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CHAPTER IX
THE CROWNING INSULT

Realizing the soundness of Bob Dalton’s counsel, his three friends agreed to abide by it. Nevertheless, Jimmy was already firmly convinced that he had Bixton to thank for the strange disappearance of his letters. He did not hesitate to reiterate the statement to his chums. Iggy solemnly supported the theory out of pure devotion to Jimmy. Bob and Roger refused to commit themselves, thought privately they were of the same opinion that suspicion pointed strongly in Bixton’s direction. Both knew only too well that it needed but a word from them to set hot-headed Jimmy Blazes on the trail of the disagreeable rookie with a vengeance, a proceeding which, as Bob had sagely pointed out, would be not only futile but disastrous to Jimmy as well.

The exigencies of drill that morning drove the incident from the minds of the four for the time being. Keyed up to the highest pitch of desire to do well, Ignace partially retrieved himself in the eyes of the impatient drill sergeant. Though he could not know it, that efficient individual laid the Pole’s marked improvement of carriage to the dressing-down he had launched at Iggy on the previous day. Proud of his ability to “whip these rookies into shape” he showed considerably more patience with the still clumsy recruit, and the end of the morning drill found Ignace again escaping the dreaded awkward squad.

Not yet obliged to put in full time at drill, the squad to which Iggy and Jimmy belonged was dismissed at 10:30 not to resume their work until called out again after one o’clock Assembly. The instant he was released, Ignace hot-footed it for barracks, there to begin the “stoody” of Military Tactics as laid down by Bob. As the latter had shrewdly calculated, when the idea for them had taken shape in his fertile brain, he could not have devised a better way of impressing the first, simple Army commands on the slow-thinking Polish boy. Aside from feeling highly honored that his “smart” Brother should have gone to so much trouble for him, Ignace regarded the jingles with much the same delight which a child takes in its first book of nursery rhymes.

Reaching the barrack soon after Ignace, Jimmy was not surprised to find the latter seated on his cot, busily engaged in droning Rule No. 1 aloud. As it happened the squad-room was almost deserted. The three or four rookies it contained beside themselves were wholly occupied with their own affairs. Thus Ignace had a free field with no one to object to the sing-song murmur of his voice.

“Come on, Iggy,” Jimmy urged. “Let’s go over to the ‘Y’ and write our letters again. We’ll have plenty of time before mess, if we hustle.”

“I can no go.” Ignace stopped in the middle of a verse to make this stolid refusal.

“Don’t you want to write to your mother?”

“Y-e-a. Som’ day. No now. I am the busy. Better I stoody the rule firs’. Mebbe to-night write. Mebbe, no. Now am on job. So stay I. You see. This morning, no get the cross word. No yet go to what call you it, that bad squad? So have I do good. Soon much good. Pretty soon fine solder, I work hard.”

“All right. Keep up the good work.” Smiling, Jimmy turned away to get his note-paper. “Guess I’ll stay here and write,” he added, half to himself. Extracting a small leather portfolio from his suit-case, he settled himself on his cot, his back braced against the wall, and started the re-writing of his letters. Every now and then he raised his head to grin at Ignace, whose voice droned on, a steady, monotonous murmur. Far from disturbed by the sound, Jimmy was merely amused.

Shortly after their arrival, the barrack contingent began dropping in by twos and threes, among them Roger and Bob. Regardless of all comers, Ignace’s sing-song recitation never flagged. Disturbed by the increasing amount of stir and conversation, his tones rose unconsciously with it until gradually he became an object of attention. Nor was he in the least aware of the curious and mirthful glances launched in his direction. Even the voices of his three Brothers, talking together so near to him, failed to distract his attention from his “job.”

“There sits a living monument to my usefulness,” muttered Bob, jerking his head toward Iggy. “I wouldn’t butt in on him for the world. He’s forgotten we’re alive. Just listen to him.”

