When night came on and the stars came out, he dropped the soldier shop and talked of religion and astronomy. The former, he assured me earnestly, was much discussed by the privates around the fire at night, which I could better believe after I saw how near the stars get and how wide the world seems when there is only a blanket between you and the heavens, and when there is a general impression prevailing that you are to be shot at from an ambush in the morning. Of astronomy he showed a very wonderful knowledge, and awakened my admiration by calling many stars by strange and ancient names--an admiration which was lessened abruptly when he confessed that he had been following some other than the North Star for the last three miles, and that we were lost. It was a warm night, and I was so tired with the twenty-five-miles ride on a Mexican saddle--which is as comfortable as a soap-box turned edges up--that the idea of lying out on the ground did not alarm me. But Trumpeter Tyler’s honor was at stake. He had his reputation as a trailer to maintain, and he did so ably by lighting matches and gazing knowingly at the hoof-marks of numerous cattle, whose bones, I was sure, were already whitening on the plain or journeying East in a refrigerator-car, but which he assured me were still fresh, and must lead to the ranch near which the camp was pitched. And so, after four hours’ aimless trailing through the chaparral, when only the thorns of the cactus kept us from falling asleep off our horses, we stumbled into two smouldering fires, a ghostly row of little shelter-tents, and a tall figure in a long overcoat, who clicked a carbine and cried, “Halt, and dismount!” I was somewhat doubtful of my reception in the absence of the captain, and waited, very wide awake now, while they consulted together in whispers, and then the sentry led me to one of the little tents and kicked a sleeping form violently, and told me to crawl in and not to mind reveille in the morning, but to sleep on as long as I wished. I did not know then that I had Trumpeter Tyler’s bed, and that he was sleeping under a wagon, but I was gratefully conscious of his “bunkie’s” tucking me in as tenderly as though I were his son, and of his not sharing, but giving me more than my share of the blankets. And I went to sleep so quickly that it was not until the morning that I found what I had drowsily concluded must be the roots of trees under me, to be “bunkie’s” sabre and carbine.