Stories That End Well Part 20

"That's milk, real milk from a cow. Yes, lots of sleep; you drink that."

The sick man drank it with an expression of pleasure. "I don't believe any of the others get milk," he murmured; "save the rest for Edgar."

"Edgar don't need it, d.i.c.k," Spruce answered gently.

d.i.c.k drew a long, s.h.i.+vering sigh and his eyes wandered to the screen.

"He was a soldier and he died for his country jest the same as if he were hit by a Mauser," said Spruce--he had taken the sick boy's long, thin hand and was smoothing his fingers.

"It's no more 'an what we all got to expect when we enlist."

"Of course," said d.i.c.k, smiling, "that's all right, for him or for me, but he--he was an awfully good fellow, Chris."

"Sure," said Spruce. "Now, you lie still; I got to look after the other boys."

"Come back when you have seen them, Chris."

"Sure."

Spruce made his rounds. He was the star nurse of the hospital. It was partly experience. Chris Spruce had been a soldier in the regulars and fought Indians and helped the regimental surgeon through a bad attack of typhoid. But it was as much a natural gift. Chris had a light foot, a quick eye, a soft voice; he was indomitably cheerful and consoled the most querulous patient in the ward by describing how much better was his lot with no worse than septic pneumonia, than that of a man whom he (Spruce) had known well who was scalped. Spruce had enlisted from a Western town where he had happened to be at the date of his last discharge. He had a great opinion of the town. And he never tired recalling the scene of their departure, amid tears and cheers and the throbbing music of a bra.s.s band, with their pockets full of cigars, and an extra car full of luncheon boxes, and a thousand dollars company spending money to their credit.

"A man he comes up to me," says Spruce, "big man in the town, rich and all that. He says, calling me by name--I don't know how he ever got my name, but he had it--he says, 'I'm told you've been with the regulars; look after the boys a little,' says he. 'That I will,' says I, 'I've been six years in the service and I know a few wrinkles.' I do, too. He gave me a five-dollar bill after he'd talked a while to me, and one of his own cigars. 'Remember the town's back of you!' says he. 'Tis, too.

I'd a letter from the committee they got there, asking if we had everything; offering to pay for nurses if they'd be allowed. Oh, it's a bully town!"

Spruce himself had never known the sweets of local pride. He had drifted about in the world, until at twenty he drifted into the regular army. He had no kindred except a brother whose career was so little creditable that Spruce was relieved when it ended--were the truth known, in a penitentiary. He had an aunt of whom he often spoke and whom he esteemed a credit to the family. She was a widow woman in an Iowa village, who kept a boarding house for railway men, and had reared a large family, not one of whom (Spruce was accustomed to explain in moments of expansion, on pay-day, when his heart had been warmed with good red liquor) had ever been to jail. Spruce had never seen this estimable woman, but he felt on terms of intimacy with her because, occasionally, on these same pay-days, he would mail her a five-dollar bank-note, the receipt of which was always promptly acknowledged by a niece who could spell most of her words correctly and who always thanked him for his "kind and welcome gift," told him what they proposed to do with the money, and invited him to come to see them.

He always meant to go, although he never did go. It was his favorite air-castle, being able to go on furlough to the village where his aunt lived and show his medal. He had won the medal in an Indian fight where he had rescued his captain. The captain died of his wounds and Spruce never got drunk (which I regret to confess he did oftener than was good either for his soul or the service) that he didn't talk about his captain, who had been his hero; and cry over him. Spruce, who was a cheery creature in his normal state, always developed sentiment and pathos when he was revealed by liquor. Now he had another day-dream. It was to be greeted by the cheering crowds--again he would march down the sunny streets with the band playing, amid the faces and the shouts. And the men who had stood by the company so stanchly would be pointing him out and telling each other his mythical exploits--and adding the record of his Indian exploits--which Spruce felt that an inattentive country had not appreciated. A dozen times a day he pictured the scene, he mentally listened to the talk--he, walking with a rigid and unseeing military mien. He approximated the number of gla.s.ses a man could take without even grazing indecorum--for he was determined he would not be riotous in his joy--and he used to whistle the refrain of a convivial song:

Enj'y yourselves, enj'y yourselves But don't do no disgrace!