Roger’s eyes rested for an instant on the absorbed Pole, then traveled about the squad-room. What he saw brought a quick frown to his forehead. “Iggy,” he remonstrated. “Keep your voice down. You’re getting noisy.”

“So-o!” The reciter straightened up with a jerk as though coming to Attention. “I no mean make the noise. You ’scuse.”

“I don’t care,” Roger laughed. “I only told you for your own good. The fellows up here will start to kid you if you keep it up. That’s all.”

“Thank.” Ignace cast a sheepish glance about him. Encountering more than one smiling face he colored slightly, then doggedly returned to his task. Though his lips continued to move, his voice was no longer heard. Luckily for him, his arch-tormentor, Bixton, was absent from the squad-room and so missed a chance to jeer at the “Poley Pet” as he had sneeringly dubbed Ignace.

When, shortly before call to mess, he sauntered into the room, he cast a scowling glance toward the latter. He had anticipated the pleasure of seeing “that thick fathead” banished to the awkward squad. In consequence he was disappointed, not so much on Iggy’s account, but more because of Jimmy’s peppery championship of the former. He had begun by jeering at Iggy purely because he considered him a glaring mark for ridicule. Jimmy’s interference had aroused in him a fierce dislike for both boys which was not likely to die out in a hurry.

The presence of the acting first sergeant, who had come up the stairs behind him, alone served to keep him discreetly within bounds. His bunkie, however, a lank, hard-featured man, whose small black eyes had a disagreeable trick of narrowing until almost half shut, lost no time in regaling the newcomer with the latest news from across the aisle, laughing loudly as he related it. Seated side by side on the latter’s cot the two were a fitting pair. At least, so Jimmy thought, his usually pleasant mouth curving scornfully as he viewed them for a second, then turned his back squarely upon the obnoxious couple.

At drill that afternoon, Ignace did even better than in the morning. True, he had not yet absorbed much of Bob’s rhymed information. Still, it had given him a working basis on which to proceed. It needed only time and the dogged persistence which so characterized him to give him a lasting grip on the first principles of military tactics.

Released from drill, half-past three that afternoon saw him back in barracks, and engrossed in the “stoody” of his precious jingles. Now, however, he was minus the company of his Brothers, who returned to the squad-room after drill only to go directly out again for a walk about the camp. With no friendly eye to keep ward over him, Ignace forgot Roger’s caution of the morning and was soon droning away like a huge bumble-bee. Nor did he evince the slightest sign of having heard, when from across the room floated the surly command, “Aw, cut it out, you big boob!”

“‘All officer you mus’ saloot,’” placidly intoned Iggy, his gaze glued to his copy. “‘You right han’ to you head now – ’”

“What’s the matter with you, you fathead? You heard me tell you ‘cut it out’ once. Isn’t that enough?” This second boorish hail as well as the first came from the man, Bixton, who was lounging on his cot. His longed-for opportunity had come.

This time Ignace had heard and dimly realized that he was being most ungently addressed. His voice breaking off on “now” his head came up with a jerk. His round blue eyes registered a blank amazement that quickly changed to active resentment as he fixed them upon the rookie who had so roughly called out to him. Half rising from his cot, his strong hands instinctively clenched themselves. Then he slowly sank back to his former position, determined to follow Bob’s advice, “just act as though that smarty wasn’t alive.” Out of pure defiance he again resumed his reciting of the Salute rule, raising his tones a trifle by way of showing his utter disregard for the other’s uncalled-for attack.

With a sudden spring Bixton left his cot. A hasty glance about him revealed the fact that the room was clear of officers. Nor were there more than half a dozen privates present, including himself and Ignace. Striding across to where the latter sat he halted directly in front of the Pole.

“I’m goin’ to put the sergeant onto you, you poor fish,” he blustered. “How’d you s’pose a fellow can rest with you keeping up that racket? Now chop it off, or you’ll get yours.”

For answer, Ignace calmly laid down one of the typewritten sheets he was holding and centered his gaze on another.

