Part 5

“Quite a little thing has took place just now about that money. Don’t jump for I am staying with it as you said to and I am liable to be staying with it as long as necessary but an old hobo held me up and got it off me and kept it for most three hours when I got it back off the old fool. I would not have throwed him around like I did if he had been content to lift the cash but he had to insult me too said I was pie and next time he’ll know a man should be civil no matter what his employment is.

“I have noticed another thing. To shoot strait always go to bed the same day you get up and to think strait use same pollicy.

“Your friend,

“SCIPIO LE MOYNE.

“P.S. I am awful oblidged to you.”

III

IN THE BACK

Force, as you may know, is like the King, and never dies. It endlessly transmits itself through the same or some other shape. Drop a stone in a pond, and the wave-rings may seem to expire as they widen, but they do not; through friction or impact or something, they merely become invisible. You can stop a cannon-ball, but you cannot kill its speed; its speed is immortal and undergoes instant resurrection, taking the new shape of heat. The cannon-ball becomes red hot and sends heat waves off into infinity. Scientific men have told you all this as they have told me, and judging from the delightful events which I shall proceed to narrate, I should not wonder if the scientific men were right.

I. THE STORING OF THE ENERGY

Once upon a time the army had a wet-nurse instead of a secretary of war. The nurse fed our soldiers upon speeches, milk-and-sugar speeches, all over the country. He told them he was going to right their wrongs. Now, as they didn’t know that they had any wrongs, this both surprised and pleased them. They liked to hear him inform them that it was they who from the first had won our battles upon land and sea. “Who” (he would ask rhetorically), “who endured the bitter cold, the frozen snow, at Valley Forge?” And as they hadn’t the slightest idea, what more agreeable than to learn it was themselves? “Let us honor George Washington” (he would exclaim), “let us not forget that great and good man! but let us remember also the honest soldier without whose aid George Washington could never have durriven the Burritish tyrant from our beloved shores of furreedom!”

He always spoke of the “honest” soldier, and therefore the average enlisted man very naturally felt that somehow George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant were all well enough in their way, but that you must keep your eye on them, and that the Secretary was the man to put them in their proper place. The Secretary quite rightly omitted to state that generals are apt to carry a responsibility which would iron the average enlisted man flatter than a pair of pressed trousers; he omitted this statement because it would have been the whole truth, and the whole truth is often very tiresome, particularly for a politician. Do not, as you read this, think evil of the Secretary; he had a large family of daughters and sons with whom he was frequently photographed, seated on the vine-clad porch of the old white homestead, and these photographs were at once widely given to the public press. Moreover, his private life was known to be chaste by every lady in the land, though how they ascertained this I am at a loss to explain. He was also a highly gifted man; gifted with the voice that matches a political frock-coat. At will he could make this so impressive, that if he remarked it was a fine day, for the time of year, it convinced the audience that something of the utmost importance had been announced. He was gifted, too, with a face impervious to vulgar scrutiny, and he had the most deeply religious chinbeard in Apple-Jack county. I have already mentioned that he possessed the gift of tears, when such phenomenon was timely, and besides all these things, he owned some extensive salt-marshes on a bay. These were too wet for private persons to buy, but he was going to be happy to sell them to the government for a naval station when he should be Senator, after his present office had expired. Meanwhile he went about busily with his basket, collecting popularity from the humblest dumping lot.

If there was one kind of audience that the Secretary liked above all others, it was an audience of fresh, bright, brave, young recruits. He missed no chance to tell them so. Their earnest faces, he was apt to say if there was a flag anywhere in sight, stirred his heart more, much more than the stars upon Old Glory waving yonder. Then he would point to Old Glory, and get results from the gallery as satisfactory as any actor could wish. Indeed, the Secretary could have made the drama as lucrative as he made politics. He could tell a story and make you laugh, tell another and make you cry, and a really excellent second-rate actor was lost in him. In the good old days of which I write, many of our political patriots resembled the Secretary.

