In the hot July sunshine, up the long vista of the street the flags hung
drooping, every one, with a single exception, at half staff. Over the
building where hearts were heaviest the colors soared highest; the
general commanding, until ordered from Washington, being debarred a
manifestation of mourning which the sovereign citizen adopts as a matter
of course. It was bitter disaster that had befallen the national arms
and involved so popular a commander with scores of his gallant men; the
stars and stripes that had been saluted all over town in honor of the
ever-glorious Fourth were now set at mid-height or draped with black.
The crowds that had gathered about the newspaper offices and department
head-quarters all the previous day were scattered, in the conviction
that little remained to be told, but there was a gathering at the
railway station to bid adieu to the battalion of infantry from the
neighboring fort, leaving by special train for the seat of war. They had
cheered the dusty fatigue uniforms as the cars rolled away, and many a
young fellow would gladly have gone with the boys in blue could he have
faced the social ban which a misguided public has established against
its most loyal servants, holding enlistment in the regular army as
virtual admission of general worthlessness. And now the crowds still
lingered under the glass roof of the big passenger shed, for word had
gone out that another train coming across the bridge was loaded with
more troops, and there was a fascination in watching these prospective
victims of the stake and scalping-knife. It had been a fierce campaign
thus far, and one in which the losses and vicissitudes both (there are
no honors to speak of) had been borne principally by the cavalry, but
now the "doughboys" with their "long toms" were being pushed to the
front. "Wait till Emma Jane gets her eye on ould Squattin' Bull," said
an Irish private, patting the butt of his rifle, as with head and
shoulders half-way out of the car window he confidentially addressed the
crowd. "It'll be the last spache he'll ever ax to hear."
"That'll do there, Moriarty; get that gun inside," said a lieutenant,
briefly. And as Moriarty obeyed, with a grin and wink at the throng, the
laugh and cheer that went up were evidently for Private Pat and not for
his superior. It is the smiling face, not official gravity, that wins
the great heart of the people. The band which had headed the column on
the march in from the post, but was not to accompany it to the field,
was still waiting to give the next comers a fitting "send off." Two or
three staff officers in civilian dress stood in earnest talk with the
superintendent of the railway, a knot of curious citizens surrounding
them, eager to pick up any point with reference to the troops or their
transportation. Expectant eyes were cast towards the east where the
towers of the great bridge loomed in the shimmer and glare of the hot
noontide. "She ought to be here now," said the railway-man with an
impatient snap of his watch-case. "What keeps No. 5, Gus?" he asked of
an assistant hurrying by.
The man hauled up short and touched his hat. "This just came at the
train-despatcher's office, sir," said he, as he handed up a slip of
paper, which the superintendent quickly read, a queer look coming into
his face as he did so.
"Hu-m-m, gentlemen. This is something _you_'ll have to straighten out.
It doesn't seem to be in my line." And he handed the paper to Major
Ludlum, chief quartermaster of the department, who in turn read it, his
eyes filling with grave concern.
"Recruits on No. 5 broke loose at Bluff Siding,--drunk--raiding the
saloon. Can't get 'em on train again. Can guards or police be sent?" It
was signed by the conductor.
"Well," said Ludlum, disgustedly, "we might have known that would
happen. The idea of sending three car-loads of raw recruits with only
one officer, and that one old Muffet. It's tempting Providence."
"Why, I thought he had a lieutenant with him. Somebody said so at the
office this morning," said the department engineer officer.
"Not even a lieutenant,--a cadet, if you like; graduated not a month
ago,--not yet commissioned. Some young cub just out of school, with
about as much idea how to handle drunken recruits as I have of dressing
a doll. Home on graduating leave and thought it his duty to volunteer is
all I can make out of it."
"Well, bully for him!" spoke up the superintendent. "The boy's got the
right stuff in him if that's the case."
"What's his name?" asked the engineer officer. "I knew most of this
year's class when I was there on duty."
"Davies," said the quartermaster, consulting a notebook. "Remember him?"
"Why,--yes,--vaguely. He was not in the section I had charge of," said
Captain Eustis. "One of the last men to attract attention,--Parson
Davies they called him, I believe. He was one of the Bible-class. Don't
think anybody knew him outside of the Sunday-school."
"No wonder the recruits jumped the traces with no one but old Muffet and
a parson," said the quartermaster, disdainfully. "Now the question is,
what's to be done? Somebody's got to go over and pull them out of the
hole."
