"Say, Uncle Ike, did you see this in the paper about fifty ambulances being lost, on the way to Tampa, Florida, last year?" said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike sat in an armchair, with his feet on the center-table, his head down on his bosom, his pipe gone out, yet hanging sideways out of the corner of his mouth, and the ashes spilled all over his shirt bosom. "Seventeen carloads of ambulances that started all right for Tampa, never showed up, and the government is writing everywhere to have them looked up. Wouldn"t that skin you?" and the boy stood up beside Uncle Ike, took his pipe out of his mouth, filled it again, brushed the ashes off his shirt, and handed him a lighted wax match that he had found somewhere. Uncle Ike put the match to his pipe, took a few whiffs, stuck up his nose, threw the match into the fireplace, and said:
"Where did you get that tallow match? Gosh, I had just as soon light my pipe with kerosene oil. Always give me a plain, old-fashioned brimstone match, if you love me, and keep out of my sight these cigarette matches, that smell like a candle that has been blown out when it needed snuffing." And the old man began to wake up, as the tobacco smoke went searching through his hair and up to the ceiling. "And so the government lost fifty ambulances in transit, eh? Well, they will be searching the returned soldiers next, to see if the boys got away with them, and never think of looking up the contractors, who probably never shipped them at all. It must be that the boys got tired of embalmed beef, and ate the ambulances. When a man is hungry you take a slice of nice, fresh ambulance, and broil it over the coals, with plenty of seasoning, and a soldier could sustain life on it. The government must be crippled for ambulances, and I think we better get up a subscription to buy some more. An ambulance famine is a terrible thing, and I have my opinion of a soldier who will steal an ambulance. When I was in the army, I remember that at the battle of Stone River we----"
"Oh, Uncle Ike, please don"t tell me any of your terrible army experiences," said the boy, as he remembered that he had heard his uncle tell of being in at least a hundred battles, when the history of the family showed that the old man was only south during the war for about six months, and he brought home a blacksnake whip as a souvenir, and it was believed that he had worked in the quartermaster"s department, driving mules. "Let us talk about something enjoyable this beautiful day. How would you like to be out on a lake, or river, today, in a boat, drifting around, and forgetting everything, and having fun?"
"I don"t want any drifting around in mine," said Uncle Ike, as he got up from his chair, limped a little on his rheumatic leg, and went to the window and looked out, and wished he were young again. "Don"t you ever drift when you are out in a boat. You just take the oars and pull, somewhere, it don"t make any difference where, as long as you pull. Row against the current, and against the wind, and bend your back, and make the boat jump, but don"t drift. If you get in the habit of drifting when you are a boy, you will drift when you are a man, and not pull against the stream. The drifting boy becomes a drifting business man, who sits still and lets those who row get away from him. The drifting lawyer sits and drifts, and waits, and sighs because people do not find out that he is great. He wears out pants instead of shoe leather. When you see a man the seat of whose pants are shiny and almost worn through, while his shoes are not worn, except on the heels, where he puts them on the table, and waits and dreams, you can make up your mind that he drifted instead of rowed, when he was a boy, out in a boat. The merchant who goes to his store late in the morning, and sits around awhile, and leaves early in the afternoon, and only shows enterprise in being cross to the clerk who lets a customer escape with car fare to get home, is a drifter, who stands still in his mercantile boat while his neighbors who row, and push, and paddle, are running away from him. The boy who drifts never catches the right girl. He drifts in to call on her, and drifts through the evening, and nothing has been done, and when she begins to yawn, he drifts away. She stands this drifting sort of love-making as long as she can, and by and by there comes along a boy who rows, and he keeps her awake, and they go off on a spin on their wheels, and they can"t drift on wheels if they try, because they have got to keep pushing, and before he knows it the drifting boy finds that the boy who rows is miles ahead with the girl, and all the drifting boy can do is to yawn and say, "Just my dumbed luck." Dogs that just drift and lay in the shade, and loll, never amount to anything. The dog that digs out the woodchuck does not drift; he digs and barks, and saws wood, and by and by he has the woodchuck by the pants, and shakes the daylights out of him. He might lay by the woodchuck hole and drift all day, and the woodchuck would just stay in the hole and laugh at the dog. The pointer dog that stays under the wagon never comes to a point on chickens, and the duck dog that stays on the sh.o.r.e and waits for the dead duck to drift in, is not worth the dog biscuit he eats.
"No, boy, whatever you do in this world, don"t drift around, but row as though you were going after the doctor," and the old man turned from the window and put his arm around the red-headed boy, and hugged him until he heard something rattle in the boy"s side pocket, and the boy pulled out a box with the cover off, and a white powder scattered over his clothes. "What is that powder?" asked the old uncle.