“At ‘Forwar’ Mar – ” he began unconcernedly.

With a sudden lunge of his right arm, Bixton snatched at the little sheaf of papers. Unexpected as was the movement, the Pole’s grip on them tightened. One of them came away in the aggressor’s clutch, however, with an ominous tearing sound.

That was the last straw. Insults to himself, Ignace could endure, but when it came to an attempt to wrest from him the fruits of Bob’s labor he was a changed and raging Iggy. Uttering a wrathful howl he launched his stocky body at Bixton with a force that sent them both crashing to the squad-room floor. The Pole landing uppermost, his arms wrapped themselves about his tormentor in an effort to pin him down.

Of strong and wiry build, Bixton struggled fiercely to free himself. Over and over the squad-room floor they rolled, thumping heavily with every turn. Nearing the end of the room farthest from the stairway, Iggy succeeded in tearing himself free and getting a vise-like hold on his antagonist. The few rookies that had been present when the fight began now gathered about the combatants with noisy exclamations of “Give it to him, Poley!” “You got him cinched, now hand him one!” It was plainly evident with whom their sympathies lay. Bixton was most thoroughly disliked by the majority of his comrades.

“Ignace Pulinski!”

The utterance was freighted with a degree of stern disapproval that almost caused the Pole to relax his grip on his adversary. It proceeded from Roger Barlow. He had come up the stairs just in time to hear the cry of “Give it to him, Poley!” Darting the length of the floor, he had pushed his way into the midst of the group to behold his usually placid Brother transformed into an enraged savage.

“Let him up,” ordered Roger. “Let him up, I say!” The intense forcefulness of his tones cut the air like a whip-lash. Long years of obedience to a superior will now had its effect upon Ignace. His face distorted with anger, nevertheless his strong hands fell away from Bixton’s prostrate form. Very sullenly he lumbered to his feet and stepped back a pace, his fists still doubled.

Freed from that relentless pressure, Bixton was up in a flash. His pale blue eyes gleaming with malignant fury, he launched a vicious upper-cut at Ignace, only to find his punishing right arm arrested in mid-air by two determined hands. Anticipating some such move on Bixton’s part, Roger had blocked it with lightning-like swiftness.

“Help me hold him back, you fellows,” he snapped, as Bixton struggled to strike him with his left arm.

Three pairs of sturdy arms now coming to Roger’s aid, Bixton was fairly dragged over to his cot and bundled upon it, thrashing about wildly under the pinioning hands. Ignace had not assisted in this operation. He stood stock-still at the point where he had let Bixton up, his face a study. Roger’s interference had brought him to his senses. He was beginning to regret his own display of temper. He had done just exactly what he had been warned against doing. Weighted down by a sense of his own shortcomings, he shuffled over to his cot and began to pick up his scattered papers.

“Hold on to him just a minute more, please. I’ve something to say to him.” With this energetic direction, Roger’s own hands relaxed their grasp on Bixton. “Now, listen to me,” he continued, fixing a steely gaze on the man. “If you know when you’re well off, you’ll behave yourself when the fellows let go of you. I don’t know what all this is about, and I don’t care. Just by pure luck you’ve escaped the sergeant. If he’d come in here as I did and seen you two fighting, you’d both be in the guard-house by now. He’s likely to come in any minute, so watch yourself. That’s all. Break away, boys.”

Released, Bixton shot up from his cot like a jack-in-the-box. “Trying to screen your pet, are you?” he sputtered. “Well, you can’t. He’s going to get his, all right, the minute the sarge hits the squad-room. I’ll teach that pasty-faced hulk a thing or two!”

For all his bluster, he made no attempt to attack either Roger or his companions.

“Better hold your tongue,” advised Roger dryly, looking the bully squarely in the eye. “It takes two to make a fight, you know. I wouldn’t bank too much on the sergeant’s seeing it differently. Come on, fellows. Leave him to think it over.”

