without mountains, but I do."
"I love mountains," said Willy.
"They were again surprised at their similarity of taste. Motor-cars and
carriages passed them continually; luxurious open vehicles, victorias
and golf-carts and automobiles with their hoods lowered, disclosing
billows of diaphanous feminine finery and pretty, uncovered girlish
heads. Willy marveled over his own ease as he returned greetings
punctiliously. A week ago he would have raced his horse into the darkest
woodland road to escape a passing salute, the hazard of a little casual
badinage.
"How pretty American girls are," said Lady Jean a little wistfully;
"such lovely wavy hair."
Willy's glance furtively took note of her sleek brown head and the heavy
braid between her slim shoulders, which had caused him to think her a
child.
"I don't much like this corrugated hair," said he carelessly; "it looks
so machine-made."
Lady Jean declined all proffers of seats, even Rivers' invitation to a
place by him in his runabout. She was going to walk; one could see
better walking. Which was entirely correct, but was not her most
intimate reason; in truth she could not endure to be sitting at her ease
while Willy, footsore and weary, would be doggedly tramping after his
ball. He presented rather a grotesque figure, did Willy, that eventful
morning, being shod as to his sound foot with one of his own neat golf
shoes, but as to his left (thanks to the ministrations of Rivers), with
one of the latter's ample slippers over swathings of bandage soaked in
healing-lotion. Every caddy on the ground (except Willy's) was in
secret ecstasies over his appearance. "We ain't out for a beauty prize,
but the champeen golf cup," says the faithful Tommy haughtily. "Yes,
that's a bottle of liniment. I wet him up with it between whiles. He's
in terrible agony. But he don't mind long's he can keep limber. And say,
jest git onto our game, will you? Two up, and first round over."
Tommy and Jean were waiting when the first round ended, Rivers having
taken the Brookes to the luncheon-tent to secure seats for them all. The
game that morning had surprised all but the newspaper men and the few
who had followed Willy the day before. The only hope of the friends of
the champion lay in the possible exhaustion of the lame wonder whose
unerring approaches were even more dangerous than his drives and his
putts. "If his foot holds out," Rivers said to Brooke, "he's got the
cup."
And at this very moment, as if fate conspired against Willy's chances, a
frightful commotion arose. Willy, talking to Jean a moment about the
game, could see the gay groups outside the white tent scatter in violent
agitation with waving hands; could hear an uproar of shouts and screams.
There came a quick change in Lady Jean's face, in every face near--the
caddy's, the young red-jacketed officer's at the blackboard, the women's
faces in a passing carriage. At first no intelligible sound penetrated
the din; but in a thought's time a blood-curdling cry tore out of a
score of throats, "Mad dog! Mad dog!" as men with golf-irons and
pistols, raced toward the little group on the links, after a
foam-flecked, glaring-eyed, panting little beast. The creature made
straight for Tommy, who fled like a deer; but his foot hit the marker,
and he stumbled and fell. It seemed in the same eyeblink that the dog
was on the child and Willy Butler was on the dog, his bare hands
twisting its collar into a tourniquet.
With one impulse Lady Jean and the young officer each snatched a
golf-club and sprang to help him. "Keep off!" he cried. "I can hold him.
Get a strap; we have to keep him alive to find out--_Jean!_ For God's
sake--"
His heart seemed to stand still. Lady Jean had dropped on her knees by
the dog, shielding him from the young officer's club. "Don't," she said;
"_he's_ not mad! It's Mrs. Brooke's dog--Why can't you _see_? The poor
brute's _wagging his tail_!"
"He is," said Willy; "hold up, boys! A mad dog doesn't wag his tail." He
released the tourniquet sufficiently to free a piteous whimper. A second
later he lifted his hand off the dog, which wriggled into Lady Jean's
compassionate arms as a voice announced, "That's not the dog!"
The real mad dog--if mad he were--had been despatched by a single shot
from a soldier's gun, rods away; but a panic-stricken crowd had used the
customary judgment of panic, and pursued the wrong dog.
"And now," wrathfully declared Jabez Rivers to his army cronies, "now
that poor boy has probably put his wrist out of whack; and his father
coming in on the two o'clock train to see him fight for the cup! And
this old fool telegraphed for him to come."
