The Iron Game: A Tale of the War. Henry F. Keenan
sentiment in the two o' ye to fill a wind-blown buttercup. No wonder ye don't care to talk of the gurls—they'll have none of ye."
"We'll be satisfied if they'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we shall have seen none of it."
"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th—" and Barney gave the barrel of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.
"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you my bones to operate."
"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead—" And honest Barney seized the poet's hand sentimentally.
"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to keep up the warrior spirit.
"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:
"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr—sauerkraut—das is aber schon?"
"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"—looking about circumspectly—"etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"
The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in the regiment that "Old Sauerkraut" was stricken with cholera. He at first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions. This was followed by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of schnapps were quite emptied. On the fourth day the poor man, very woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming engagement.
Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly over the road worn through the greensward. Hussey sat solemnly on the seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up:
"Tim, is the poor colonel no better?"
"Divil a betther; it's worse he's intirely. God be good till 'im!"
Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other's eyes as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion to settle their collapsed nerves!
"Well, haven't I won the guinea, now? It cost me just twice that. If ye's have a spark of honor ye'll pay your just dues, so ye will," Barney said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but the Oswald parasites among the officers.
"Don't say a word, Barney—to whom the medicos of mythology and all the wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks—you shall have the guinea or its equivalent."
"Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind. Yer father's a banker, ye ought to know that!"
"I do. You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of the republic."
The colonel had been routed none too soon. The very next morning, when the Caribees "fell in" for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from the commander's orderly which read, "Tents to be struck at twelve o'clock and the men ready to march, with ten days' rations."
At last! All the future, glowing with heroism, exciting with the march, the attack, the battle—ah! what after? With something of joy and regret the comely tents, that had given them home and harbor, were taken down, folded in precise line, and carried away for storage—for in the field the ranks were to bivouac in the open air. Such gayety; such jokes; such bravado; and augury of the to be! And the rumors! Telephones, had they been invented; stenographers, had they been present in legion, could not have kept track of the momentous tales that were instantly bruited about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a "detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his tent had been. He hurried to the spot and Nick saluted him with the cry—
"Here, Jack, are two recruits who declare they must enter Company K."
His gun was on his arm and his knapsack on his back, but only the realization that a score of eyes were upon him saved Jack from dropping limply on the ground, as, looking in the group, he saw Dick Perley and Tom Twigg grinning ingratiatingly at him.
"Where—how in the name of all that's sacred did you get here?" he gasped.
"Why, we enlisted for drummers in the Caribees, but the recruiting officer told us as we were eighteen we could carry muskets if we wanted to. We do want to, and we're going to come into Company K."
They looked him confidently in the face as Dick repeated this evidently long-practiced explanation. It would not do to take them to task before the company. Jack waited until the rest were scattered, and then, leading the boys aside, said, sternly:
"Don't you know you can be put in prison for this? You have run away from your parents and guardians. No one had a lawful right to enlist you. I shall send for the provost marshal and have you put in prison until your parents can come and get your enlistment annulled."
Appalled by Jack's stern manner as much as by his words, the two lads began to whimper and expostulate tearfully. They had trusted to his ancient friendship. They could have gone into any other regiment, but they had enlisted to be with him. Whatever happened, they were soldiers, and, if Tom Twigg wasn't eighteen until September, it was perfectly lawful for him to enlist as a drummer. Perley was eighteen in April last, and he was a soldier in spite of all that Jack could do. Jack was deeply perplexed. What could be done? If he attempted to put the machinery of reclamation in order, the boys would be subjected to all sorts of vicissitudes, prisons, everything distressing and demoralizing to tender youth.
"Do they know at home what you have done?" Jack asked, doubtingly.
"Yes," Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack's troubled face. "I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well."
"You impudent young scamp—to write that to your best friend! Don't you know it will kill her?"
Dick