"Knock down and assemble against time!" Purvis called.
The audience closed in a little as the crews flung themselves on the guns,
which melted, wheel by wheel, beneath their touch.
"I've never seen anything like this," I whispered.
"Huh!" said Matthews scornfully. "They're always doin' it in the Line and
Militia drill-halls. It's only circus-work."
The guns were assembled again and some one called the time. Then followed
ten minutes of the quickest firing and feeding with dummy cartridges that
was ever given man to behold.
"They look as if they might amount to something--this draft," said
Matthews softly.
"What might you teach 'em after this, then?" I asked.
"To be Guard," said Matthews.
"Spurs," cried Purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into the
stables. Each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel and
then the other.
"What the deuce are they doing?" I asked.
"This," said Matthews. He put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his
regulation cuff, showed me two very small black box-spurs: drawing up a
gaitered foot, he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when I had
inspected snapped them out again.
"That's all the spur you really need," he said.
Then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the neophytes
were told to ride.
Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not make
it easy for the men.
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