Roger turned away, followed by an extremely disgusted trio of young men. He did not consider it necessary to enjoin them to silence. Bixton’s threat to tell tales to the sergeant had merely put him in deep disfavor with them. In the Army or out, no self-respecting man will countenance a tale-bearer.

Roger went over to Ignace, who had now slumped down on his cot in an attitude of utter dejection. He had hard work to keep from smiling. He did not doubt for an instant that Ignace had had just cause for his outbreak. Nevertheless, he put on an air of severity that he was far from feeling. “What started this fight?” he asked sharply. “Didn’t Bob and I both warn you not to notice that fellow? Do you know where you’ll land if the sergeant hears of this? You’ll land in the guard-house for a month, maybe. I shouldn’t be very sorry for you, if you did. Get up and let me brush you off. Your uniform’s covered with dust.”

Without a word Ignace meekly stood up. Reaching under his own cot for his clothes brush, Roger put it into energetic use on his now chastened Brother. “I’m surprised at you,” he rebuked, between strokes. “You need a keeper, Iggy.”

“So am I the bad one,” Ignace agreed mournfully. “But I feel to kill w’en that – ” English failing him, he paused, then added a string of Polish words which Roger could only guess at as not being complimentary to Bixton.

“You had better luck than you deserved,” commented Roger crisply. “Now come on out for a walk with me. I want you to tell me about this affair. But not here. It’s a good thing that it was I instead of Jimmy who happened along. There’d have been a free-for-all fight sure. Here comes the sergeant, too,” he added grimly, as the acting first sergeant stepped from the stairway into the squad room. “Wait a minute. Sit down again and we’ll see what Bixton intends to do.”

With these words, Roger calmly seated himself on his own cot to await developments, his eyes trained squarely on Bixton. That injured individual had also been busy plying a clothes brush, a fairly good sign, Roger thought, that he did not intend to carry out his threat. During the short time that the sergeant remained in the room an expectant silence prevailed. Like himself the other rookies present were breathlessly awaiting the outcome.

Stretched at full length on his cot, Bixton made no move to unburden himself to the officer. He watched the latter morosely as he paused to give an order to one of the men, who promptly seized his hat and followed him from the room. As the two disappeared, Roger could not refrain from casting a challenging glance at the sulker. Directly he had done it, he was sorry.

Bixton had caught and rightly interpreted it. Raising himself on his elbow he said fiercely: “’Fraid I was going to tell on him, wasn’t you? I’ll do it yet, if I feel like it. I’ll fix both you boobs for this. There’s other ways beside that. Before I’m through, I’ll see you both fired outa this camp and those two smart Alecks that run with you. This camp’s not big enough to hold me and you fresh guys at the same time, and you’ll pretty soon get wise to it or my name’s not Bixton.”

CHAPTER X
NO LONGER “JUST ROOKIES”

As the September days glided by, Bixton’s threat of speedy vengeance bore no apparent fruit. Whether he was lying in wait for a good opportunity to discredit the four Khaki Boys, or whether he was only the proverbial barking dog that never bites, they neither knew nor cared. To their great relief, the story of the fight did not reach the ear of the acting first sergeant. Thus Ignace escaped the disgrace of being punished in his very first week at Camp Sterling.

On hearing an account of the affair from Ignace himself, Roger was less inclined than ever to blame him for what had happened. He did not say so to Ignace, however. Instead, he sharply pointed out to the crest-fallen pugilist that two wrongs never made a right. He also privately warned Bob and Jimmy, who had been told of the fracas, not to let their sympathies run away with them.

Impetuous Jimmy, however, found it very hard to repress openly, to Ignace, his own satisfaction at the latter’s recent uprising. He secretly wished that Ignace had given Bixton a sound thrashing and “gotten away with it.” Slow of comprehension in some respects, the Polish boy was not too obtuse to divine Jimmy’s attitude toward him. In consequence, he hung about the latter with a dog-like fidelity that signally amused Roger and Bob. Devoted as he was to his three Brothers, Jimmy was rapidly becoming his idol.