The situation was indeed serious. Many of the commands now suddenly
ordered to take the field were so short of men that, after the manner of
doing things in the 70's, a detachment of undrilled recruits, one
hundred and eighty strong, was hurriedly tumbled aboard the cars at the
cavalry depot on the Mississippi, while others were shipped from the far
East for the Foot. Only one officer--a semi-invalided old trooper--could
be spared from Jefferson Barracks to accompany the batch. There was no
time to wait, and just an hour before the detachment started there
arrived at the office of the depot commander a tall, slim, solemn young
man in brand-new fatigue uniform,--that of the infantry,--who introduced
himself as Mr. Davies of the graduating class, who said he was not yet
assigned to a regiment, but having read that all officers were hastening
to join their commands before they got beyond communication in the
Indian country, thought it possible that he might be assigned to some
company in the field and didn't wish to be left behind. That night he
was seeing his first service. Colonel Cooper, the post commander, shook
him by the hand and presented him to old Muffet, who was in a devil of a
stew and glad of professional help, and then wired on ahead to the
general commanding across the Missouri, or to his representatives at
head-quarters,--he being in the field. All went well enough early in the
night, but, towards morning, whiskey had been smuggled aboard in
sufficient quantity to start the devil of mischief, and finally, at
Bluff Siding, just before reaching the Missouri bridge, overpowering the
unarmed and perhaps sympathetic sentries at the car doors, and defying
the orders of their sergeants, the half-drunken crowd swarmed out and
made a swoop upon a saloon across the side-track. In less time than it
takes to tell it every cubic foot of space of the bar-room was packed
with rioting humanity in grimy blue flannel. The proprietor, who had
stood his ground at the instant of initial impact, was now doubled up
underneath the counter; his shrieking family--Hibernians all, and
somewhat used to war's alarms, though hardly to the sight of raiding
boys in blue--had taken refuge in the privacy of their own apartments
above and behind the saloon itself, while within the reeking
establishment pandemonium had broken loose. Bottles, glasses, and raw
liquor were liberally besprinkling the heads and shoulders of the
surging throng. A brawny Irishman, mad with the joy of unlimited riot
and whiskey, was on top of the counter impartially cracking the heads of
all men within reach with the blows of a big wooden bung-starter. Four
or five who had found the trapdoor leading presumably to the supplies in
the cellar were furiously fighting back the crowd so as to admit of
their raising it and forcing a passage down the wooden flight. Poor
Muffet, vainly pleading and swearing, was scouting on the outskirts of
the crowd about the door-way, occasionally turning and shrieking orders
to some bewildered lance sergeant to find the lieutenant and tell him he
must get in there and do something, but the lieutenant was nowhere to be
seen. At a respectful distance the neighbors were looking curiously on,
half a dozen roustabouts from the wharf-boat moored under the bank, a
little batch of railway employés, a number of slatternly women, not
entirely unsympathetic, and perhaps half a dozen hands from a
neighboring saw-mill, but all these, combined with the townsfolk
hurrying to the scene, would have been powerless as opposed to the
sixscore drink-maddened "toughs." Of the recruits, perhaps a dozen had
remained in the cars; of their non-commissioned officers, perhaps half a
dozen were trying to do something, but having no directing head or hand,
accomplishing little. It looked as though nothing but the bursting
asunder of that ramshackle building would liberate its human charge, for
even those who, battered, bleeding, and suffocated, would gladly have
escaped into outer air, were packed in, sardine-like, and incapable of
self-extrication. To the appeal of the conductor that he should regain
control of his men and prevent destruction of property, the luckless
Muffet plaintively responded, "My God, what can I do? I've done my best,
and nobody else has done anything. The only officer I've got has
deserted me."
But even as he spoke, accompanied by a jutting and hissing and spraying,
by outburst of yells, jeers, maudlin laughter, there came sudden
vomiting forth of drenched and dripping forms. Over the heads of the
throng within, into the hot faces of the throng without the double door,
hurling them back from the battered entrance in sudden panic, a powerful
stream of cold water, shooting from unseen nozzle, broke up and
demoralized the drunken barrier. Skilfully directed into the heart of
the crowd at the door-way, then into the ruck and tumult within, it
first cleared a passage, then, torrent-like, swept away into it,
tumbling and swearing and cursing, but going, the last able-bodied
invader of saloon sanctity, bestowing upon its foul interior the first
thorough washing it ever received, driving the despoilers before it with
the force of a battering-ram, yet even then, unsatisfied, following up
its victory. With perhaps half a dozen soldiers and as many mill-hands
hauling on the slack of the hose behind him, through a north window came
the tall, slender, serious-faced person of Mr. Davies, a laughing young
lance corporal manning the butt with him, and, aiming low and driving
discipline and punishment at the rate of a gallon a second, _a
posteriori_, at the now drenched and scattering mob, and shouting, "Back
to the train! Back to your seats!" never did they cease their deluge
until the last laggard capable of locomotion took shelter within the
cars. Muffet, recoiling in time to escape both rush of men and muddy
water, stood shouting confirmatory orders from the platform the while.
Many a mob will face the shock of charging steel and hissing lead that
melts away before ridicule and squirted water. The _emeute_ was ended
long before the police arrived, and Muffet had regained some measure of
his accustomed presence of mind. "Oh, we simply manned the saw-mill
hose," said he, in complacent acknowledgment of the congratulation of
the staff officials first to meet him. "It didn't take long to souse
them to their sober senses."