"That is some of this foot-ease that I saw advertised in the paper. Aunt Almira likes pigs" feet, and she says they lay hard on her stomach; so I got some foot-ease and sprinkled a little on her pigs" feet for lunch, and she ate it all right. Say, don"t you think it is nice to be trying to do kind acts for your auntie?"
"Yes; but if she ever finds out about that pigs" foot ease, she will make you think your trousers are warmer than your hair. You strike me as being a boy that resembles a tornado. No one knows when you are going to become dangerous, or where you are going to strike. You and a tornado are a good deal like a cross-eyed man; you don"t strike where you look as though you were aiming, and suddenly you strike where you are not looking, and where n.o.body is looking for you to strike. Nature must have been in a curious mood when she produced cross-eyed men, red-headed boys and tornadoes. What do you think ought to be done to Nature for giving me a redheaded boy to bring up, eh, you rascal?" and the old man chucked the boy under the chin, as though he wasn"t half as mad at Nature as he pretended to be.
"Uncle Ike, do you think a tornado could be broken up, when it got all ready to tear a town to pieces, by shooting into it with a cannon, as the scientific people say?" said the boy, climbing up into the old man"s lap, and slyly putting a handful of peanut shucks down under the waistband of his uncle"s trousers.
"Well, I don"t know," said Uncle Ike, as he wiggled around a little when the first peanut shuck got down near the small of his back. "These scientific people make me weary, talking about preventing tornadoes by firing cannon into the funnel-shaped clouds. Why don"t they do it? If a tornado came up, you would find these cannon sharps in a cellar somewhere. They are a pa.s.sel of condemned theorists, and they want someone else to take sight over a cannon at an approaching tornado, while the sharps look through a peep-hole and see how it is going to work. You might have a million cannon loaded ready for tornadoes, and when one came up it would come so quick n.o.body would think of the cannon, and everybody would dig out for a place of safety. Not one artilleryman in a million could hit a tornado in a vital part. Do these people think tornadoes are going around with a target tied on them, for experts to shoot cannon b.a.l.l.s at? A tornado is like one of these Fourth of July n.i.g.g.e.r-chasers, that you touch off and it starts somewhere and changes its mind and turns around and goes sideways, and when it finds a girl looking the other way it everlastingly makes for her and runs into her pantalets when she would swear it was pointed the other way. No, I am something of a sportsman myself, and can shoot a gun some, but if I had a cannon in each hand loaded for elephants, and I should see a tornado going the other way, I would drop both guns and crawl into a hole, and the tornado would probably turn around and pick up the guns and fire them into the hole I was in. That"s the kind of an insect a tornado is, and don"t you ever fool with one. A tornado is worse than a battle. I remember when we were at the battle of Gettysburg----"
"Oh, for Heaven"s sake, Uncle Ike, what have I done that you should fight that war all over again every time I try to have a quiet talk with you?" and the boy stuffed his fingers in his ears, and got up off the old man"s lap, and the uncle got up and walked around, and when the peanut sh.e.l.ls began to work down his legs, and scratch his skin, and he found his foot asleep from holding the big boy in his lap, the old man thought he was stricken with paralysis, and he sat down again, and called the boy to him and said, in a trembling voice:
[Il.u.s.tration: My boy, you are going to lose your Uncle Ike 057]
"My boy, you are going to lose your Uncle Ike. I feel that the end is coming, and before I go to the beautiful beyond I want to say a few serious words to you. It is coming as I had hoped. The disease begins at my feet, and will work up gradually, paralyzing my limbs, then my body, and lastly my brain will be seized by the destroyer, and then it will all be over with your Uncle Ike. Remove my shoes, my boy, and I will tell you a story. When we scaled the perpendicular wall at Lookout Mountain, in the face of the Confederate guns, and----"
"Can this be death?" said the boy, as he took off one of the old man"s shoes and emptied out a handful of peanut shucks, and laughed loud and long.
"Well, by gum!" said Uncle Ike, "peanuts instead of paralysis," and he jumped up and kicked high with the lately paralyzed legs; "now, I haven"t eaten peanuts in a week, and I suppose those shucks have been in my clothes all this time. I am not going to die. Go dig some worms and I will show you the liveliest corpse that ever caught a mess of bullheads," and the boy dropped the shoe and went out winking and laughing as though he was having plenty of fun, and Uncle Ike went to a mirror and looked at himself to see if he was really alive.
CHAPTER VII.
