JOINING HANDS WITH UNCLE SAM
Captain Pratt, recruiting officer, glanced up to see two young fellows
approaching, evidently with some intention of engaging his services. And
for the big and important cause he was appointed to aid he was more than
willing that his services should be engaged, heavily engaged, at any and
all times.
The world was at war; his beloved country was mixed up in this contest,
hopefully for the right and as humanely as it is possible to be when
fighting. It required soldiers to fight and men and more men and still
more men out of which to make these soldiers which were to win in a
glorious cause for liberty and honor.
And so, because of the position of his office and the considerable
number of students coming to him there, he may have been a little less
careful about sticking to the precise regulations concerning very young
applicants. The captain had a weakness for youngsters, being something
of an overgrown boy himself at times, and this may have had much to do
with his leniency.
The upshot of it was that, a little while later, after some information
had been exchanged, questions had been asked mostly on the part of the
captain, and oaths had been taken, the military gentleman dismissed the
two young fellows with this parting injunction:
"Now you understand. Both of you report to the commanding officer at
Camp Wheeler as soon as you can arrange matters. Come to me for cards to
him. I need hear nothing more from you, Whitcomb, as you say your
guardian will be willing and anxious for you to enlist. I'll want a
letter of consent from your father, Flynn. Flynn? That might be somewhat
of a Celtic name, eh?"
"Yiss, sorr!" said Roy, standing very straight and saluting in the most
approved manner, at which the captain laughed heartily.
"Well, go your ways, lads, and report to me as soon as you can get away
from school in the proper manner. I rather think that Uncle Sam can make
very promising soldiers of you both, especially considering the shooting
practice you've had."
"Say, Herb," said Roy, as soon as the two had got well away from the
office, "that guy thought I could shoot, too, but I didn't tell him so.
I only bragged you up."
"Too much; I don't like it, Roy. But it's natural; you will blarney, you
dear, old chump. You made it so strong that I guess he thought we're an
entire regiment of experts. Well, you can't help it now. The only thing
to do is for you to learn to shoot."
"But could I, Herb?"
"Of course."
"Glory be! Hearken, me lad! Come along. I'm goin' to get me a rifle and
ammunition and you get your gun and we'll go out and blow the face off
of nature. I'll buy your ammunition and you teach me; see? Come on."
In vain Herbert protested that it was needless to spend money for a gun;
that Roy could practise with Herb's own, a splendid repeating weapon, of
.30-caliber, won by the boy at the individual shoot of the Interstate
Prep School Match a month before.
No; Roy must have his own gun.
From tiny boyhood, when a chummy father had put into the youngster's
hands his first air-gun, Herbert had shown a marked genius, if it may be
so called, for aiming straight and knowing just when to press a
trigger. Then, with his first cartridge gun, a light target 22, which he
had brought to school and taken on many a hike into the broad country,
the boy had become, as Roy put it, almost unreasonably expert, knocking
acorns and chestnut burs from high limbs, cutting tall weeds and hanging
vines in half with the first shot, tossing a stone or a tin can in air
with one hand and nine times out of ten plunking it fairly before it
reached the ground.
But with all this ability to put a bullet just where he wanted it to go,
the lad was unwilling to use his skill in taking the life of any
creature. He would not kill even a hawk or a crow, though sometimes
sorely tempted to try a shot at such birds on the wing. Once he sat on a
log, with rifle across his knees, while a fox leaped on a fence not
forty yards away and stood balancing and curious for half a minute.
"We've got no real right to kill these things," he said to Roy, who was
always with him. "They've got as much right to live as we have and they
were here before we were. A fellow might shoot something if he were
hungry, but not decently just for sport. These animals, birds and
things, are getting too scarce as it is."
The town supported a first-class hardware store and its stock of guns
was sufficient for the most exacting selection to be made therefrom.