Indeed, the three car-loads of dripping and bedraggled humanity, meekly
side-tracked under the guarding bayonets of the one company of infantry
left at the fort, found not a sympathetic eye among the lookers-on. An
ambulance had carted off to the hospital four or five, whose battered
skulls bore witness to the hammering powers of big Milligan and his
bung-starter. That redoubtable giant himself, weak from the shock of
having involuntarily gulped more water in a second than ever before he
had swallowed in weeks, was flattened out in a baggage-car. Two more of
the arriving reinforcements failed to appear to the public eye at the
scene of congratulation, and, as sometimes happens in even so well
regulated a family as our little army, these were the two who most
deserved any honors that were being bestowed,--Mr. Davies and his
assistant pipeman.
Just as the last prostrate victim of that powerful combination--rum and
riot--had performed the frog's march to the baggage-car, the raving
saloon-keeper had been instructed to send his bill of damages to the
chief quartermaster across the bridge, the conductor had signalled "Go
ahead," and the young officer, ruefully scanning the wreck of his new
fatigue uniform, was clambering on the platform of the sleeper, when he
saw that the blood was dripping from the corporal's hand, despite the
big handkerchief wrapped about it.
"Come in here, corporal," said he. "Let me look at that. How did it
happen?" And he led the way into the men's toilet-room of the sleeper.
"I must have cut it with some of that broken glass at the window," was
the answer.
He was paling now, drooping evidently from loss of blood. Quickly Mr.
Davies unrolled the bandage, and there, beside a little jagged gash,
disclosed a deep cut from which the blood was oozing. "Why, man," said
he, "that's as clean as though done with a razor. Did any one try to
knife you?"
But the soldier made no answer. He sank limp upon a seat. Two civilian
travellers, in prompt sympathy, tendered flasks, and a stiff cup of
brandy brought back some vestige of the flitting color. Then a young
lady came forward from the interior of the car. "Please let me help
you," she said. "My father was a surgeon and I know something about
these wounds." Davies gratefully gave way to her, and found himself
watching the swift, skilful touch of her slender white hands as she bent
over the work. It was finished in a minute, and then with calm decision
the girl spoke again. "I will take him back to our section. He needs
quiet for a while," said she, standing erect now and addressing herself
to Mr. Davies, and rather pointedly ignoring the younger civilian, whose
interjected remarks fell upon ears that were dainty but deaf. "I am with
Mrs. Cranston," said she, "whose husband is among the wounded. Do you
know him?--Captain Cranston?"
"Only by reputation," answered Davies, raising his cap. "You are very
good to our men. Go with this young lady, corporal. I'll come as soon as
I can wash my hands."
Hardly waiting, however, for his reply, the girl had passed her hand
underneath the soldier's arm and led him rearwards as the train slowly
rounded the long curve to the bridge embankment. Davies slipped out of
his sack coat and plunged his hands in the basin. "Would you mind
pumping for me?" he said to the nearest civilian, who with his companion
stood gazing admiringly after the girl. "My hands are covered with that
poor fellow's blood."
"Certainly," was the prompt answer, as one of them grasped the
nickel-plated lever. The other and younger man turned to the ice-water
tank, rinsed the tumbler that had just been used to such good purpose,
poured out another stiff load of spirits, and with confident kindliness
held it out to the young officer.
"Thank you," said Davies, shaking his head, "I never use it."
"You don't?" was the surprised answer. "Why, I thought all army officers
drank."
"That seems to be the general idea," was the quiet answer. "Much more
general than the practice, I hope. Thank you," he continued, as, drying
his hands, he quickly donned his coat and went on through the car. They
watched him a moment as he was presented to the elder of the two ladies,
one whose face, though still young, bore traces of grief and tears and
anxiety. They saw her look up and clasp his proffered hand, evidently
glad to meet one of her husband's cloth.
"Now, if I'd only known about her husband's being one of the wounded, I
could have rung in there all right," said the younger of the two
travellers. "I haven't seen a prettier girl in all my wanderings,--but
she stood me off even on a dodge I never knew to fail."
"You were too transparent, so to speak, Willett," said the elder. "She
couldn't help seeing you were trying to scrape acquaintance. All young
girls don't take to frivolity any more than all officers to whiskey."
Willett, nettled at this palpable hit, spoke resentfully. "Oh, I dare
say they'd make a good team,--one's a prude and the other a prig."
"Perhaps not a very bad team, as you put it, my boy," was the answer, as
the elder thoughtfully regarded the two now in earnest conversation.
"But a girl who won't flirt isn't necessarily a prude, nor a man who
won't drink a prig. If I were marrying again, I should be glad of a girl
like that for a wife. If I were soldiering again, I'd like that boy for
a sub."
And just before leaving the train on its arrival at the Omaha station
the speaker went to Davies and held out his hand. "Lieutenant," said he,
"my name is Langston. I met and knew a number of West Pointers during
the war, and I am glad to have met you. If ever I can be of service to
you in my way,--and my duties carry me out here on the frontier very
often,--let me know."
Never dreaming how it might be needed, Davies accepted the proffer of
services with all that the proffer implied.