Recruits after his own heart sat close before him one afternoon at McPherson, gathered from various Southern States.

“Let those young men come up front!” he had commanded from the platform in his deepest frock-coat basso. “Let them see me and let me see them. We understand each other, for we are comrades.”

Accordingly, the recruits occupied the front benches, while the mustache of Captain Stone, who sat in the rear of the hall, began to look like the back of a dog’s neck when the dog is not pleased. The captain took down one leg that had been crossed over the other, and began sliding one hand up and down the yellow stripe of his trousers. To his brother officers and to his favorite sergeant, Jones, this hand sliding was another sign, like the singular behavior of the mustache. Nobody knew whether it was the hair itself that rose, or whether he did it with his upper lip; but when the whole thing stood straight out beyond his nose, everybody knew at a hundred yards’ range what it meant, no matter how it was done. It was the hurricane signal and you steered your course accordingly.

“You never’ll get a better captain, Jock,” Sergeant Jones would often remark to Corporal Cumnor. “But you want to catch his profile at morning stables. If the muss-tash is merely standing attention, clear weather’s to be looked for. But if she’s deployed in extended order of skirmish-line, don’t you go nowheres without your slicker.”

On the present occasion the sergeant was also in the hall listening to the Secretary. To him had fallen the responsibility of conducting some of the recruits to Fort Chiricahua in Arizona, to which post they had been assigned. Captain Stone was on leave, and had no responsibilities whatever until in a few weeks he should return to that same post after a honeymoon which he and his bride were completing by a visit to the lady’s parents. She was a pastor’s daughter and played the melodeon.

“We are comrades,” repeated the Secretary of War to the recruits, “and that means you and I are going to stand by each other through thick and thin.” It sounded so well that the recruits all cheered.

The captain’s mustache lifted a couple of hairs more, Sergeant Jones in another part of the hall whispered to himself two words which I cannot repeat, and the Secretary looked about to see if there was a flag anywhere convenient for his popular climax about earnest faces and the stars in Old Glory. But there was no flag, and he therefore selected another of the many strings to his oratorical bow. He gave them his great “What I am for” speech, the speech which had brought the gallery down at Albany on Decoration Day, had caught the crowd at Terre Haute on the Fourth of July, swept Minneapolis on Labor Day and turned Dallas, Texas, hoarse on Washington’s Birthday. In it the Secretary asked, “What am I for?” and then answered the question. He was to watch over the enlisted man, he was to be his father and protect him from military tyranny. Superior officers were to cease their despotic methods. Was this not a republic where one man was as good as another? The very term “superior officer” was repugnant to the American idea, and no offender of any grade should hide behind it as long as he was Secretary of War. To hear him you would have supposed that until he stepped into the Cabinet the slave under the lash knew a better lot than the American soldier. To be sure, he did not always say these remarkable things in the same way. At Boston, for instance, he would draw it milder than at Billings, Montana. At Boston he mentioned other duties of the Secretary of War besides that of tucking the enlisted man in his bed every night; but he seldom spoke in Boston, because he preferred a warm, heart-to-heart audience.

He knew at sight that he had one here. His practised eye ran the recruits over and read their wholesome vacant up-country faces, noted their big rosy wrists, appraised their untrained juicy agricultural shapelessness as they sat beneath him like rows of cantaloupes and watermelons. With such innocence as this, he knew that he could spread it thick; and very soon after the preliminary details about his always having cherished a peculiar affection for this part of the country, and how General Lee had had no warmer admirer than himself, he was spreading it unmistakably thick. By the time he had informed them that it was not colonels and generals to whom he bowed the knee, but the enlisted man, the so-called common soldier, whose bleeding feet had blazed the trail for liberty with fearless shouts of triumph, Sergeant Jones was muttering to his neighbor, “How long more d’yu figure he’ll slobber?” and the captain’s mustache was standing out from his face like a shelf.

