"Yes, sir," groaned the sergeant.

"First two men of the rear four of B company fall out and come here," Captain Holmes shouted.

Instantly the two men detached themselves from the company and came running back.

"Fix your bayonets," Greg ordered. "Bring Sergeant Mock in at the rear of the battalion. If he shirks, prod him with the points of your bayonets. Don't be brutal, but make the sergeant keep up at the rear of the battalion."

"Sir-----" began Mock protestingly.

"Quite enough for you, Sergeant Mock," Greg rapped out. "I'll have your feet examined by a surgeon when you come in. Unless the surgeon tells me that I'm wrong you may look for something to happen!"

As Greg turned and started to run back to the head of his company he thought he heard a sound like a hiss. In his opinion it came from some one in the group of carpenters, but he did not halt to investigate.

Though Mock limped all the way in, he came in exactly at the tail of the battalion. As the last company halted on the drill ground Sergeant Lund came back for him, relieving the guards.

"Mock, until you've been examined," said the top, "you're not to go beyond battalion bounds."

"Am I in arrest?" demanded Mock, his face set in ugly lines.

"You're confined within battalion bounds. Remember that," saying which First Sergeant Lund turned and strode away.

Nor was Mock a happy man. Holmes arranged that a regimental surgeon should come over to B company barracks later and make a careful examination of Sergeant Mock's feet. For some reason the surgeon did not come promptly. The evening meal was eaten, and darkness settled down over Camp Berry. Mock, still limping and looking woeful, kept out in the open air.

"Psst!" came sharply from somewhere, and Mock, turning, saw a man in civilian garb standing in the shadow of a latrine shed.

"Come here," called the stranger. Still surly, but urged by curiosity, Mock obeyed the summons.

"I don't want to be seen talking with you," murmured the stranger, in a low voice, "but I want to offer you my sympathy. Say, but a man gets treated roughly in the Army. That captain of yours---"

As the stranger paused, looking keenly at Mock, the disgruntled sergeant finished vengefully:

"The captain? He's a dog!"

"Dog is right," agreed the stranger promptly. "Will he do anything more to you?"

"I expect he'll bust me," said Sergeant Mock.

To "bust" is the same as to "break." It means to reduce a non-com to the ranks.

"Are you going to stand it?" demanded the stranger.

"Fat chance I'll have to beat the captain's game!" declared Mock angrily.

"But are you going to pay him back?"

"How?"

"Listen. I was in the Army once, and I don't like these officer boys. Maybe I've something against your captain, too. Anyway, keep mum and take good advice, and I'll help you to make him wish he'd never been born."

"Not a chance!" dissented Sergeant Mock promptly. "Captain Holmes isn't afraid of anything, and besides he was born lucky. Besides that, do anything to hurt him, and you've got Captain Prescott against you, too, and ready to rip you up the back."

"It's as easy to put 'em both in bad as it is to do it to either,"

promised the stranger. "Now, listen. You-----"

CHAPTER III

BAD BLOOD COMES TO THE SURFACE

Later in the evening the surgeon came around. After examining Sergeant Mock's feet for twenty minutes, and testing the skin as well, he p.r.o.nounced Mock a shammer.

Mock was sent to the guard-house for twenty-four hours. The next morning an order was published reducing the sergeant to the rank of private. Yet, on the whole, the ex-sergeant looked pleased in a sullen, disagreeable sort of way. He had listened to the stranger.

Greg, however, had other troubles on his hands. After the noon meal that day, as he was on his way to his quarters upstairs Captain Cartwright pa.s.sed him in the corridor.

"I hear you're turning martinet," said Cartwright, with a disagreeable smile.

"Very likely," smiled Holmes, "but what are the specifications?"

"I heard that you had a sergeant busted for having an opinion of his own."

"That's not so," Greg declared promptly.

"Do you mean to tell me I'm a liar?" Cartwright asked flushing.

"Did I understand you to charge me with preferring unjustifiable charges against a sergeant in my company?"

"I said I heard you had busted a sergeant for doing his own thinking,"

the other captain insisted.

"Cartwright, it's difficult for me to guess at what you're driving,"

Holmes went on, patiently, "but I've already told you that I did nothing of the kind that you allege."

"That's calling me a liar again!" flamed Cartwright.

"I'm sorry if it is," returned Greg coolly, and turned toward his door.

"You cannot call me a liar!" cried Captain Cartwright, taking a quick step forward, his fists clenched.

"Apparently I don't have to," scoffed Holmes. "You're eager to claim the t.i.tle for yourself."

Up flew the other captain's fist. But just then a door opened behind him, and d.i.c.k Prescott caught the uplifted fist in tight, vise-like hold.

"Don't do that, Cartwright," he advised.