Part 13

"Well," said Shorty, grabbing his hat and preparing to bolt, "I have sure appreciated 'em. But, you mark my words, there's a girl behind this. A fellow like Ryan doesn't go squanderin' rhymes for nothin', hombre. Adios." And off shot Shorty, with hands jammed deep in his pockets.

"He's smart, all right," said Stone to himself; "the girl's there. Where the deuce is that bloomin' ode, 'To my Lady-Frend'?" Finding it, he read:

Heaven meant things to go in 2s Cora, Thats why i am alone unhappy single. There won't be a bird or animal refuse Cora Each with other folks to mingle.

So why do you give me the cold sholder Cora Is it becaws youre shi or love another? If youd only speak to your deer soljer Cora, Ide fite a feller if he was my brother.

The moone is shining britely in the ski my Cora deer The nite is late the village clock strikes 2. Yes everything says 2 my years can hear Cora, And that is why i think of you.

"Poor kid, he seems to be up against it! Wonder where he got that about the village clock? Must have been doin' some promiscious readin'. He said that was the best 'piece' he'd written. I wonder if he--I wonder if she----" Still wondering, Stone carefully put the precious manuscript away and turned back to work, resolving to corral Private T. Ryan at the first opportunity.

Private T. Ryan proved obliging, however, and came into Stone's room after supper to get his verses and the first sergeant's opinion of them.

"What do I think about 'em, kid? Why, I think they're mighty interestin'. Take a chair. I didn't know you had it in you. But that one about your lady-friend, now; is that straight goods or is it a poet's pipe-dream?"

"It's true, all right. You know who she is, too. Cora Sheean--father's that retired chief trumpeter; lives over back o' the ridin'-hall."

"Cora Sheean! Why, yes, I know who _she_ is." Mrs. Sheean did Stone's washing, and he had often seen red-haired Cora, and heard of her, too; for she was the belle of the post in "enlisted" circles. "She's a mighty pretty girl, Ted,--here's luck to you,--but she's so bloomin' popular it's liable to be heavy goin'. You tell me all about it, an' maybe I can help you some"; and Stone began a rapid-fire broadside of questions, in the midst of which arrived John Whitney.

"Howdy," he remarked. "Say, yo' runnin' a pumpin'-station, Jerry?"

"No, I'm not. Now, either you clear out or come in an' help. I showed you Ryan's poetry--an' you remember that one about his lady-friend? Well, it's true, an' he's tellin' me about it. Do you mind his comin' in, kid? He can probably help you better than I can, as he's had so much more experience with Eliz----"

"Shut up! Yo'-all are mighty fond of refe'in' to that lady. I notice yo' get a letter every day yo'self!"

"Set down," said Ryan. "No, I don't mind, but don't you ever let on. There's Hansen, now. He'd devil me all over the place if he caught on."

And so he continued his recital. Yes, Cora had flirted outrageously with him. "But she says she ain't ever goin' ter marry no private; I got ter be a sergeant anyway, or she won't look at me." He was going to hold her to that; he was going to work hard, and there was a good chance, for there would be two non-coms to get their _dis_charge next week. No, he hadn't always been fond of poetry; only this last winter. Will Carleton was a fine poet. "'Member 'bout that feller who fell through the ceilin' into the butter-tub?--or was it a churn he fell in?" But Ella Wheeler Wilcox was the finest poet who ever wrote a line. "So all-fired hot," she was. He had two books full of her things. He always wrote verses when he felt sort of lonely or Cora had been making him mad. "I write 'em about everything. To-day, at Retreat, now, I thought they'd keep us standin' there till kingdom come; an' when them bugles was blowin' the last part, that goes down an' up an' down again twice, an' then has a little wiggle to it, yer know, why, the words to it just popped into my head. Like this": And he sang:

The gun goes boom, The flag goes flop Here we're standin' stiffened at the knees an' almost nigh ter drop

Rhymes came easy when he felt like it. Sometimes he could write 'em when he felt extra _good_, too. It had to be one way or the other; he couldn't write a bit when things were just common. And he was awfully fond of Cora. He'd give up 'most anything he had if she'd only say she'd marry him. But Hansen was a Q. M. sergeant an' put on dog, an' had reenlisted pay an' all, an' it cut a big figger with her. He wasn't worried about any of the other fellers; he could beat them out easy; but Hansen had him buffaloed. "An' I say, Sergeant, don't you tell Shorty I want ter get married or he won't do a blame thing for me."