Nevertheless he kept a semblance of confidence. And he has always liked
Dickson because he was so sure Willy would win. He offered to caddy for
Willy; but Willy gratefully declined, because it would break Tommy's
heart; Tommy's mother was coming over to see the game. "He's a real
dead-game sport," Dickson ended, "and a little thing like a spurious
mad dog isn't going to put him out of the running."
Nor did it; Cleaves made up one of his missing holes, but he got no
farther; and at the sixteenth hole Rivers and a small, keen-eyed,
quiet-looking man stood up in a runabout and shouted while the great
Cleaves, bewildered but invincibly courteous, shook hands with Willy
Butler.
"You wait until he has cleaned up a bit" advised Rivers; "give the boy's
girl a chance first--there they are; she's talking to him now."
Mr. Butler knew who she was; she had been pointed out to him before;
possibly having watched her carefully through the progress of the game,
he knew something else, being a man who came to conclusions quickly, on
occasion. He looked at her now; he looked at Rivers; the only words that
escaped his lips--in a very small, low voice--were, "Wouldn't that make
a man believe in answers to prayers!"
"Willy's been going some," said Rivers. "I don't know who you've up your
sleeve for him, but we've picked out a winner--a sweet, brave,
true-hearted little lady. Don't _you_ butt in, Hiram."
"Well, hardly," said Hiram Butler, "since her father and I picked her
out first. But, Jabez, blood will tell; I knew Willy had the makings.
Now suppose you and I put the young folks into the machine. They can do
their courting on the way."
It may be presumed that he knew, although they took their own original
way to Arcadia. Fifteen minutes later, in the heart of the woods which
they had sought because, although much longer to the club-house by that
road, Willy needed its cool refreshment; fifteen minutes later the boy
was saying, "I had to write the note because I didn't have a chance to
see you. Have you read it?" He looked up tremulously. "I write an
awfully blind handwriting always, and to-day, with playing golf and all,
it's worse than ever."
"You could read it out to me, you know," said the girl; she pulled the
score-card, on which Willy had scribbled, from her sleeve, and both the
young heads bent over it. "'Dear Jean,'" read Willy; then he added, "I
hope you don't think that presumptuous, but being engaged--"
"No, never mind that; you called me that to-day, already, at the top of
your voice, too."
"You scared me stiff--Jean."
"You scared me first--before I knew it was Flukes. You are an awfully
reckless boy."
"I will go on," said Willy; "it's short." He read:
"'Dear Jean, I forgot to say one thing yesterday when I asked you to
marry me; I love and adore you. Yours very sincerely, William Godfrey
Butler.'"
He said nothing more; neither did she say anything for a space. The
squirrels watched them with their bright little eyes, and scampered
fearlessly up the very tree under which their car had halted. All at
once she began to laugh. "My word! but you look miserable, William
Butler. I know it is a sacrifice; I made up my mind to release you; I
only consented yesterday to make you easy in your mind for the game."
Then he surprised her. "That was yesterday," said he. "To-day I know why
all the world has been different ever since I saw you; I knew everything
I felt when you ran to that dog--"
"Then it will not be an awful sacrifice for you?"
He took her little cold brown hand; I had forgotten there was such a
thing in the world as fear. "It will be heaven for me," he said. "But
for you?"
She looked away at the squirrels; she tried in vain to speak in her
gay, light tone. "I--I found out something this morning, too."
So Arcady lured two new explorers, who, going through its subtly winding
paths, naturally took quite a little while to reach the club-house and
the ovation waiting the champion. Just outside the portals Lady Jean
uttered a little cry. "Why, I do believe! Why, _Willy_! There's the
motor mower!"
There in the body, resting amid long lines of green stubble, there,
indeed, stood the long-sought mower.
"I'm obliged to it," said Willy, "but I don't need it now."
THE HERO OF COMPANY G
The flies and the sun! The sun and the flies! The two tents of the
division ward in the hospital had been pitched end to end, thus turning
them into one. The sun filtered through the cracks of the canvas; it
poured in a broad, dancing, shifting column of gold through the open
tent flap. The air was hot, not an endurable, dry heat, but a moist,
sticky heat which drew an intolerable mist from the water standing in
pools beneath the plain flooring of the tents. The flies had no barrier
and they entered in noisome companies, to swarm, heavily buzzing, about
the medicine spoons and the tumblers and crawl over the nostrils and
mouths of the typhoid patients, too weak and stupid to brush them away.