“That is what I am for!” perorated the wet-nurse. “I am for the enlisted man. The country looks to our beloved Purresident, but you look to me. Go forth, young men, for I am behind every one of you. No so-called military regulations shall insult your American manhood or grind you down while I stand sentinel at my post. If you are troubled, come to me and you shall have your rights. Go forth then, you who outshine their vaunted Cæsars, their licentious Alexanders, their pagan Plutos and Aspasias! Go forth to be the bulwarks and imperishable heroes of our gullorious country!”

The watermelons cheered, the wet-nurse stepped down to let them shake his hand, and Captain Stone went home with his bride, in a speechless rage. He was able to speak presently.

“Still, Joshua,” she mildly insisted, “young soldiers have so many sad temptations, I am glad he has their welfare at heart.”

“Nonsense, Gwendolen,” said the captain. “You’ll soon know the army, and you’ll see then that such talk as his merely turns contented men into discontented babies.”

“Nobody could ever be discontented with you, Joshua, I am sure,” the bride, with sweet emotion, murmured.

She was nineteen, the captain was forty-five, and upon gazing at the rosy cheeks of his Gwendolen he would frequently assert that a man was always as young as he felt.

The Secretary, after inspecting the military post, dined with the mayor of the neighboring town. At this meal, when a cold bottle had been finished, the mayor went so far as to inquire: “Say, who was Aspasia?”

But the Secretary answered: “What a wonderful land is ours and what a beautiful city is yours.”

II. THE ENERGY IS TRANSMITTED

The expectations of Sergeant Jones were entirely unfulfilled. Much experience in taking charge of recruits upon long railway journeys had taught him that their earnest faces were not always more stirring than the stars upon Old Glory; he knew that you do not invariably find that sort of face for thirteen dollars a month. He had generally been obliged to watch their purchases at way stations, he had not seldom been forced to remove bottles of strong spirits from their possession, and he had almost always found it necessary to teach some of them a lesson in obedience. Judge therefore of the sergeant’s amazement when, after the first half day of journey, a long overgrown ruddy boy approached him and asked in unsoiled Southern accents: “Please, sah, can we sing?”

“Sing?” said Jones. “Sing what?”

“‘Pull foah the shoah, sailah.’ We have learned to do it in parts back in our home.”

“Yes,” said Jones, “I guess you can sing that--in parts or as a whole.”

“We sing it as a whole in parts, sah,” explained the recruit with simplicity.

“Your name Anniston?” Jones inquired, abruptly suspicious.

“Bateau, sah. Leonidas Bateau. My cousin, Xerxes Anniston, sits over yonder by the watahcoolah.”

“Oh,” said Jones.

“Yes, sah. Xerx he sings bass in our choir back in our home. Sistah Smith--”

“Who?” said the sergeant.

“Sistah Smith, sah, the wife of our ministah, Tullius C. Smith.”

“Oh,” said the sergeant.

“She is leadah of our choir back in our home. She is our best soprano, Sistah Mingory is our best alto, and Brother Macon Lafayette Young gets two notes lowah than any of our basses. He keeps the choicest grocery in town and is president of our Y. M. C. A. You’d ought to heard our quartet in the prayer from ‘Moses in Egypt,’ arranged by Sistah Mingory last Eastah Sunday.”

The thoroughly good heart of Jones now warmed to this recruit. (I cannot hope that you will remember Jones. He was Specimen Jones long ago, before he joined the Army. Some of his doings are chronicled elsewhere. He is an old member of the family.) “Made Moses hum, did y’u?” said he. “I’ll bet the girls would sooner have a solo from you than from Brother what’s-his-name Lafayette.”

“Sistah Smith,” replied Leonidas, blushing like the innocent watermelon that he was, “did say that she couldn’t see how they were going to get along without my uppah registah.”

Jones settled back in his seat. “Sing away,” said he.

