CHAPTER IX

A LESSON IN MANNERS

Ten days later an interminably long transport-train puffed out of the Cincinnati station. Its three engines were gay in polished brass and red smokestacks. All three were decked with sooty American flags.

At the station a brass band was braying and a brazen-lunged crowd was still cheering, for this was the first of the several troop-trains, bearing drafts of recruits from Cincinnati to the training-camps outside of Washington.

The day was stiflingly hot. The wooden cars were packed to overflowing. When the windows were closed the air promptly became unbreathable. When they were open a whirlwind of soft-coal embers and soot from the gaudy locomotive gushed in.

The recruits, however, were as jubilant as though they were starting on a picnic.

Singly there were choking memories of dear ones left behind, and there was perhaps dread of what might lie before. But collectively all was noisy, even boisterous, gayety.

One car, whose occupants were largely recruited from Cincinnati water-front and similar purlieus, was deafeningly rackety. Songs, cheers, catcalls, horseplay, and the more or less surreptitious circulation of flat, brown flasks were the chief components of the fun.

The officers in charge, acting on a hint from headquarters not to press too heavily the lever of discipline until the recruits should reach the training-camps, did little to suppress the jolly riot in this particular car.

Yet as the racket swelled they exchanged many uneasy looks.

They themselves were for the most part civilians, still new to martial ways and to the handling of men. Wherefore, they had gathered in the officers’ compartment at the forward end of the troop-car, where there was at least breathing room, and left the men pretty much to themselves.

A new-made militia major went through the car, glaring sternly from side to side, at a loss for the exact words wherewith to restore quiet. As he passed there was but slight lessening of the din, and as he entered the officers’ compartment the horseplay broke out afresh.

A drillmaster, ranking as first lieutenant and veteran of the Mexican War, looked up as the major entered.

“A few of those fellows need a taste of the cells or the log and chain,” hazarded the lieutenant. “And they’ll get plenty of both if they keep up this sort of thing after we reach the camps. It seems a pity we were ordered to go easy with them on the trips.”

“It’s mostly that big bargemaster who enlisted last week,” said the major. “You remember? The fellow you told me about--the one who smuggled a flask of whisky onto the parade-grounds and tried to drink during drill? He’s cast himself for the rôle of village cut-up. He starts the noise every time. His latest feat is to pelt one of the older men with peanut-shells. He picked out the meekest-looking, oldest man in sight, I suppose, to make the sport safer. Every shot brings a laugh and every hit a chorus of yells.”

The lieutenant glanced out of the compartment and down the length of the thronged car.

“It’s a dirty shame,” he reported as he drew back from investigating. “He’s chosen as his butt one of the finest old fellows in all the draft of recruits. A man I’ve had my eye on since the day he joined. A man with a mystery behind him, I should say.”

“Who?” asked the major, waking to mild interest at the magic word “mystery.” “The old codger the bargee is pelting? Seems a harmless, unromantic sort of fellow.”

“He joined a little over a week ago,” replied the lieutenant. “I was cranky that day, and I hated to see a gray-haired man among the rookies I was drilling, for the old ones are awkwardest and take twice as long to learn the simplest tactics as the young chaps. But he’d passed the physical exam, and had been sworn in, so I tried to make the best of it. But, as it turned out, I didn’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“I put him in an ‘awkward squad’ and started in to teach the squad how to stand and how to step out. Well, the instant this old man ‘fell in’ I saw he was a soldier. I yanked him out of that awkward squad in five seconds and put him in a company. I kept on watching him. He had the tactics down to his finger-ends. I’ve used him two or three times at a pinch to help me drill awkward squads.”

“Nothing very mysterious about that, is there?” yawned the major. “I’ve read several more thrilling mystery stories by Poe and Gaboriau.”

“The mystery is this,” said the lieutenant, ignoring the elephantine sarcasm. “I can’t get him to admit he’s ever served before. He just shut up like a clam when I asked him. His name is Dadd--James Dadd. I took the bother to look up the name on the old army rolls. There’s never been such a name in the United States army. He isn’t a foreigner, either.”

“May be serving under another name,” suggested the major, whom the story did not at all interest.

“Is it probable? Nowadays men are only too anxious to be known as enlisting for the flag. And there are big chances for promotion for men who have served before. He wouldn’t be likely to miss those chances by changing his name and refusing to admit he was a veteran. No, it’s a bit mysterious. And--”

A redoubled chorus of yells from the car brought the several officers in the compartment instinctively to their feet. Crowding to the door, they peered out over each other’s shoulders into the traveling bedlam.

The humorist had just put a capstone on his achievement of wit by creeping slyly up behind the old man whom he had been bombarding with peanut-shells, and emptying the entire residue of the paper-bag’s contents down the back of his patient victim’s neck.

The exploit brought forth tumultuous applause from the uncouth crowd of onlookers near by.

Dad, who had smiled amusedly as each peanut of the earlier volleys had chanced to hit him, now laughed aloud in tolerant mirth. He had seen new-comers far more mercilessly hazed in his earlier army days. To him the rude fun was the mere animal spirit of a gathering of children, bent on larking it while out for a holiday.