The other sick men would lift their feeble skeletons of hands against
them; and a tall soldier who walked between the cots and was the sole
nurse on duty, waved his palm-leaf fan at them and swore softly under
his breath.
There were ten serious cases in the ward. The soldier was a raw man
detailed only the day before and not used to nursing, being a blacksmith
in civil life. An overworked surgeon had instructed him in the use of a
thermometer; but he was much more confident of the success of his lesson
than the instructed one. There was one case in particular bothered the
nurse; he returned to the cot where this case lay more than once and
eyed the gaunt figure which lay so quietly under the sheet, with a
dejected attention. Once he laid his hand shyly on the sick man's
forehead, and when he took it away he strangled a desperate sort of
sigh. Then he walked to the end of the tent and stared dismally down the
camp street, flooded with sunshine. "Well, thank God, there's Spruce!"
said he. A man in a khaki uniform, carrying a bale of mosquito netting,
was walking smartly through the glare. He stopped at the tent. "How goes
it?" said he, cheerfully but in the lowest of tones. He was a short man
and thin, but with a good color under his tan, and teeth gleaming at his
smile, white as milk.
"Why, I'm kinder worried about Maxwell--"
Before he could finish his sentence, Spruce was at Maxwell's cot. His
face changed. "Git the hot-water bottle quick's you can!" he muttered,
"and git the screen--the one I made!" As he spoke he was dropping brandy
into the corners of Maxwell's mouth. The brandy trickled down the chin.
"He looks awful quiet, don't he?" whispered the nurse with an awestruck
glance.
"You git them things!" said Spruce, and he sent a flash of his eyes
after his words, whereat the soldier shuffled out of the tent, returning
first with the screen and last with the bottles. Then he watched
Spruce's rapid but silent movements. At last he ventured to breathe:
"Say, he ain't--he ain't--he ain't--?"
Spruce nodded. The other turned a kind of groan into a cough and wiped
his face. Awkwardly he helped Spruce wherever there was the chance for a
hand; and in a little while his bungling agitation reached the worker,
who straightened up and turned a grim face on him.
"Was it me?" he whispered then. "For God's sake, Spruce--I did
everything the doctor told me, nigh's I could remember. I didn't disturb
him, 'cause he 'peared to be asleep. I--I never saw a man die before!"
"It ain't no fault of yours," said Spruce in the same low whisper. "I'm
sorry for you. Did you give him the ice I got?"
"Yes, I did, Sergeant."
"And was there enough for Green and Dick Danvers?"
"Yes, I kept it rolled up in flannel and newspapers. Say, I got a little
more, Sergeant."
"How?"
"The doctors or some fellers had a tub of lemonade outside, a little bit
further down. I chipped off a bit."
Spruce ground his teeth, but he made no comment. All he said was, "You
go git Captain Hale and report. Tell the captain I got his folks'
address. They'll want him sent home. They're rich folks and they were
coming on; guess they're on the way now. Be quiet!"
The soldier was looking at the placid face. A sob choked him. "He said,
'Thank you,' every time I gave him anything," he gulped. "God! it's
murder to put fools like me at nursing; and the country full of women
that know how and want to come!"
"S-s-s! 'Tain't no good talking. You done your best. Go and report."
As the wretched soldier lumbered off, Spruce set his teeth on an ugly
oath.
"I ought to have stayed, maybe," he thought, "but I've been doing with
so little sleep, my head was feeling dirty queer; and the doctor sent
me. Collapse, of course; temperature ran down to normal, and poor Tooley
didn't notice, and him too weak to talk! Well, I hope I git the G boys
through, that's all I ask!"
He went over to the next cot, where lay the nearest of the G boys,
greeting him cheerily. "Hello, Dick?"
Dick was a handsome young specter, just beginning to turn the corner in
a bad case of typhoid fever. His blue eyes lighted at Spruce's voice;
and he sent a smile back at Spruce's smile. "Did you get some sleep?"
said he. "What's that you have in your hand?"
"That's milk, real milk from a cow. Yes, lots of sleep; you drink that."
The sick man drank it with an expression of pleasure. "I don't believe
any of the others get milk," he murmured; "save the rest for Edgar."
"Edgar don't need it, Dick," Spruce answered gently.
Dick drew a long, shivering sigh and his eyes wandered to the screen.
"He was a soldier and he died for his country jest the same as if he
were hit by a Mauser," said Spruce--he had taken the sick boy's long,
thin hand and was smoothing his fingers.
