Just you take a tip from me: You keep your eyes an' ears
real wide open for the next few days an' your mouth shut as long as
you can. Tommy explained to you about the opposition? About what
Oliver Swinnerton is doin' an' tryin' to do?"
"Yes."
"Then you remember that; don't overlook it for a minute, wakin' or
sleepin'. It'll explain a whole lot."
When they rode into the camp at Little Rome the two hundred men
employed there were just beginning to stir. Conniston's eyes took in
with no little interest the details of the camp. There was one long,
low tent, the canvas sides rolled up so that he could see a big
cooking-stove with two or three men working over it. This, plainly
enough, was the kitchen. From each side of the door a long line of
twelve-inch boards laid across saw-horses ran out across the level
sand. Upon the parallel boards were tin plates stacked high in piles,
tin cups, knives and forks, and scores of loaves of bread. There were
in addition perhaps twenty tin buckets half filled with sugar.
Scattered here and there upon the sand, some not twenty feet from the
tent, some a hundred yards, some few with a little straw under them,
the most of them with their blankets thrown upon the sand or upon
heaps of cut sage-brush, were Truxton's "muckers." They lay there like
a bivouacking army, their bodies disposed loosely, some upon their
backs, still sleeping heavily; many just sitting up, awakened by the
clatter of the cook's big iron spoon against a tin pan.
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