"Sure thing," said Stone, "I won't tell him. But look here, kid; if I can work a pull for you,--an' I'll do the best I can,--will the lady have you, after all?"

"I think I can work it. I believe she's got a fondness for me, but she's that proud she wouldn't never marry nothin' but a sergeant; her father was chief trumpeter, yer know. Say, do please give me a recommend ter Shorty, an' I'll try mer very best ter do the work well an' be a good soldier."

"Glad to hear you say that; 'cause, I warn you, if you don't make a good non-com, you get busted. We can't run this troop on sentiment. Yes, I'll tell the captain I think you'll do for a corporal, if that'll ease your mind any; as for your getting a sergeancy, that's your own lookout later. It all depends on what sort you prove yourself to be. If it isn't the right sort, back you go."

"'I was a corporal wanst; I was rejuiced aftherwards,'" murmured Whitney. "Yes, Ted, I'll tell Shorty, too, that you'd make a good non-com. Will yo' leave yo' vuhses? I want to read 'em again. Goodnight. Next time I see Miss Cora, I'll make yo' ears bu'n." And, as Ryan departed with abject thanks, visibly cheered, Whitney stretched out his hand. "Speakin' of Kiplin', hand over that Lady-Friend yonder--want to learn her; she's a gem. Say, do yo' think Hansen's in earnest over that?"

"Ask me an' I say no. I know that Knudt down to the ground. He isn't the marryin' kind."

"Soldier of fortune, pyo' an' simple, he is," said Whitney; "always on the go; an' do yo' think he's goin' to pin himself down anywhere? Not he. He's only in this for the fun of the thing, an' it's a heap better fo' the little Cora girl if he stays out."

"I'm with you. He couldn't tie up to one girl, never in his bloomin' life. Between you an' me an' the lamp-post, he's goin' to the bad in more ways than one. 'Wine, women, an' song,' an' consequent mix-ups in his accounts. He's gettin' too crooked to stay quartermaster. Shorty's about decided to put him back in the line. Why, only yesterday he came over to me an' said, 'Say, make me out a afferdavid, will you? I lost my carbine.' I knew blame well he hadn't lost it, so I said right quick, 'That so? How much you get for it?'

"'Why,' he says, 'the man only gave me three-fif--Say, Stone, you're darn smart! But help a feller out a bit, won't you? I had to have the money.'

"'No,' I said, 'I won't. You get out of here. I'm not goin' to perjure my soul so's you can have any three-fifteen, or three-fifty, or whatever it was.' The big yap! An', you can bet your life, if it had come down to his carbine, he's been doin' some tall monkeyin' with the accounts an' the troop fund. An' yet, with it all, I can't help liking him; there's so many good things about him. If he's your friend once, he's your friend for always--never knew such a man to stick. He's been awfully good to me when there's no call to be, an' helped me in lots of little ways."

"Yes," said Whitney; "an' the things he's seen, an' the places he's been, an' the messes he's been mixed up in--an' he knows how to tell it, too. That takes with the little Cora girl, of co'se. Better fo' her, though, if he'd keep away. I like him all right fo' myself, but he's liable to be crooked anywheres. Little Teddy Ryan's clean strain, but he wouldn't show up to much advantage beside Knudt. Dixon goes out to-mo'w; I s'pose that's what yo're thinkin' of fo' the kid. Who gets the sergeancy? Decided?"

"Yep. Melody's jumped, an' Sullivan gets it, but I don't think Shorty's thought of who'd be corporal. I'll try an' fix it in the mornin'."

Accordingly, next morning Stone nominated the poet to be Corporal Ryan.

"What the----!" said Shorty. "I've no use for a poet, I was thinkin' of Terry--what?"

"Well, only that Terry drinks an' Ryan never does. I don't think his verse-makin' will interfere with his duties; it hasn't hitherto, an' if he doesn't make good, we can try some one else."

"Have it your own way, then. The way you run this troop is scandalous. There's not another T. C. in the army who gets bossed by his Top the way I do." And off went Shorty chuckling, having decided two days before that Ryan was to be corporal, and well knowing that Stone would defy even the colonel before he would run counter to an order given by his adored captain.

* * * * *

Two nights later Stone and Whitney were again together.

"Well," said Whitney, "I've just seen the new co'poral goin', in all his glory, to the little Cora girl's. He didn't take long to get his stripes an' chevrons."

