For a man of philosophic temperament, one who seldom worried other people or himself, Colonel Stone had been having a nerve-racking time of it. He was troubled in the first place about the condition of affairs military in his big command, which the general himself had referred to as "a sad falling off," and which Stone saw no way under the law to correct. The number of men absent without leave, absent unaccounted for, probably in desertion, or absent "in the hands of the civil authorities," had increased alarmingly since the closing of the Canteen. "Skid" and his abominable community across the fords had been doing a thriving business, and were vastly enjoying the situation. Men by dozens who had been content, after their sharp drills or when the day's work was done, with mild and palatable beer, now sat sullenly about their barrack steps in the summer evenings, or, out of sheer disgust, wandered off by twos and threes (and a new footbridge erected by Skidmore), to spend their leisure hours and scanty cash over the reeking counters of the saloon, deeming themselves robbed of a right accorded every other wageworker throughout Christendom, and saying things of their Congress it wasn't safe for their officers even to think. They did not so much blame the women who had started the movement that spoiled their soldier homelife--how could women of the Fold be expected to know anything about the conditions on the frontier?--but, said our sergeants and corporals and sturdy men-at-arms, the soldier had a right to expect that Congress would look before it voted. Possibly had the soldiers, too, been voters their side of the case might have met some consideration; but, being politically on the same plane with "Indians not taxed," it was safe, at least, to similarly fix their social status and restrictions. Forbidden by the people he was sworn to serve, to take his temperate drink at home, but permitted by the same people to drink his fill of fiery stuff abroad, abroad the thirsty soldier went, and with him went many a man who had been content with mighty little, but resented it that he should be discriminated against, denied the right of the humblest citizen, and declared the only white man in America fit only to be ruled as is the red.