Meanwhile, his consciousness of in some way caring for the whole company held him a model of sobriety. In fact, he did take care of the company, secretly instructing the captain in the delicacies of military etiquette and primitive sanitary conditions, and openly showing the commissary sergeant how to make requisitions and barter his superfluous rations for acceptable canned goods at the groceries of the town. He explained all the regulars' artless devices for being comfortable; he mended the boys'

morals and their blouses in the same breath; and he inculcated all the regular traditions and superst.i.tions. But it is to be confessed again, that while Spruce was living laboriously up to his lights of righteousness under this new stimulus, the lights were rather dim; and, in particular, as regards the duty of a man to pick up outlying portable property for his company--they would have shocked a police magistrate.

Neither did he rank among the martial virtues the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. "A good captain is always a kicker," says Spruce firmly; "he's got to be. Look at this here camp, Captain; the mess tent's all under water; we're standing in the slush every d.a.m.ned meal we eat.

Water's under our tent, water--"

"I know, I know, Sergeant," interrupts the perplexed and worried young captain, a clever young dandy bright enough to be willing to take wisdom without shoulder straps; "I've been to the colonel; he agrees with me, and he's been to Major Green, and that's all comes of it. I don't see what I can do further, if I did--"

"Begging your pardon, Captain, the men will be falling sick soon and dying. They're weakened by the climate and being fretted, expecting always to git off and never going."

"But what can I do? Oh, speak out, we're off here alone. Have you any idea?"

"Well, sir, if you was my captain in the old --th, you'd say to the colonel, 'Colonel, I've remonstrated and remonstrated. Now I'm desperate. I'm desperate,' says you. 'If there ain't something done to-morrow I'm going to march my company out and find a new camp, and you kin court-martial me if you please. I'd rather stand a court-martial than see my men die!' He'd talk real pleasant at first, so as to git in all his facts, and then he'd blaze away. And he'd do it, too, if they didn't listen."

The captain gave the sergeant a keen glance. "And that's your notion of discipline?" said he.

"There's a newspaper fellow asking for you, Captain, this morning. I see him a-coming now," was the sergeant's oblique response. But he chuckled, walking stiffly away, "He'll do it; I bet we won't be here two days longer." For which glee there was reason, since, inside the hour, the captain was in the colonel's tent, concluding an eloquent picture of his company's discomforts with "Somebody has to do something. If you are powerless, Colonel, I'm not. If they don't give some a.s.surance of changing the camp to-morrow I shall march Company G out and pitch a camp myself, and stand a court-martial. I would rather risk a court-martial than see my men die--and that's what it has come to!"

The colonel looked the fiery young speaker sternly in the eye, and said something about unsoldierly conduct.

"It would be unmanly conduct for me to let the boys trusted to me die, because I was afraid to speak out," flung back the captain. "And I know one thing: if I am court-martialed the papers are likely to get the true story."

"You mean the reporter on the Chicago papers who is snooping around? Let me advise you to give him a wide berth."

"I mean nothing of the kind, sir. I only mean that the thing will not be done in a corner."

"Well, well, keep cool, Captain, you're too good a fellow to fling yourself away. Wait and see if I can't get something definite out of the major to-day."

Whereupon the captain departed with outward decent gloom and inward premonitions of rejoicing, for when he had hit a nail on the head he had eyes to see. And the colonel betook himself, hot-foot, to the pompous old soldier in charge of the camp, who happened to be a man of fixed belief in himself, but, if he feared anything, was afraid of a newspaper reporter. The colonel gave him the facts, sparing no squalid detail; indeed, adding a few picturesque embellishments from his own observations. He cut short the other's contemptuous criticism of boy soldiers, and his comparison with the hards.h.i.+ps endured during the Civil War, with a curt "I know they fooled away men's lives then; that is no reason we should fool them away now. The men are sickening to-day--they will be dying to-morrow; I'm desperate. If that camp is not changed by to-morrow I shall march my regiment out myself and pitch my own camp, and you may court-martial me for it if you like. I would rather stand a court-martial than see my men die, because I was afraid to speak out!

The camp we have now is murder, as the reporters say! I don't wonder that young fellow from Chicago talks hard!"

"You're excited, Colonel; you forget yourself."

"I _am_ excited, Major; I'm desperate! Will you walk round the camp with me?"

The end of the colloquy was that the captain saw the major and the colonel and told the first-lieutenant, who told, the first-sergeant, whose name was Spruce. "Captain's kicked to the colonel, I guess," says Spruce, "and colonel's kicked to the major. That's the talk. Git ready, boys, and pack." True enough, the camp was moved the very next day.

"I guess captain will make an officer if he lives and don't git the big head," Spruce moralized. "It's mighty prevalent in the volunteers."