"It's no more 'an what we all got to expect when we enlist."
"Of course," said Dick, smiling, "that's all right, for him or for me,
but he--he was an awfully good fellow, Chris."
"Sure," said Spruce. "Now, you lie still; I got to look after the other
boys."
"Come back when you have seen them, Chris."
"Sure."
Spruce made his rounds. He was the star nurse of the hospital. It was
partly experience. Chris Spruce had been a soldier in the regulars and
fought Indians and helped the regimental surgeon through a bad attack of
typhoid. But it was as much a natural gift. Chris had a light foot, a
quick eye, a soft voice; he was indomitably cheerful and consoled the
most querulous patient in the ward by describing how much better was his
lot with no worse than septic pneumonia, than that of a man whom he
(Spruce) had known well who was scalped. Spruce had enlisted from a
Western town where he had happened to be at the date of his last
discharge. He had a great opinion of the town. And he never tired
recalling the scene of their departure, amid tears and cheers and the
throbbing music of a brass band, with their pockets full of cigars, and
an extra car full of luncheon boxes, and a thousand dollars company
spending money to their credit.
"A man he comes up to me," says Spruce, "big man in the town, rich and
all that. He says, calling me by name--I don't know how he ever got my
name, but he had it--he says, 'I'm told you've been with the regulars;
look after the boys a little,' says he. 'That I will,' says I, 'I've
been six years in the service and I know a few wrinkles.' I do, too. He
gave me a five-dollar bill after he'd talked a while to me, and one of
his own cigars. 'Remember the town's back of you!' says he. 'Tis, too.
I'd a letter from the committee they got there, asking if we had
everything; offering to pay for nurses if they'd be allowed. Oh, it's a
bully town!"
Spruce himself had never known the sweets of local pride. He had drifted
about in the world, until at twenty he drifted into the regular army. He
had no kindred except a brother whose career was so little creditable
that Spruce was relieved when it ended--were the truth known, in a
penitentiary. He had an aunt of whom he often spoke and whom he esteemed
a credit to the family. She was a widow woman in an Iowa village, who
kept a boarding house for railway men, and had reared a large family,
not one of whom (Spruce was accustomed to explain in moments of
expansion, on pay-day, when his heart had been warmed with good red
liquor) had ever been to jail. Spruce had never seen this estimable
woman, but he felt on terms of intimacy with her because, occasionally,
on these same pay-days, he would mail her a five-dollar bank-note, the
receipt of which was always promptly acknowledged by a niece who could
spell most of her words correctly and who always thanked him for his
"kind and welcome gift," told him what they proposed to do with the
money, and invited him to come to see them.
He always meant to go, although he never did go. It was his favorite
air-castle, being able to go on furlough to the village where his aunt
lived and show his medal. He had won the medal in an Indian fight where
he had rescued his captain. The captain died of his wounds and Spruce
never got drunk (which I regret to confess he did oftener than was good
either for his soul or the service) that he didn't talk about his
captain, who had been his hero; and cry over him. Spruce, who was a
cheery creature in his normal state, always developed sentiment and
pathos when he was revealed by liquor. Now he had another day-dream. It
was to be greeted by the cheering crowds--again he would march down the
sunny streets with the band playing, amid the faces and the shouts. And
the men who had stood by the company so stanchly would be pointing him
out and telling each other his mythical exploits--and adding the record
of his Indian exploits--which Spruce felt that an inattentive country
had not appreciated. A dozen times a day he pictured the scene, he
mentally listened to the talk--he, walking with a rigid and unseeing
military mien. He approximated the number of glasses a man could take
without even grazing indecorum--for he was determined he would not be
riotous in his joy--and he used to whistle the refrain of a convivial
song:
Enj'y yourselves, enj'y yourselves
But don't do no disgrace!
Meanwhile, his consciousness of in some way caring for the whole company
held him a model of sobriety. In fact, he did take care of the company,
secretly instructing the captain in the delicacies of military etiquette
and primitive sanitary conditions, and openly showing the commissary
sergeant how to make requisitions and barter his superfluous rations for
acceptable canned goods at the groceries of the town. He explained all
the regulars' artless devices for being comfortable; he mended the boys'
morals and their blouses in the same breath; and he inculcated all the
regular traditions and superstitions. But it is to be confessed again,
that while Spruce was living laboriously up to his lights of
righteousness under this new stimulus, the lights were rather dim; and,
in particular, as regards the duty of a man to pick up outlying portable
property for his company--they would have shocked a police magistrate.