"You are a nice-looking duck," said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy came into the sitting-room with a black" eye and a scratch across his nose, and one thumb tied up in a rag, but looking as well, otherwise, as could be expected. "What you been doing? Run over by a trolley car or anything?"
"Nope," said the boy, as he looked in the mirror to see how his eye was coloring, with all the pride of a man who is coloring a meerschaum; "I just had a fight. Licked a boy, that"s all," and he put his hand to his head, where a lock of his red hair had been pulled out.
"You look as though you had licked a boy," said the old man taking a good look at the blue spot around the boy"s eye. "I suppose he is telling his folks how he licked you, too. My experience has been that in these boys" fights you can"t tell which licks until you hear both stories. What was it about, anyway?"
"He lied about you, Uncle Ike, and I choked him until he said "peunk,"
and then I let him up, but he wouldn"t apologize, and said he would leave it to you, if what he said was true or not, and here he comes now," and the red-headed boy opened the door and ushered in a boy about his own size, with two black eyes and a piece peeled off his cheek, and one arm in a sling.
"Which is Jeffries?" asked Uncle Ike, as he filled his pipe, and looked over the two companions who had been sc.r.a.pping.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Which is Jeffries 63]
"He is Jeffries," said the visitor, "and I am Fitzsimmons, but I want to have another go at him, unless we leave it to arbitration," and the boy looked at the red-headed boy with blood in his eye, and at Uncle Ike with a look of no particular admiration.
"Well, what was the cause of the row?" said Uncle Ike, as he took a chair between the two boys, lit his pipe, and smiled as he saw the marks of combat on their persons.
"He said you used to be a drunkard, Uncle Ike, and had been to the Keeley cure, and I called him a liar, and then we mixed up."
"That"s about the size of it," said the other boy; "now, which was right?"
Uncle Ike smoked up and filled the room so it looked like camping out and cooking over a fire made of wet wood, and thought a long time, and looked very serious, and the red-headed boy could see they were in for a talk. Finally the old man said:
"Boys, you are both right and both wrong, and I"ll tell you all about it. I never was a drunkard, and never drank much, but I have been to the cure all the same. It was this way: I had a friend who was one of the best men that ever lived, only he got a habit of drinking too much, and no one seemed able to reason with him. He wouldn"t take advice from his own mother, his wife, or me, or anybody. He was just going to the devil on a gallop, and it was only a question of a year or two when he would die. I loved that man like a brother, but he would get mad the minute I spoke of his drinking, and I quit talking to him, though I wanted to save him. I have smoked dog-leg tobacco many a night till after midnight, trying to study a way to save the only man in the world that I ever actually loved, and I finally got it down fine. I began to act as though I was half drunk whenever I saw my friend, spilled whisky on my coat sleeves, and acted disreputable, and got a few good fellows to talk with him about what a confounded wreck I was getting to be; and he actually got to pitying me, and finally got disgusted with me; and one day he said to me that I was a disgrace, and was making more different kinds of a fool of myself than any drunkard he ever met. I got mad at him, and told him to attend to his own business and left him. Then the boys got to telling him that the only way to save me was to get me to go to a cure; and, do you know, that good fellow that I would have given the world to save, came to me and urged me to, take the cure; and at first I was indignant that he should interfere in my affairs, and finally he said he would go if I would. Then we struck a bargain, and went to Dwight, and took the medicine. The boys had told the doctors the story, and they only gave me one shot in the arm; but that came near killing me, because it almost broke me of using tobacco. Well, I remained there ten days, and, while they were pretending to cure me, they were curing my friend sure enough, putting the gold cure into his system with injections and drinks, while I didn"t get anything but ginger ale; and when we were discharged cured, I was the happiest man in the world, except my friend, who was happier. He was not only cured himself, and an honor to his family, but he thought he had saved me from a drunkard"s grave. That"s the story, boys, and now you get up and shake hands, and don"t fight any more over your Uncle Ike," and the old man patted them both on the head, and they shook hands and laughed at each other"s black eyes. As the red-headed boy showed his late antagonist to the door, he turned to his uncle and said:
"Uncle Ike, if you have ever held up a railroad train, or robbed a bank, or stolen horses, or done anything that would cause you to be arrested, I beg of you to tell me of it now, so if anybody abuses you in my presence I won"t get into a fight every time," and the boy put his arm around his Uncle Ike and hugged him, and added, "You were a thoroughbred when you bilked that friend of yours to take the cure."
"Oh, I don"t know," said Uncle Ike, "that reminds me of the battle of Chickamauga. When Bragg"s forces were----"
"Fire! Fire!" yelled the red-headed boy, and he rushed out of doors and left the old man talking to his pipe.
