Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/114

 "Where you going?"

"Looking for you, is all."

"Good. Wait a minute, till after retreat. I've got to beat retreat."

"Do you have to retreat?" Jerry blurted, aghast.

"Naw; not that kind. Not for Old Fuss and Feathers. Cracky, but you're green! It's evening roll-call and parade."

Through the camp drums were tapping, fifes squeaking, horns blaring. Officers were striding, buttoning their jackets and buckling on their swords. Soldiers were seizing muskets from the stacks and forming lines under their gruff sergeants. Hannibal himself ran and grabbed his drum from a stack of muskets, and disappeared around a tent. Sergeants were calling the company rolls. And in a few moments here came the regiment's band, and the fifers and drummers, in a broad, short column, playing a lively march tune; led by a whopping big drum major, in a long scarlet coat, gay with gilt braid and cord, on his head a shako which with nodding plume looked to be three feet high, in his hand a tasseled staff

The music formed on a level space, the band to the fore, then a rank of fifers, then a rank of drummers—with all the little drummer boys bursting through their tightly fitting uniforms of red-braided snug jackets and sky-blue long trousers flaring at the bottoms, their swords by their sides, their drums slung from their white cross-belts, their caps tilted saucily. Hannibal was there, rolling his drumsticks as lustily as the others.

The regiment followed, marching by companies,