The Last Shot. Frederick Palmer
was in the Hussars—in the Hussars! I tell you, with our sabres a-gleaming, our horses' bits a-jingling, our pennons a-flying, and all the color of our uniform—I tell you, the girls used to open their eyes at us. And we went into the charge like that—yes, sir, just that gay and grand, Colonel Galland leading!"
Military history said that it had been a rather foolish charge, a fine example of the vainglory of unreasoning bravery that accomplishes nothing, but no one would suggest such scepticism of an immortal event in popular imagination in hearing of the old man as he lived over that intoxicated rush of horses and men into a battery of the Grays.
"Well, didn't you find what I said was true about the lowlanders?" asked grandfather after he had finished the charge, referring to the people of the southern frontier of the Browns, where the 53d had just been garrisoned.
"No, I kind of liked them. I made a lot of friends," admitted Tom. "They're very progressive."
"Eh? eh? You're joking!" To like the people of the southern frontier was only less conceivable than liking the people of the Grays. "That's because you didn't see deep under them. They're all on the outside—a flighty lot! Why, if they'd done their part in that last war we'd have licked the Grays until they cried for mercy! If their army corps had stood its ground at Volmer—"
"So you've always said," interrupted Tom.
"And the way they cook tripe! I couldn't stomach it, could you? And if there's anything I am partial to it's a good dish of tripe! And their light beer—like drinking froth! And their bread—why, it ain't bread! It's chips! 'Taint fit for civilized folks!"
"But I sort of got used to their ways," said Tom.
"Eh? eh?" Grandfather looked at grandson quizzically, seeking the cause of such heterodoxy in a northern man. "Say, you ain't been falling in love?" he hazarded. "You—you ain't going to bring one of them southern girls home?"
"No!" said Tom laughing.
"Well, I'm glad you ain't, for they're naturally light-minded. I remember 'em well." He wandered on with his questions and comments. "Is it a fact, Tom, or was you just joking when you wrote home that the soldiers took so many baths?"
"Yes, they do."
"Well, that beats me! It's a wonder you didn't all die of pneumonia!" He paused to absorb the phenomenon. Then his half-childish mind, prompted by a random recollection, flitted to another subject which set him to giggling. "And the little crawlers—did they bother you much, the little crawlers?"
"The little crawlers?" repeated Tom, mystified.
"Yes. Everybody used to get 'em just from living close together. Had to comb 'em out and pick 'em out of your clothes. The chase we used to call it."
"No, grandfather, crawlers have gone out of fashion. And no more epidemics of typhoid and dysentery either," said Tom.
"Times have certainly changed!" grumbled Grandfather Fragini.
Interested in their own reunion, they had paid no attention to a group of Tom's comrades near-by, sprawled around a newspaper containing the latest despatches from both capitals. It was a group as typical as that of the Grays around Hugo Mallin's cot; only the common voice was that of defence.
"Five million soldiers to our three million!"
"Eighty million people to our fifty million!"
"Because of the odds, they think we are bound to yield, no matter if we are in the right!"
"Let them come!" said the butcher's son. "If we have to go, it will be on a wave of blood."
"And they will come some time," said the judge's son. "They want our land."
"We gain nothing if we beat them back. War will be the ruin of business,"-said the banker's son.
"Yes, we are prosperous now. Let well enough alone!" said the manufacturer's son.
"Some say it makes wages higher," said the laborer's son, "but I am thinking it's a poor way of raising your pay."
"There won't be any war," said the banker's son "There can't be without credit. The banking interests will lot permit it."
"There can always be war," said the judge's son, "always when one people determines to strike at another people—even if it brings bankruptcy."
"It would be a war that would make all others in history a mere exchange of skirmishes. Every able-bodied man in line—automatics a hundred shots a minute—guns a dozen shots a minute—and aeroplanes and dirigibles!" said the manufacturer's son.
"To the death, too!"
"And not for glory! We of the 53d who live on the frontier will be fighting for our homes."
"If we lose them we'll never get them back. Better die than be beaten!"
There was no humorist Hugo Mallin in this group; no nimble fancy to send heresy skating over thin ice; but there was Herbert Stransky, with deep-set eyes, slightly squinting inward, and a heavy jaw, an enormous man who was the best shot in the company when he cared to be. He had listened in silence to the others, his rather thick but expressive lips curving with cynicism. His only speech all the morning had been in the midst of the reception in the public square of the town when he said:
"This home-coming doesn't mean much to me. Home? Hell! The hedgerows of the world are my home!"
He appeared older than his years, and hard and bitter, except when his eyes would light with a feverish sort of fire which shone now as he broke into a lull in the talk.
"Comrades," he began.
"Let us hear from the socialist!" a Tory exclaimed.
"No, the anarchist!" shouted a socialist.
"There won't be any war!" said Stransky, his voice gradually rising to the pitch of an agitator relishing the sensation of his own words. "Patriotism is the played-out trick of the ruling classes to keep down the proletariat. There won't be any war! Why? Because there are too many enlightened men on both sides who do the world's work. We of the 53d are a provincial lot, but throughout our army there are thousands upon thousands like me. They march, they drill, but when battle comes they will refuse to fight—my comrades in heart, to whom the flag of this country means no more than that of any other country!"
"Hold on! The flag is sacred!" cried the banker's son.
"Yes, that will do!"
"Shut up!"
Other voices formed a chorus of angry protest.
"I knew you thought it; now I've caught you!" This from the sergeant, who had seen hard fighting against a savage foe in Africa and therefore was particularly bitter about the Bodlapoo affair. The welt of a scar on his gaunt, fever-yellowed cheek turned a deeper red as he seized Stransky by the collar of the blouse.
Stransky raised his free hand as if to strike, but paused as he faced the company's boyish captain, slender of figure, aristocratic of feature. His indignation was as evident as the sergeant's, but he was biting his lips to keep it under control.
"You heard what he said, sir?"
"The latter part—enough!"
"It's incitation to mutiny! An example!"
"Yes, put him under arrest."
The sergeant still held fast to the collar of Stransky's blouse. Stransky could have shaken himself free, as a mastiff frees himself from a puppy, but this was resistance to arrest and he had not yet made up his mind to go that far. His muscles were weaving under the sergeant's grip, his eyes glowing as with volcanic fire waiting on the madness of impulse for eruption.
"I wonder if it is really worth while to put him under arrest?" said some one at the edge of the group in amiable inquiry.
The voice came from an officer of about thirty-five, who apparently had strolled over from a near-by aeroplane station