"Has that battle of Chickamauga been fought out to a finish yet?" said the red-headed boy, as he stuck his head in the door after the imaginary fire alarm that he had created to escape Uncle Ike"s war history, "for if it is ended I want to come in, but I can"t stand gore, and your war stories are so full of blood that you must have had to swim in it."
"Oh, you don"t know a hero when you see one," said the old man, as he straightened up and saluted the boy in a military manner, only that he used his left hand instead of his right hand.
"Well, I"ll tell you," said the boy as he got inside the room and stood with his hand on the door k.n.o.b, ready to escape if Uncle Ike got excited. "You old veterans make me sick. I have heard nothing for fifteen years except war talk, old war talk, back number war talk, about how you old fellows put down the rebellion, and suffered, and fought, and all that rot. Why, I heard a bugler who enlisted for the Spanish war, and who only got as far as Jacksonville, say that you fellows that put down the rebellion in 1864 were just a mob, and that you didn"t have any fighting, and that the Southern people were only fooling you, and that you didn"t suffer like the Spanish war heroes did, and that you just had a picnic from start to finish. The bugler said he wouldn"t ask any better fun than to fight the way you fellows did, when you had all you wanted to eat, good beds to sleep on, and servants to carry your guns, and cook for you. The bugler said you fellows all get pensions just for making an excursion through the Southern resorts, while the heroes of the Spanish war, who fought a foreign country to a standstill, and went without food, and got malaria, are without pensions, and just existing on the record they made fighting for their country----" and the boy stopped nagging the old man when he noticed that Uncle Ike was turning blue in the face, and choking to keep down his wrath.
"Where is this heroic bugler of the Spanish war?" said Uncle Ike, trying to be calm, but actually frothing at the mouth. "Bring him here, and let me hear him say these things, condemn him, and I will take him across my knee and I will knock the wind out of him, so that he can never gather enough in his carca.s.s to blow another bugle. Why, confound him, he is a liar. The war of the rebellion was a war, not a country schuetzenfest, with a chance to go home every night and sleep in a feather bed, and get a Turkish bath. The whole Spanish war, except what the navy did, was not equal to an outpost skirmish in "63. Of course, the rough riders and the weary walkers did a nice job going up San Juan hill, but we had a thousand such fights in the rebellion. After that skirmish there was nothing done by the army at Santiago, but to sit down in the mud and wait for the Spaniards to eat their last cracker, and kill their last dog and eat it, and then surrender. Ask that bugler to tell you where he found, in his glorious career as a wind instrument in the Spanish war, any Grants, Shermans, Sheridans, Logans, Pap Thomases, McClellans, Kilpatricks, Custers, McPhersons, Braggs, and hundreds of such heroes.
What has the bugler got to show for his war? Shafter! And Alger! And all of them quarreling over the little bone of victory that was not big enough for a meal for our old generals of the war of the rebellion. And he talks about our pensions, the young kid. He probably wears corsets.
Why, we didn"t get pensions until we got so old we couldn"t get up alone. His gang of Jacksonville heroes will probably get pensions when they are old enough. Bring that bugler in here some day, and don"t let him know what he is going to run up against, and I will give you a dollar, and I will let you see me dust the carpet with him," and the old man sat down and fanned himself, while the boy looked scared for fear Uncle Ike was going to have a fit. "Why, at the battle of Pea Ridge, when a minie ball struck me, when I was on the firing line----"
"Keno," said the red-headed boy, as he went through the window head first, and over the picket fence on his stomach, and disappeared down the street.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Say, Uncle Ike, don"t you think the Fourth of July is sort of played out?" asked the red-headed boy, as he came to Uncle Ike"s room on the morning of the 5th, by appointment, to demonstrate to the old man that he had not been quite killed by the celebration of the great day. "It seems to me we don"t have half as many accidents and fires as we used to," and the boy counted off to the uncle the dozen injuries he had received by burns, and dug into his eye with a soiled handkerchief in search of some gravel from a torpedo.
"Oh, I don"t know," said Uncle Ike, as he lighted the old pipe and began to look over the boy"s injuries. "The Fourth is carrying on business at the old stand, apparently. Your injuries are in the right places, on the left hand, princ.i.p.ally, and the gravel is in the left eye. That is right. Always keep the right hand and the right eye in good shape, so you can sight a gun and pull a trigger, either in shooting ducks or Filipinos. You see, our country is growing, and we are celebrating the Fourth from Alaska to Porto Rico, and from London to Luzon, so we can"t celebrate so very much in any one place. I expect by another Fourth Queen Victoria will be yelling for the glorious Fourth, Emperor William will be touching off dynamite firecrackers, Russia will be eating Roman candies, and Aguinaldo will be touching off n.i.g.g.e.r-chasers and drinking red lemonade. This is a great country, boy, and don"t you forget it."