And while he did not greatly enjoy the task of scraping harsh peanut-shells from between his collar and his neck, it struck him as decidedly amusing that a full-grown man like this partly drunk bargee should find joy in such foolishness and that others should deem it funny enough to send them into recurrent and boisterous guffaws.

He was glad, though, that they could laugh. It would shift their thoughts from the grief of leave-taking. He was quite willing to be the butt of their laughter so long as it served so good a purpose.

The bargee, however, was far from pleased at his victim’s tolerant attitude. He would have preferred to see the old man stamp and swear in impotent rage or mumble piteously futile threats at his tormentor.

To achieve some such end he came around in front of Dad and, hands on hips, leered down at the pleasantly smiling target of his clownish activities.

“Well, gran’pa,” said he, “ain’t you goin’ to thank me for them generous gifts I been lavishin’ so freehanded and kind on you?”

“Certainly,” agreed Dad. “Much obliged, my friend. Only you mistook the location of my mouth. It’s in front here, not at the back of my neck, as you seem to have made the mistake of thinking.”

Some one tittered at this very mild pleasantry.

The titter nettled the bargee. He desired a monopoly of laughs, and through vexation his merrymaking at once assumed a more caustic tone.

“Kind of a smart Abe, ain’t ye?” he queried. “Guess that kind o’ talk passes for funny back in the Old Men’s Home, don’t it? Or did they dig you up out of somebody’s fam’ly vault?”

“Aw, drop it, Cy!” expostulated a softer-hearted recruit across the aisle.

“That’s right,” assented the bargee. “He may be somebody’s great-great-granddaddy. Gran’ma starved him and larruped him with a broom-handle back home, so he run away to get a square feed at Uncle Sammy’s expense. Ain’t that the way of it, gran’pa?”

“Sonny,” replied Dad, still smiling and in perfect good nature, “I ran away because somebody stole my comic almanac, and I couldn’t get on without it. I missed it a lot--till I met you.”

The titter rose again, this time swelled by several voices. The bargee reddened as he sought to digest the dubious repartee.

Nevertheless, he essayed to answer the none too subtle gibe in like vein.

“It’s bad enough,” he grumbled, “to stand up and get shot at for thirteen dollars a month. But when we’ve got to stomach an old goat like you, along with the job, by gollies, it adds new horrors to war! You talk like you’re the same breed as old monkey-faced Abe, down there in Washington.”

The smile was wiped clean off Dad’s face now. His eyes were cold, and his mouth was set in a very straight, thin line.

“My friend,” he said with slow gravity, “you don’t realize what you are saying. So I will explain to you, if you will let me. President Abraham Lincoln is commander-in-chief of the army to which you have sworn allegiance. In speaking of your commander-in-chief as you have just done, you do not insult _him_--he is too high for insults to reach him--but you insult your army, and likewise your own self-respect. You didn’t stop to think of that when you spoke, did you? I’m sure you didn’t. But you will another time.”

The bargee’s head shot forward from between his suddenly hunched shoulders. There was a menacing scowl on his low, receding brow, below which his eyes had narrowed to pinpoints that gleamed redly.

“I don’t want no lectures,” he snarled, “from any fat-headed old blowhard.” Angry, the bargee, nevertheless, rejoiced in secret that at last he had aroused his foe from his former kindly calm. “And I’ve got a right to speak my opinions as I choose to. This is a free country. Or it was till they stuck up a lantern-jawed, backwoods booby in the President’s chair. That’s some more of my opinions; how d’ye like that?”

Somebody hissed. The hiss was taken up from various parts of the car.

But at the next moment every man was on his feet; and on the instant hush that had fallen a hundred necks were craned.

With almost incalculable swiftness Dad had sprung up and faced the bargee. The latter, reading the white-fire message in the lately kind blue eyes, hesitated not the fraction of a second, but struck out instinctively.

The hamlike fist swished portentously through the air.

But the air was all it encountered. Dad, ducking the blow, ran in. Before the bargee could grapple, he was lifted bodily on high.

Down he came. Not to the floor, but to a bended knee that caught him lengthwise athwart the middle of the body. The bargee doubled, face downward, across Dad’s knee--like a jack-knife.

One iron hand on the back of his fat neck pinioned his head to the floor. With the other hand Dad smote--smote again, and yet again and again.

Wide-handed he struck and with open palm on the portion of the bargee’s anatomy which, in that position, presented the largest and, in all respects, the most convenient striking surface.

The blows of the spanking resounded like prolonged theater applause. The bargee struggled and writhed and kicked. But all in vain. The hand and arm that held him fast were as strong as they were deft.

With no shadow of annoyance on his handsome face, Dad continued to spank, while the car shook with howls of delight from a hundred throats--howls that quite downed the bargee’s lurid vocabulary.

At length Dad paused. Palm significantly upraised, he asked gently:

“President Lincoln is a great man, isn’t he?”

“Y-yes,” groaned the bargee, after a moment of hesitation.

“You’ll never forget that again?”

“No.”

“I’m glad. Get up now, and let’s be friends. Won’t you share my seat? Or--perhaps, under the circumstances, you’ll feel more comfortable to stand up for a while.”