"To _get_! What you talkin' about? He had 'em all ready. Stevens saw him take 'em out of his locker already fixed on a new suit."

"That's what I call befo'handed. But the little cuss is so blame happy over it all."

"Yes," said Stone; "happy, an' wooin' the Muse again, too. Hope he don't mix her up with his Cora. Will you look at this? And the length of it? It's an ode to the troop, an' he hasn't left out anybody. Wonder where he got the time to do it all! Read the first three verses an' then the last; they're all you need to waste your time on."

So Whitney read:

OAD TO J TROOP

Come comrads come your carbeans load While neer and far I sing my oad. There never was a troop like owers It does deserve all bueateous flowers.

Ower Captain in the army is the best But he doesent give you any rest And sergeants Stone and Whitny is very fine to, The best sergeants who breth ever drew.

And now I come with unwiling pennence, To tell you about ower 2 lootennence. Lootenent Burns a Prints could be, But Spurs isent neerly as educated as me.

* * * * *

So galopp on my gallent troop, Let no one to a bob-tale stoop, Its prayses sound from East to West For all agree J troop is best.

Signed, Corporal T. Ryan Poet Lariat of J troop 18th U. S. Cav.

"Lariat! Gee! Wonder he didn't put 'an' picket-pin.' The second line of that last verse is mighty ambiguous. Do you s'pose he means a hawse or a dishono'able discharge?"

"Don't know," said Stone. "An' look at the last two lines:

Its prayses sound from East to West For all agree J troop is best.

Sounds like a soap advertisement to me. An' up there about the lieutenants. Wonder if an' 'unwiling pennence' meant a reluctant pen 'cause he didn't care to mention Spurs an' had to have a rhyme?"

"It's likely. But look yere, Jerry. Yo' an' I don't breathe. Our breath draws _us_."

"Pretty strong breath it must be, then."

"Hush, man! Yo' goin' to show these to Shorty?"

"I was thinkin' maybe he wouldn't like to think Ryan was still writin', now that he's a corporal."

"Ah, go on; show it. Shorty won't care."

And Shorty didn't. Only, after a delighted snort over the ode, he sent forth the order: "You tell him I say this has got to be the last. If I catch him writin' any more monkey-doodle verses, I'll bust him quick as a minute. If he wants to be a non-com in my troop, he's got to put his whole mind to it."

Ryan obeyed, and, unsaddling his Pegasus, set himself to work with such a will that as time went on he came to be one of the best non-coms in the troop, particularly where the instruction of recruits was concerned; for he seemed to have a special sympathy with them, and a knack of imparting the correct way to do things; His suit with Cora prospered, too, for she paid more attention to the corporal than she had to the private; but, being past grand mistress of the art of flirtation, she always contrived some little act or remark to chasten her lover's spirit and keep him sufficiently humble, as an offset to any particular favoritism that might have uplifted his spirits; which manoeuver always successfully puzzled Teddy. "First she's all sweet as candy; next minute I get the throw-down." But he never despaired, and came back strongly on the rebound, inquiring periodically, "Say, Cora, you're goin' ter marry me when I get mer sergeancy, ain't yer?" And she would reply, laughing: "Yes, when you get to be a sergeant I'll marry yer; an' that'll be when the river catches fire."

Time wore on, and the summer drew to a close. Hansen was no longer the quartermaster-sergeant, so he was not such an impressive figure as he had been. One payday Captain Campbell instructed Stone to read the men a lecture on the sin of drunkenness. "Not that I mind a man's gettin' drunk so much, but when the whole troop goes on a booze, it's a blame sight too much of a good thing. We're not to have any such time in J barracks as we did last month. You tell 'em that, an' make it red-hot."

So Stone, translating liberally, read them a severe lecture, ending up with: "An' if any of you big yaps comes home drunk, don't care who he is, he gets put under arrest. Savvy? That's straight."

The troop paid honors to an ultimatum when it was paraded before them, and it was a straight-walking, sober crowd that rounded up at J barracks that night. But, shortly before reveille, sounds of song and hilarity disturbed the sleepers, and Stone was obliged to rise and place Sergeant Knudt Hansen under arrest. He had returned from town in an exceedingly talkative frame of mind, and was now tipsily enlightening his squad-room on the disgracefully small quantity of drinks that could be bought on a sergeant's pay.

"I hate to do it, old man," said Stone, "but I'll have to put you under arrest. You know what I said, and now you've gone an' done this deliberately."