The captain wrote the whole account home to one single confidant--his father--and him he swore to secrecy. The captain's father was the man who had committed Company G to Spruce's good offices. He sent a check to the company and a special box of cigars to Spruce. And Spruce, knowing nothing of the intermediary, felt a more brilliant pride in his adopted town, and bragged of its virtues more vehemently than ever. The camp was not moved soon enough. Pneumonia and typhoid fever appeared. One by one the boys of the regiment sickened. Presently one by one they began to die.

Then Spruce suggested to the captain: "I guess I'd be more good in the hospital than I am here, Captain." And the captain (who was scared, poor lad, and had visions of the boys' mothers demanding the wasted lives of their sons at his hands) had his best sergeant put on the sick detail.

If Spruce had been useful in camp he was invaluable in hospital. The head surgeon leaned on him, with a jest, and the young surgeon in charge with pretense of abuse. "You'll burst if you don't work off your steam, Spruce, so out with it. What is it _now_?" In this fas.h.i.+on he really sought both information and suggestion. Nor was he above being instructed in the innumerable delicacies of requisitions by the old regular, and he did not, when requisitions were unanswered and supplies appeared in unusual form, ask any embarra.s.sing questions. "I get 'em from the Red Cross, sir," was Spruce's invariable and unquestioned formula.

And the doctor in his reports accounted for what he had received and complained l.u.s.tily because his requisitions were not honored, even as Spruce had desired, and, thereby, he obtained much credit, in the days to come. Spruce did not obtain any particular credit, but he saved a few lives, it is likely; and the sick men found him better than medicine.

The captain always handed the committee letters over to him; and bought whatever he desired.

"Captain's going to distinguish himself, give him a chance," thought Spruce, "he's got _sense_!"

And by degrees he began to feel for the young volunteer a reflection of the wors.h.i.+p which had secretly been offered to a certain fat little bald-headed captain of the old --steenth. His picture of the great day when he should have his triumph--quite as dear to him, perhaps, as any Roman general's to the Roman--now always included a vision of the captain, slender and straight and bright-eyed, at the head of the line; and he always could see the captain, later in the day, presenting him to his father; "Here's Sergeant Spruce, who has coached us all!" He had overheard those very words once said to a girl visiting the camp, and they clung to his memory with the persistent sweetness of the odor of violets.

To-day he was thinking much more of the captain than of young Danvers, though Danvers ranked next in his good will. Danvers was a college lad who had begged and bl.u.s.tered his mother into letting him go. He would not let her know how ill he was, but had the captain write to his married sister, in the same town but not the same house. She, in sore perplexity, wrote to both the captain and Spruce and kept her trunk packed, expecting a telegram. Danvers used to talk of her and of his mother and of his little nephews and nieces to Spruce, at first in mere broken sentences--this was when he was so ill they expected that he might die any day--later in little happy s.n.a.t.c.hes of reminiscence. He was perfectly aware that he owed his life to Spruce's nursing; and he gave Spruce the same admiration which he had used to give the great man who commanded the university football team. The social hiatus between them closed up insensibly, as it always does between men who are in danger and suffering together. Danvers knew Spruce's footfall and his thin face would lighten with a smile whenever the sergeant came in sight. He liked the strong, soft touch of his hand, the soothing cadence of his voice; he felt a grat.i.tude which he was too boyish to express for the comfort of Spruce's baths and rubbings and cheerfulness. The other sick lads had a touch of the same feeling for the sergeant. As he pa.s.sed from cot to cot, even the sickest man could make some little sign of relief at his return.

Spruce's heart, a simple and tender affair, as a soldier's is, oftener than people know, swelled within him, not for the first time.

"Well, I guess I done right to come here," thought he, "and I guess all the G boys will be out of the woods this week, and then I don't care how soon we git our orders."

Danvers stopped him when he returned. "I want to speak to you, Chris,"

he next said, and a new note in his voice turned Spruce about abruptly.

"What's the matter, d.i.c.k?"

"Oh, nothing, I only wanted to be sure you'd come back and say good-by before you got off. The regiment's got its orders, you know?"

"_No!_" cried Spruce. He swallowed a little gasp. "What are you giving me?"

"Oh, it's straight; I heard them talking. Colonel has the order; the boys are packing to-day."

Spruce's eyes burned, he was minded to make some exclamations of profane joy, but his mood fell at the sight of the boy's quivering smile.