When the boys reached their room in the dormitory an hour later and the
new gun was unpacked, Herb took it up and toyed with it lovingly. It was
one of the most modern of sporting rifles, also shooting a 30-30-160
cartridge, the first figure referring to the caliber, the second to the
grains of powder by weight and the third to grains of lead. The
workmanship, the finish, the design were perfect.
Herb, perforce, must make potent remarks concerning the weapon.
"Now you have something that you can rely on whenever you look over the
barrel and press the trigger in the right way. It'll do the trick and
never fail you if you treat it as it deserves; keep it clean. Remember
to do that. We'll take the stock off, unlimber the breech, warm all the
parts and run melted vaseline all through it; then, when it gets cold,
that sticks in there as grease, which beats any liquid oil all to
pieces. In the barrel only always use but a drop or two of oil on your
rag or brush and with that brass-jointed cleaning rod you can clean from
either end. If you use an iron rod, clean only from the breech end; I'll
bet they'll tell us that in the army.
"And, Roy, you've got to be careful how you shoot, what you shoot at and
what's back of it around here. If it goes off accidentally some old
time, or there isn't anything back of what you shoot at to stop the
bullet, why, the blamed thing is apt to go on and kill a cow in the next
county. These steel-jacketed bullets will punch through six inches of
seasoned oak, twice as much pine, and clean through an ordinary tree of
green wood. But say, Roy, you don't care how you spend your money; a
thousand cartridges! I'll use about two hundred of them and I want to
pay you----"
"You go plumb to smash; will you? Pay nothin'! Ain't you goin' to teach
me how to hit a bumble-bee at half a mile? We'll start to-morrow and
work regular until Commencement."
It was even so, except the bumble-bee stunt. Excellence generally
follows determination where all else is favorable, and Roy possessed
good eyes, steady nerves and faith in his own ability and that of his
teacher. The result was that before the cartridges were half spent the
one-time disinterested greenhorn was that no longer; he could put ten
shots within a six-inch circle and do it pretty quickly, too, and he had
completely fallen in love with what he called "the fun and fine art of
firearms; hooray!"
But however interested he became in his own efforts, it was as nothing
to his intense delight over Herbert's wonderful skill. He ran back and
forth between target and gunner like a playful dog chasing a thrown
stick.
"Ye've got the center pushed into one big hole now!" he would shout,
"and ye've got only one or mebbe two outside the center and none near
the ring! It's wonderful! I might shoot lead enough into yon old quarry
bank to make a ten-million-dollar mine of it and never be as certain of
hittin' the center as what you are each time you let her go. Shooters,
like poets, are sure born and not made."
The departure from dear old Brighton, the saying of farewells that might
be final, the leaving of scenes that would always be reminiscent of
happy days and worthy efforts with benefits for life, came all too
soon.
With his one bag and gun case, his sole possessions, Herbert Whitcomb
stood on the station platform waiting until Roy Flynn had checked his
numerous trunks and boxes. He glanced again at the letter from Captain
Pratt, the recruiting officer, introducing both boys to
Brigadier-General Harding in command at Camp Wheeler. The captain had
invited them to peruse it and emotional Roy had been greatly tickled by
the contents. It read in part:
"I write you about these boys because they are younger than we have
been accepting them, those from the same school heretofore having
been seniors. But these are manly fellows, athletes in training,
spending much of their time out of doors on long hikes and week-end
camping trips and, most important of all, they are both very
excellent shots, Whitcomb excelling almost anything that I have
ever heard of, as I have it from good authority. In view of the
Special Inquiry No. 10, June 1st, I believed this would interest
you."
Special Inquiry, eh? The captain had not explained that. It was probably
a matter for higher authorities to explain and no doubt they would hear
of it again. Surely it related to shooting, and most certainly the
ability to handle a gun much better than the average man must be an
important thing in relation to soldiering.
Roy returned just as the train pulled in and the two went aboard. The
boys were now on their way for a few days' visit to the elegant Flynn
home and, from a previous experience, Herb knew he would be made most
welcome.
After that came the journey and the introduction to Camp Wheeler.