"Well, you may be right," said the boy, as he poured some witch-hazel on a rag around his thumb, "but it looks to me as though the troops in the Philippines will be climbing aboard transports protected by the fleet, with Aguinaldo slaughtering the boys in the hospitals and looting Manila, if the President does not get a move onto himself and send another army out there to be victorious some more. The way it is now, we shall not have troops enough there to bury the dead. The boys have been debating at school the Philippine question, and it was decided unanimously that the President is up against a tough proposition, and if he does not stop looking at the political side of that war and send troops enough to eat up those shirtless soldiers, who can live on six grains of rice and two grains of quinine a day, we are going to be whipped out of our boots. That"s what us boys think."
"Well, you boys don"t want to think too much, or you are liable to have brain fever," said the old man, as he realized that there was mutiny brewing among the school children. "What you fellows want the President to do? Haven"t we whipped the negroes everywhere, and taken village after village, and burned them, and--and--chased them--and----"
"Sure!" said the boy, as he saw that his uncle was at a loss to defend the policy of his government. "We have had regular foot races with them, and burned the huts of the helpless, and taken villages, and then didn"t have troops to hold them, and when we went out of a village on one street, the n.i.g.g.e.rs came in on another, and shot into our pants. We swim rivers and take towns with as brave work as ever was done, and become so exhausted we have to lay down in the mud and have a fit, and the n.i.g.g.e.rs climb trees like monkeys, eat cocoanuts and chatter at us. Say, Uncle Ike, do you know us boys are getting tired of this business, and we are getting up a pet.i.tion to the President to get a trained nurse to put Alger to sleep and run the war department herself."
[Ill.u.s.tration: We are going to have the pet.i.tion 071]
"We are going to have the pet.i.tion signed by seven million American boys.
Why, if those n.i.g.g.e.rs could go off in the woods and shoot at a mark for a week, and get so they could hit anything, our boys would all be dead in a month. The trouble is the n.i.g.g.e.rs just pull up a gun and touch it off like a girl does a firecracker. She lights the tip end of the tail of a firecracker, and throws it, and you forget all about it, and when her firecracker has ceased to interest you, and you don"t know where it is, it goes off in your coat collar, or down the waistband of your pants. A Filipino shoots the way a trained monkey touches off a syphon of seltzer water. He knows it will squirt if he touches the thumbpiece, but it is as liable to hit him in the face, or wet his feet as anything.
Some day those n.i.g.g.e.rs will learn how to shoot, and when Funston attempts to swim a river he will get a bullet through the head, and Lawton and MacArthur, who stand up in plain sight and let them practice will wish they hadn"t. We boys have decided to support the President until he conquers those people, if that is what he is trying to do, but, by gosh, if he does not wake up and quit looking pleasant, and seeming to hope that Filipino shower is going to blow over, we feel that he will wake up some morning and find that a n.i.g.g.e.r tornado has struck his brave boys at Manila, and they will be in the cyclone cellars waiting for somebody to come and dig them out. Don"t you think so, Uncle Ike?"
"I say, boy," said Uncle Ike, as he lighted up the pipe, after letting it go out while listening to the war talk of the excited boy, "do you think you could arrange your affairs so as to leave here by tomorrow evening and take the limited for Washington? Would you accept the vacancy in the office of secretary of war? I know this offer comes sudden to you, and that you will have no time to consult your debating society as to whether you ought to accept the position, but when you reflect that the country is in a critical situation, and needs a man of blood and iron to steer the craft through among the rocks, I feel that you cannot refuse. The ideas you express are so near like those that General Jackson would express if he were alive, that I feel the country would be blessed if you were in a position to brace up the President.
Now go wash your face, and I will wire the President that you will be there day after tomorrow morning. But if you go there thinking, as many people seem to think, that the President"s backbone is made of banana pulp, and that he is not alive to the situation, you will make a mistake. There are chumps like you all over this country that wonder why they have not been selected to run this country, who think the commander-in-chief is running ward politics instead of the affairs of the country. Of course, a President gets under obligations to different elements in a campaign, and finds it necessary to surround himself with a cabinet, a few members of which are not worth powder to blow them up, but if they were all weak and vicious on the make, and political ciphers, and the President himself is all right, the country will not go very far wrong. What you boys want to do is to debate less on questions you do not understand, and saw more wood. Let the grown people run things a while longer, and you boys prepare to take the burden a quarter of a century hence," and the old man got up and put his arm around the boy and felt of his head to see if he could find any soft spot.