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Page 60
"'All right,' says I. 'Then why do you so recklessly chase the bright
rainbow of fame? Do you expect to be elected President, or do you
belong to a suicide club ?'
"And then Captain Sam interferes.
"'You gentlemen quit jawing and go back to your quarters,' says he,
'or I'll have you escorted to the guard-house. Now, scat, both of
you! Before you go, which one of you has got any chewing-tobacco?'
"'We're off, Sam,' says I. 'It's supper-time, anyhow. But what do
you think of what we was talking about? I've noticed you throwing out
a good many grappling-hooks for this here balloon called fame--
What's ambition, anyhow? What does a man risk his life day after day
for? Do you know of anything he gets in the end that can pay him for
the trouble? I want to go back home,' says I. 'I don't care whether
Cuba sinks or swims, and I don't give a pipeful of rabbit tobacco
whether Queen Sophia Christina or Charlie Culberson rules these fairy
isles; and I don't want my name on any list except the list of
survivors. But I've noticed you, Sam,' says I, 'seeking the bubble
notoriety in the cannon's larynx a number of times. Now, what do you
do it for? Is it ambition, business, or some freckle-faced Pheebe at
home that you are heroing for ?'
"'Well, Ben,' says Sam, kind of hefting his sword out from between his
knees, 'as your superior officer I could court-martial you for
attempted cowardice and desertion. But I won't. And I'll tell you
why I'm trying for promotion and the usual honors of war and conquest.
A major gets more pay than a captain, and I need the money.'
"'Correct for you!' says I. 'I can understand that. Your system of
fame-seeking is rooted in the deepest soil of patriotism. But I can't
comprehend,' says I, 'why Willie Robbins, whose folks at home are well
off, and who used to be as meek and undesirous of notice as a cat with
cream on his whiskers, should all at once develop into a warrior bold
with the most fire-eating kind of proclivities. And the girl in his
case seems to have been eliminated by marriage to another fellow. I
reckon,' says I, 'it's a plain case of just common ambition. He wants
his name, maybe, to go thundering down the coroners of time. It must
be that.'
"Well, without itemizing his deeds, Willie sure made good as a hero.
He simply spent most of his time on his knees begging our captain to
send him on forlorn hopes and dangerous scouting expeditions. In
every fight he was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the
Don Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various parts
of his autonomy. Once he went off with a detail of eight men and
captured a whole company of Spanish. He kept Captain Floyd busy
writing out recommendations of his bravery to send in to head-
quarters; and he began to accumulate medals for all kinds of things-
heroism and target-shooting and valor and tactics and
uninsubordination, and all the little accomplishments that look good
to the third assistant secretaries of the War Department.
"Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major-general, or a knight
commander of the main herd, or something like that. He pounded around
on a white horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers
and a Good Templar's hat, and wasn't allowed by the regulations to
speak to us. And Willie Robbins was made captain of our company.
"And maybe he didn't go after the wreath of fame then! As far as I
could see it was him that ended the war. He got eighteen of us boys--
friends of his, too--killed in battles that he stirred up himself, and
that didn't seem to me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of
us and waded through a little nil about a hundred and ninety yards
wide, and climbed a couple of mountains, and sneaked through a mile of
neglected shrubbery and a couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw
village, and captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny
Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, being a blackish
man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious to surrender and throw himself
on the commissary of his foe.
"But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine
News and the Galveston, St. Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers
printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine
simply went crazy over its 'gallant son.' The News had an editorial
tearfully begging the Government to call off the regular army and the
national guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war single-
handed. It said that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a proof
that the Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever.
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