"Aw right. 'Sh mer own fault--only 'sh bad exshample to 'resht shergeant before shquad-room o' privatshes; mosht demoralizin'."

"I'm sorry, Hansen, but I must do it. You are confined to quarters for two days." And Stone retired, grieved that Hansen, of all men, should have been the one to suffer for the sake of an example.

"Gee!" said Brown, "I never thought Stone'd do that!"

"Wouldn't he, though?" rejoined Ryan. "You bet your boots, a sergeant looks all-same buck to the Top."

"Hansen'll lay it up to him, you see," said Hickey, looking at the big man now sprawled out on his bunk in noisy slumber.

"Not on yer life, Dope," said Brown. "Hansen's too much sense fer that. He'll see the Top's side of it." And so it proved, for, after a few half-laughs, half-apologetic words from his first sergeant, Hansen agreed that there had been no other course to pursue.

"And, anyway," he said, with a grin, "I'll get a goot rest, yess. It iss about time I loafed some. I shall sleep."

Now, sleep was all very well for that day and part of the next, but by the afternoon of the second day Sergeant Knudt Hansen's active mind and body became saturated with rest and extremely bored. He had read everything he could lay his hands on, even including a vagrant copy of "Edgeworth's Moral Tales" that had wandered, Heaven knows how, into the troop library. While affording him food for sarcastically profane comment in the slimy sediment of at least six different languages, this estimable work had, if anything, increased his ennui. His body began actually to ache for action of some sort; almost anything would do at a pinch.

Strolling disconsolately through the hall, whom should he chance to see but Corporal Ryan, who was in charge of quarters for that day, busily cleaning his saber (for the next day was Saturday), and singing cheerfully, "'You're in the army now.'"

"Let up on that musical, you gamin; it iss not to the ear pleasant," growled Hansen. Besides his other grievance that Ryan's cheerfulness flicked on the raw, the little corporal had cut out the big sergeant several times lately with Cora.

"Ah, g'wan an' soak yer swelled head!" retorted Ryan respectfully, and, bending to his work, began to carol forth the delectable ballad of the "Rubber Dolly." Hansen advanced into the room.

"See here, Meester Freshie, that iss no way to speak to your sergeant! Oh, yess; I am knowing what you mean. You t'ank, because Cora go with you a leetle, you can come it ofer me here, too--not?"

"You leave her name out o' that," said Teddy, straightening up and reddening. "She's got nothin' ter do with it, an' you leave her be."

"Oho! The leetle man tank she iss so sweet and innocent a leetle girl, I am not fit to speak of her--yess? Why, she--" And Hansen started in to enumerate in no very choice language certain fabricated insinuations against the character of the popular Miss Cora Sheean. But they were barely out of his mouth before Teddy Ryan's fist was in it. Blindly the big Swede struck back, catching Ryan on the nose and drawing the blood; and then they started in in earnest.

"Hello, hello! What's all this?" demanded Captain Campbell, popping in on the scene like a vibrant little jack-in-the-box. Hansen drew off. "He used language to me, sir, and I am hiss sergeant; it iss him that I am teaching hiss place," he explained sullenly.

"But, Cap'en," cried Ryan, "he said--he said--I can't tell yer what he said," he finished slowly.

"Well, I can tell what _I'll_ say, an' pretty blame quick! Hansen, you're a bully, that's what. Next time tackle some one nearer your size; an' you get three days' confinement. Ryan (for heaven's sake get a handkerchief an' wipe your nose), I'll give you a day, too; for fightin' your sergeant an' for gettin' into a fight when you're left in charge of quarters." Thus it was that the Captain ended the fight, but the consequences stretched far beyond him and were in the hands of Cora.

"You oughter been ter J Troop yesterday," quoth Corporal Brown the next evening, while sitting on Miss Cora Sheean's front step. "Hansen an' Ryan had a fight. Hansen said somepin', an' Ryan went fer him, an' they had it hot. Nobody was by, an' Ryan won't tell, so we don't know what Hansen said."

Cora was staring at him with eyes wide with concern. "My Lord!" she gasped, "is he hurt?"

"Naw, Hansen ain't hurt none. He's a fighter, an' Ryan ain't big enough ter----"

"_Stupid!_ I mean Teddy Ryan. Is he hurt?"

"Naw; only a black eye an' a nose-bleed. Cap'en stopped 'em before Hansen had a chance ter do much."