Neither did he rank among the martial virtues the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit. "A good captain is always a kicker," says Spruce firmly;
"he's got to be. Look at this here camp, Captain; the mess tent's all
under water; we're standing in the slush every damned meal we eat.
Water's under our tent, water--"
"I know, I know, Sergeant," interrupts the perplexed and worried young
captain, a clever young dandy bright enough to be willing to take wisdom
without shoulder straps; "I've been to the colonel; he agrees with me,
and he's been to Major Green, and that's all comes of it. I don't see
what I can do further, if I did--"
"Begging your pardon, Captain, the men will be falling sick soon and
dying. They're weakened by the climate and being fretted, expecting
always to git off and never going."
"But what can I do? Oh, speak out, we're off here alone. Have you any
idea?"
"Well, sir, if you was my captain in the old --th, you'd say to the
colonel, 'Colonel, I've remonstrated and remonstrated. Now I'm
desperate. I'm desperate,' says you. 'If there ain't something done
to-morrow I'm going to march my company out and find a new camp, and you
kin court-martial me if you please. I'd rather stand a court-martial
than see my men die!' He'd talk real pleasant at first, so as to git in
all his facts, and then he'd blaze away. And he'd do it, too, if they
didn't listen."
The captain gave the sergeant a keen glance. "And that's your notion of
discipline?" said he.
"There's a newspaper fellow asking for you, Captain, this morning. I see
him a-coming now," was the sergeant's oblique response. But he chuckled,
walking stiffly away, "He'll do it; I bet we won't be here two days
longer." For which glee there was reason, since, inside the hour, the
captain was in the colonel's tent, concluding an eloquent picture of his
company's discomforts with "Somebody has to do something. If you are
powerless, Colonel, I'm not. If they don't give some assurance of
changing the camp to-morrow I shall march Company G out and pitch a camp
myself, and stand a court-martial. I would rather risk a court-martial
than see my men die--and that's what it has come to!"
The colonel looked the fiery young speaker sternly in the eye, and said
something about unsoldierly conduct.
"It would be unmanly conduct for me to let the boys trusted to me die,
because I was afraid to speak out," flung back the captain. "And I know
one thing: if I am court-martialed the papers are likely to get the true
story."
"You mean the reporter on the Chicago papers who is snooping around? Let
me advise you to give him a wide berth."
"I mean nothing of the kind, sir. I only mean that the thing will not be
done in a corner."
"Well, well, keep cool, Captain, you're too good a fellow to fling
yourself away. Wait and see if I can't get something definite out of the
major to-day."
Whereupon the captain departed with outward decent gloom and inward
premonitions of rejoicing, for when he had hit a nail on the head he had
eyes to see. And the colonel betook himself, hot-foot, to the pompous
old soldier in charge of the camp, who happened to be a man of fixed
belief in himself, but, if he feared anything, was afraid of a newspaper
reporter. The colonel gave him the facts, sparing no squalid detail;
indeed, adding a few picturesque embellishments from his own
observations. He cut short the other's contemptuous criticism of boy
soldiers, and his comparison with the hardships endured during the Civil
War, with a curt "I know they fooled away men's lives then; that is no
reason we should fool them away now. The men are sickening to-day--they
will be dying to-morrow; I'm desperate. If that camp is not changed by
to-morrow I shall march my regiment out myself and pitch my own camp,
and you may court-martial me for it if you like. I would rather stand a
court-martial than see my men die, because I was afraid to speak out!
The camp we have now is murder, as the reporters say! I don't wonder
that young fellow from Chicago talks hard!"
"You're excited, Colonel; you forget yourself."
"I _am_ excited, Major; I'm desperate! Will you walk round the camp with
me?"
The end of the colloquy was that the captain saw the major and the
colonel and told the first-lieutenant, who told, the first-sergeant,
whose name was Spruce. "Captain's kicked to the colonel, I guess," says
Spruce, "and colonel's kicked to the major. That's the talk. Git ready,
boys, and pack." True enough, the camp was moved the very next day.
"I guess captain will make an officer if he lives and don't git the big
head," Spruce moralized. "It's mighty prevalent in the volunteers."