Under Fire. Charles King

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