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That was over quick, and by the time it had settled to a drizzle I was down in the paymaster's camp. Things were sure in an uproar there. Two men killed, two more crippled, and the paymaster raving like a maniac. I hadn't been far wide of the mark. The men that passed me on the ridge had held up the outfit and looted fifty thousand dollars in cold cash." "Fifty thousand the devil!" I broke in.
He rebelled against the Paymaster's service, and remained till the ship was in the river mouth beside him. "Ho 'ille 'ille!" Black Duncan cried upon him, leaning upon his tarry gunnle, and smiling to the shore like a man far-travelled come upon a friendly face in some foreign port. The wooded rock gave back the call with interest. Round about turned the seaman and viewed the southern sky.
I found that he was a commissioned officer, a major on duty with Fremont, and Major Eaton, now of the paymaster's Department, was in the same office with him. I explained to them that I had come from General Anderson, and wanted to confer with General Fremont in person.
The woods, the woods in spring; the country full of birds; Dhuloch lap-lapping on the shore; the summer with hay filling the field, and the sky blue from hill to hill, the nights of heather and star oh, yes, she led me a pretty dance, I'm thinking, and sometimes I will be wondering if it was worth the paying for." The Paymaster's house was grown very still.
I kicked some at being detailed to drive a six-mule team, but the colonel said I might see the time when I could save the government a million dol-lars by being able to jump on to a wheel mule and drive a wagon loaded with ammunition, or paymaster's cash, out of danger of being captured by the enemy.
From a seat in the paymaster's office of the depôt barracks at Bury one afternoon in November, 1899, I could look either into the barrack yard or out along the Bolton Road. A four-wheeler clove its way through the crowd surrounding the gates, and the sentries presented arms to it.
Why there should not be one uniform stoppage out of the pay of men in hospital no person of modern ideas could see; and the paymaster's toils would have been lessened by more than one-half, if he had had to reckon the deduction from the patients' pay at threepence or fourpence each, all round, instead of having to deal with thousands per day individually, under three kinds of charge upon the pay.
The drums, the drums, the drums! Fronting that monotonous but pregnant music by the drummers of the regiment still unseen, the people of the burgh waited whispering, afraid like the Paymaster's boy to shatter the charm of that delightful terror.
I then went to Sumnad Sha's, the great shawl merchant, and turned some of the Paymaster's paper into silver currency. He showed me his stock, and I wished that I possessed the means of purchasing his goods. But even here a good shawl costs thirty or forty pounds, very magnificent they are, but I need not describe that which every English lady knows and longs for, if she has not it.
An event which for a time put Frank under a cloud, because it looked as though he were involved in the robbery of a paymaster's clerk, ended in showing that Nick Rabig was the real culprit. This completely vindicated Frank, as will be seen in the fourth volume of the series entitled: "Army Boys In the Big Drive; Or, Smashing Forward to Victory." That victory was now in sight.
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