"You're wearin' a military saloot, which you have no business to. You've got no right to show that you ever was in the army, or so much as seen a regiment. You salooted the General jest now. Don't you ever let me see you do it to him agin, or to no other officer. You musn't do nothin' but take off your hat and bow. You hear me?" Shorty was rubbing it in on his old tormentor in hopes to provoke him to a fight. But the cowed man was too fearful of publicity just then. He did not know what might be held in reserve to spring upon him. He shambled away, muttering: "O, go on! Grind down upon me. You'll be wantin' to send me to a Lincoln bastile next. But a day will come when white men'll have their rights agin." Unfortunately for Shorty, however, he was having things too much his own way. There were complaints that he was acting as if he owned Headquarters. Even the General noticed it, and would occasionally say in tones of gentle remonstrance: "See here, Corporal, you are carrying too big a load. Leave something for the rest of us to do. We are getting bigger pay than you are, and should have a chance to earn our money." But Shorty would not take the hint. With his rapidly-returning strength there had come what Si termed "one of his bull-headed spells," which inevitably led to a cataclysm, unless it could be worked off legitimately, as it usually was at the front by a toilsome march, a tour of hard fatigue duty, or a battle or skirmish. But the routine of Headquarters duties left him too much chance to get "fat and sassy." One day the General and his staff had to go over to Louisville to attend some great military function, and Shorty was left alone in charge of Headquarters. There was nothing for him to do but hold a chair down, and keep anybody from carrying off the Headquarters. This was a dangerous condition, in his frame of mind. He began meditating how he could put in the idle hours until the General should return in the evening. He thought of hunting up Billngs, and giving him that promised thrashing, but his recent experience did not promise hopefully that he could nag that worthy into a fight that would be sufficiently interesting. "I'd probably hit him a welt and he'd go off bawlin' like a calf," he communed with himself. "No; Billings is too tame, now, until he finds out whether we've got anything on him to send him to the penitentiary, where he orter go." Looking across the street he noticed Eph Click, whom he had known as a camp-follower down in Tennessee, and was now running a "place" in the unsavory part of the town. Shorty had the poorest opinion of Eph, but the latter was a cunning rascal, who kept on the windy side of the law, and had so far managed to escape the active notice of the Provost-Marshal. He was now accompanied by a couple of men in brand-new uniforms, so fresh that they still had the folds of the Quartermaster's boxes.