The passing of days saw all four young men making progress in the business of soldiering. As has been already stated, Jimmy showed the most dash and snap in that direction. He took to military procedure like a duck to water, and “went to it” heart and soul. Easily the most efficient man in his squad, he was on the road to a corporalship, though he did not suspect it. He drilled with the same zest he would have put into a football game and prided himself on his prompt ability to execute correctly a new movement immediately it had been explained to him. It was the glory rather than the duty of being a good soldier that most impressed him.

On the other hand, Bob and Roger regarded it more from the duty angle. This was only natural, considering that both men had been obliged, when in civil life, to shift for themselves. They tackled drill as they would have wrestled with a new job. It interested but did not enthrall them. It was a means to an end. That end meant, to them, Bob in particular, active service in France. He looked upon “Going Over” as the supreme adventure. If he survived he intended to come home and write a book “that would sell like hot cakes.”

Iggy’s noblest aspiration was to do well and so stay in the same squad with Jimmy and Bixton. Devotion to the former and spite against the latter swayed him equally. He knew that Jimmy was as desirous of his welfare as Bixton was of his downfall. This double motive inspired him to good works. Back of it all, undoubtedly, he was a true patriot. His enlistment in the Army proved that. For the time being, however, the glory of being a soldier was lost in the difficulty of trying to stay one. The drill sergeant was the most awe-inspiring figure on his horizon. Long afterward when the four Brothers had proved their mettle in far-off France, he had been heard to declare soulfully: “Go Over Top no so bad. One drill sergeant more worse twenty Tops!”

In spite of his encounter with Bixton, Ignace was still seized with spells of reciting his rules aloud. It did not take his companions of the barracks long to discover the nature of his frequent fits of mumbling. When it gradually became noised about in the squad-room that Bob Dalton had composed them for his bunkie’s benefit, he was besieged for copies of them. Though he refused to supply them, he good-naturedly recited such as he could recall to several of the men. Very soon hardly a day passed when he was not asked to give one or more of them. As a result it was not long before they achieved the popularity of a topical song and at least half the occupants of the squad-room could recite one or more of them. In time they became circulated throughout the camp and long after Bob had left Camp Sterling behind for “Over There,” his “Military Maneuvers in Rhyme” were passed on to newcomers and gleefully quoted.

October saw the four Khaki Boys long since emerge from the School of the Soldier into the School of the Squad. They had now mastered the basic principles of military training and were beginning to feel a little more like Regulars. They now knew the Manual of Arms and had been fully instructed in the use, nomenclature and care of their rifles. They were no longer just “rookies.”

Their periods of drill had been gradually lengthened until they were now putting in the same amount of time as the seasoned men. From half-past seven in the morning until dismissal by a sergeant at half-past eleven, they were kept at work learning soldiering. One o’clock Assembly marked the beginning of the afternoon drill period, which lasted until half-past four with thirty minutes’ intermission before Retreat.

Thus far none of the quartette had troubled themselves much concerning “passes,” those magic bits of scribbled paper that meant permission to quit camp limits for a few brief hours of civil life. Once or twice they had obtained leave to spend an evening in Glenwood, a village about three miles from Camp Sterling.

“What we ought to do is to all get a pass, go to Tremont and take in a good show,” was Bob’s opinion one evening as the four boys sat talking together in barracks. “We could get off at noon some Saturday and be back by midnight. That would give us the afternoon to see the town, a bang-up supper at a first-class restaurant and a show afterward. Oh, boy! Oh, joy! I can just see us doing it.”

“That sounds good to me,” glowed Jimmy. “I’ve been going slow on the pass business ’cause I want to ask for one from Saturday until Monday morning, so that I can go home. Every letter I get from Mother lately she asks me when I’m coming home. But I guess if I’m good maybe I can get off with you fellows and get the pass home, too.”