Many songs were sung through Alabama and Louisiana and Texas; virtuous songs with no offending or even convivial word, and none so frequently demanded by the passengers as a solo from Leonidas,

How little do I love this vale of tears,

through which the chorus crooned a murmuring accompaniment. West of San Antonio, they played a game of riddles, and when Cousin Xerxes (who seemed the wit of the party) asked, “Why is Dass’s solo like Texas? Because it’s all in flats,” and the recruits were convulsed with merriment by this, Sergeant Jones, listening to them in his seat behind, muttered with compassion: “Their mothers could hear every word they say.” And friendliness was established between him and the recruits. They confided many things to him.

Yes; not a drop of vice’s poison flowed in them, but at El Paso, while they waited, Leonidas, on saying to Jones, “What an elegant speech the Secretary of War gave us!” was astonished to hear the sergeant burst into strong language.

“That hypercrite!” exclaimed Jones. And the shocked Leonidas answered him.

And now began to fall the first chill upon their friendliness. The recruits were clean from vice, but the Secretary’s poison was at work, the sugar of self-pity he had given them to swallow, the false sentiment over themselves, the sick notion they were objects of special sympathy, instead of stout young lads beginning life with about as many helps and hindrances as other stout young lads.

“Yes, he did say so!” declared Leonidas. “Yes, he did, sah. He said he’d take care we was treated like gentlemen. He said he was behind us. And I guess he’s the man to back up his word.”

“Well,” said Jones, making a final try, “I’ll tell y’u.” And he laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “A man enlists to be a soldier--nothin’ else. Not to be a gentleman, but just a soldier who obeys his orders--and nothin’ else. I obey the captain, and he obeys the colonel, and he obeys the commanding general of the department, and so it goes clean to the top, and we’re all soldiers obeyin’ the President of the United States, and if bein’ a gentleman consists in makin’ things as pleasant and easy for others as y’u can, why, the chap in the army who obeys best is the best gentleman. There’s remedies for injustice all right, but you keep thinkin’ about your duties and you’ll not need to think about your remedies. Understand?”

“Yes, sah,” said Leonidas, without the faintest sign of comprehension. “But the Secretary is at the top and it’s right in him to say the top should nevah forget to recognize the onaliable rights of the bottom. He said he was behind us.”

“Oh, go sit down and give us some of your upper register!” cried Jones.

Thus did friendliness give place to estrangement. The watermelons laid their heads together and assured Leonidas that he had acted in a proper and spirited manner. In Sergeant Jones they confided no longer, for which he was man enough to lay the blame where it belonged. He handsomely cursed the Secretary of War, but what good did that do?

Arrived at Fort Chiricahua, the recruits fell into safe hands, though not perhaps entirely wise ones. The post chaplain was an earnest preacher of the same denomination as the Rev. Tullius C. Smith, and delighted to surround Leonidas and his band with the same customs and influences which they had known at home. They were soon known throughout the post as “The Shouters.” This epithet came from their choir singing, which was no whit lessened by their new and not wholly religious environment. If Sergeant Jones or Captain Stone had looked for insubordination as a result of the Secretary’s speech, it was an agreeable disappointment. The recruits were punctual, they were clean, they were assiduous at drill, they showed intelligence, they were model, both as youths and soldiers, and nothing kept them from a more than common popularity in their various troops unless it was that they were a little too model for the taste of the average enlisted man. The parade-ground was constantly melodious with their week-day practising for Sabbath exercises. Sister Smith had sent them much music from home, and the post learned to admire “Moses in Egypt” as arranged by Sister Mingory and interpreted by the upper register of Leonidas.

One person there was whom the strains of psalmody, as they floated from the open windows of the school-room, did not wholly please. Captain Stone disapproved of his Gwendolen’s spending so much time alone with the melodeon and Leonidas. Almost as fittingly might a Senator’s wife sing duets with her coachman, and all the ladies of the Post knew this--excepting Gwendolen! But he could not forbid her, at least not yet. Was she not his bride of scarce three months? In this new army world, where he had brought her so far from everything that she had always known, how could he deprive her of one great resource, he who had cut her off from so many? Time would steadily teach her the conduct suitable for an officer’s wife, and then of her own accord she would put the proper distance between herself and the enlisted men.

