Out on the target-range a detachment was at work one day mastering the problems of long-range fire with sadly inefficient rifles. It was shortly after their arrival at Chickamauga, and Newt Spooner had just fallen back, his Springfield still smoking with the black powder of its discharge. He had scored a "bull," and his thin lips were gravely pleased. Over the sultry area of the mobilization camp went the roar and activity of war-preparation. Newly commissioned staff officers galloped importantly from headquarters to headquarters. Mule trains and commissariat-wagons rumbled noisily under yellow clouds of following dust. Lines upon lines of company streets stretched away in a spread of canvas with the locales of commands marked by brigade and regimental colors; brazen mingling of shouts and bugles set to it its accompaniment of sound. As Newt Spooner walked back, throwing open the breach of his piece, his eyes fell on a new figure, which wore its uniform with as soldierly a jauntiness as though it had never been accustomed to "cits." The face was already bronzed, and the gauntleted hands rested on the saber-belt. The man was Henry Falkins, and on his shoulder-straps and collar-ornaments were not the twin bars of a captain, but the oak leaves of a major. Newt, falling back toward the little group of his fellows who sat cross-legged in the meager shadow of a tent-flap, halted suddenly and stood for a moment transfixed. Then his hand stole to his ammunition-belt, and toyed there with a cartridge. His face paled and hardened. So, after all, his enemy had not stayed at home. Falkins looked up, and saw the soldier. He saw the attitude, and the venomous hatred of the narrowed eyes, and the itching twitch of the fingers at the cartridge-belt, and he knew then that his most dangerous enemy would not be always at his front. But he nodded to the boy, and said casually: "Spooner, that last shot was a neat one." The private did not answer. He did not salute, he did not move. He only stood and glared. Henry Falkins turned his back on the potential assassin, and strolled deliberately away. But the Deacon, now "top-Sergeant" of B Company came over to the boy--who had taken one step as if to follow Falkins--and stepped between. "Son," he said in a low voice, while his eyes were very steady and quieting in their hypnotic quality, "your year ain't up yet--not by several months. I reckon until the fourth of next July, you'd better not let your face give you away like that. It's bad business in the army." The boy fell suddenly trembling with the reaction of his temptation. For an instant, forgetful of his pledge, he had fully meant to shoot. Now, he turned and walked back toward the group of seated comrades. After a while, he inquired in a normal voice: "What's Henry Falkins a-doin' with them major's leaves on his shoulder-straps? He hain't nothin' but captain of A Company. I thought he'd done stayed at home."