"Thank Gawd!" sighed Cora, sinking back in relief. "Look here, Mr. Brown, will you do me a favor? Will you tell Mr. Ryan that if he can run over here early to-morrow mornin', I got somethin' I want ter give him?"

When the bearer of tidings had departed, Cora sat up very straight, with tightly clasped hands, repeating vacantly, with an ambiguous mixture of pronouns, "He might er killed him--he might er killed him!" For to her the fight between these men had only one meaning; intuitively she knew herself to be the cause. "He fought for me," she said, "I know he did. An' I want Teddy Ryan. _I want him!_"

Next morning she peeped out of the window and watched the approach of the sturdy, honest-faced little corporal before she went to open the door for him herself.

"You wanted ter see me?" he said, fingering his hat shyly.

"Yes; I--I heard you'd been in a fight. I--I wanted to read you a lecture. That's an awful eye you got, Mr. Ryan!"

"I'm sorry you don't like it, Miss Cora, but I had to; you'd have wanted me to if you'd known."

"Oh!" cried Cora, and her heart whispered: "Then it _was_ about me, just as I thought, and the dear won't tell me." But aloud she said, "It ain't ever right to fight, an' I didn't think it of you, Mr. Ryan."

"I had to," he repeated awkwardly, and turned away. "Is that all you had ter say ter me? I must go back; but I thought Brown said that you had somethin' ter give me."

"Yes," said Cora in a very scared, small voice. "I have--_me_!"

"Cora! Do you mean it, girlie? Do you really mean it?" And two short but strong arms went round her. "But I ain't a sergeant yet, nor won't be for ever so long."

"Oh, Teddy!" said Cora, and hid her face right over his second button, "I ain't lovin' yer chevrons; I'm lovin' _you_."

* * * * *

Shorty received the joyous news in ominous silence. "When's the weddin'?" he demanded abruptly.

"Oh, sometime next month, I guess," said the proud husband-to-be.

"Nothin' of the sort. You get married next week; do you hear? No mañana about this business; get it over as quick as possible. You'll be worthless to me for long enough, as it is. A great poet _you_ are! The whole thing was nothin' but the girl, just as I told Sergeant Stone."

So J Troop had a wedding, and the whole troop turned out in force, brave in full dress, from Shorty down to the latest junior rook--the only member not present being Sergeant Hansen, who had no interest in the proceedings. And the punch flowed so freely and so strongly that every man who tried to enlighten the absent one told a totally different story.

* * * * *

Spring had come again at Fort Hotchkiss, and one soft evening, as Stone and Whitney were sitting on the porch, Sergeant Theodore Ryan, now proudly sporting his three chevrons, came up to them, smiling a wide-mouthed, foolish smile.

"Well, what's up, hombre?"

"Recruits fer J Troop--over to my quarters."

"_Recruits!_ You don't mean to say there's _two_ of 'em?"

Ryan nodded. "Twins," he assented beamingly.

"'Heaven meant things to go in twos, Cora,'" quoted Whitney.

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

One of the best "audiences" that actor or actress could wish for was Mr. Gladstone. He used often to come and see the play at the Lyceum from a little seat in the O. P. entrance, and he nearly always arrived five minutes before the curtain went up. One night I thought he would catch cold--it was a bitter night--and I lent him my white scarf.

He could always give his whole great mind to the matter in hand. This made him one of the most comfortable people to talk to that I have ever met.

I contrasted his punctuality, when he came to see "King Lear," with the unpunctuality of Lord Randolph Churchill, who came to see the play the very next night with a party of men friends and arrived when the first act was over. Lord Randolph was, all the same, a great admirer of Henry Irving. He confessed to him once that he had never read a play of Shakespeare's in his life, but that after seeing Henry act he thought it was time to begin. A very few days later he astonished us with his complete and masterly knowledge of at least half a dozen of the plays. He was a perfect person to meet at a dinner or supper--brilliantly entertaining, and queerly simple. He struck one as being able to master any subject that interested him, and, once a Shakespeare performance at the Lyceum had fired his interest, there was nothing about that play, or about past performances of it, which he did not know. His beautiful wife, now Mrs. George Cornwallis West, wore a dress at supper one evening which gave me the idea for the Lady Macbeth dress, afterwards painted by Sargent. The bodice of Lady Randolph's gown was trimmed all over with green beetles' wings. I told Mrs. Comyns Carr about it, and she remembered it when she designed my Lady Macbeth dress.