“It is so unexpected, Joshua,” she said once, “such an unexpected joy to be able to keep a good influence around those poor boys.”

“What do you call them poor boys for?” inquired the captain.

“To come into so many temptations so far from home!” she exclaimed.

“They’re not going to have you and the chaplain and the organ all their lives, Gwendolen.”

“Now, Joshua, keep your mustache down! The Secretary of War--don’t swear so dreadfully, darling! Don’t!” And the bride stopped her lord’s lips with her hand. “I won’t mention him any more,” she promised. “I must run now, or I’ll be late for practising next Sunday’s anthem with Leonidas Bateau.”

Left on the porch of his quarters, the captain made the same remark about next Sunday’s anthem that he had made about the Secretary of War; but Gwendolen, having departed, did not hear him, and soon from the open windows of the school-house floated the chords of the melodeon with a chorus led by Cousin Xerxes, and a solo on an upper register,

How little do I love this vale of teahs.

Would Gwendolen have been so eager to redeem some dried-up middle-aged sinner? I don’t know. At any rate, in her solicitude for the spotless Leonidas, she was abreast with the advanced Philanthropy which holds prevention better than cure. Of course, not even to the most evil-minded could scandal arise from any of this. But when you see a wife of nineteen playing the organ for a trooper of twenty-two, and a husband of forty-five constantly remarking that a man is always as young as he feels, why, then you are at no great distance from comedy, and the joke draws nearer when the wife is anxious that the trooper should not feel the want of his mother, and the trooper retains the limpid innocence of the watermelon. The ladies of the Post tried to be indignant that an officer’s wife should so much associate herself with enlisted men, but they could only laugh--and hush when the captain came by, and the men in barracks laughed--and hushed when the captain came by, and the poor captain knew it all. Meanwhile, the melodeon played on, the watermelons lifted their harmless hymns, and in the heart of Leonidas the Secretary’s speech dwelled like honey but like gall in the heart of the captain. Had Captain Stone dreamed what sweet familiarity the hymns were breeding, he--but he did not dream, hence was his awakening all the more pronounced.

The day it came had made an ill beginning with him. He had walked unexpectedly into the kitchen before breakfast, and found there his Chinaman putting a finishing crust on the breakfast rolls. He had never been aware of such a process. He had always particularly enjoyed the crust. The Chinaman had just reached the point where he withdrew the hot rolls from the oven and sprayed them suddenly with cold water from his mouth. There had ensued a dreadful time in the kitchen, and no rolls for breakfast and no Chinaman for dinner, and even as late as five o’clock the captain’s mustache had not completely flattened down. Leonidas should have observed this as he came up the captain’s steps with a message from the chaplain for the captain’s wife. They were waiting for her to come over and play the melodeon for Sunday’s anthem.

“Is Sistah Stone here?” Leonidas inquired.

“WHO?” said the captain, rising from his chair, which fell backward with the movement.

“Is Sistah Stone here?” repeated Leonidas, mildly. “The chaplain says--”

You will meet the most conflicting accounts of the spot where Leonidas first landed on firm ground after leaving the captain’s boot. The colonel’s orderly, who was standing in front of the colonel’s gate four houses farther up the line, deposed that he “thought he heard a something but didn’t see what made it.” Mrs. Phillips declared she was sitting on her porch two houses down the line, and “it looked just like diving from a spring-board.” These were the only two disinterested witnesses. The afflicted Leonidas claimed that he had gone from the porch clean over the front gate, and Captain Stone said that he didn’t know and didn’t care, but that if the gate story was true, then he had projected one hundred and sixty pounds forty measured feet and felt younger than ever.

The version which Jones gave has (to me) always seemed wholly satisfactory. “Don’t y’u go sittin’ up nights over it,” said Jones. “Nobody’ll never prove where he struck. But what