once been the running gear of a California buck-board. Behind it
dangled from dusty pegs portions of leather harness, which all the
neat's-foot oil of the military pharmacopoeia could never again
restore to softness or pliability. A newer edition of the same class
of vehicle was covered by a canvas "'paulin." A huge stack of barley
bags was piled at the far end of the corral, guarded from depredation
(quadrupedal) by a barrier of wooden slats, mostly down, and by a
tattered biped, very sound asleep.

"Where's the sergeant?" queried the paymaster, slowly, addressing no
one in particular, but looking plaintively around him.

Still leaning a brown chin on a nearly black hand, and stirring up his
spider with the forked stick he held in the other paw, the boy simply
tilted his head towards the dark opening under the farther end of the
shed, an aperture that seemed to lead to nothing but blackness beyond.

"What's he doing?"

"No sa-a-abe," drawled the boy, never lifting his handsome eyes from
the joys before him.

"Why hasn't he harnessed up?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.

"Hey?"

"No sa-a-abe," slowly as before.