“Let me see. This is Thursday. Why not make it for day after to-morrow?” proposed Bob. “With pay-day only yesterday we’ve all got money to spend. Why let it burn in our pockets? Use up and earn more’s my motto.”

“I’d like to take a trip to Tremont,” nodded Roger. “We’ve all worked good and hard since we came here. It’s time for a little harmless recreation.”

“You can count me in,” readily assured Jimmy.

“I can no go,” stated Ignace regretfully.

“Why not?” Jimmy demanded. “What’s going to hinder you?”

“I have no the monies. A little, yes, but no much. So stay I here. Anyhow, you go. I very glad for you have the fon. While you way think I to you,” Ignace added with a sigh.

“No money! For goodness’ sake, where is it? You just drew – I beg your pardon, Iggy.” Jimmy colored hotly. “I shouldn’t have asked such a nosey question. Forget it.”

“Ask all thing you want ask all time.” Ignace accompanied this gracious permission with a sweeping flourish of his hand. “You are the Brother. So have you the good right. Firs’ think I no say nothin’. Anyhow, now I tell. I am to poor my mother the bad son for that I run way. When I home give her all monies no my father take. Now I here she have the nothin’ for long time. He my father give only for the rent an’ the eat. No much the eat. In my house are the three littles, two sister an’ one brother. So have I nother brother. He have sixteen year. Work hard but every week get only the five dollar, an’ my father take mos’. Now have I the pay sen’ all my mother. Only I keep two dollar. It is enough here, but no for have the eat, the show, the good time Bob say. Som’ day go along Tremont. No now. I am the broke.” Ignace looked mildly triumphant at having been able to express himself in slangy Bob’s vernacular.

“You may be ‘the broke,’ Iggy, but you’ve got a solid gold heart!” exclaimed Bob, his shrewd black eyes growing soft. “I call that mighty white in you. Never you mind, if we can get the passes you come along with us just the same. I’ll do the treating and glad to at that.”

“Count me in on that,” emphasized Jimmy. “My dough is yours, Iggy. You can draw on it till it gives out.”

“Same here,” smiled Roger, who had been signally touched by the broken little tale of sacrifice.

“No, no!” The Pole’s tones indicated stubborn finality. “I can no do. Thank. You are the too good all. I know; un’erstan’. I have for me what you call it, the respet. So mus’ I the no say an’ stay by the camp. You ask me more, I no like; feel fonny mad!”

Ignace’s characterization of hurt self-respect as “fonny mad” raised a laugh. That, at least, did not disturb him. He merely grinned and remarked tranquilly: “You make the fon one poor Poley.”

The plan for a journey into Tremont, having been duly discussed, it but remained to the three young men to obtain the desired passes for Saturday afternoon. Tremont was the only city of importance within a radius of seventy-five miles. It lay about twenty miles east of the camp. Soon after the making of Camp Sterling a line of automobile busses had sprung up to do a thriving business between there and Tremont. There were also many regularly licensed jitney automobiles that went to and fro for the accommodation of both soldiers and visitors, not to mention their own individual profit.

“We can go to Tremont in one of those Cinderella pumpkins for seventy-five cents, or we can give up a plunk apiece and ride in style in a jit. You pays your money and you takes your choice,” declared Bob. At first sight he had attached the appellation of Cinderella pumpkins to the big yellow uncomfortable busses operated by a business concern in Tremont.

“Me for a regular buzz wagon. I wouldn’t wear out my bones bouncing around in one of those bumpety-bump Noah’s Arks if I was paid to ride in it,” objected Jimmy disdainfully.

“What’s a quarter more beside Jimmy Blazes’s delicate little bones!” jeered Bob.

“Did you ever ride in one of those rattle-traps?” retorted Jimmy.

“No, my son, and I don’t intend to,” beamed Bob. “I’ve seen other fellows ride in ’em.”