The Hero Of Company G

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Title:     The Hero Of Company G
Author: Octave Thanet [More Titles by Thanet]

The flies and the sun! The sun and the flies! The two tents of the division ward in the hospital had been pitched end to end, thus turning them into one. The sun filtered through the cracks of the canvas; it poured in a broad, dancing, shifting column of gold through the open tent flap. The air was hot, not an endurable, dry heat, but a moist, sticky heat which drew an intolerable mist from the water standing in pools beneath the plain flooring of the tents. The flies had no barrier and they entered in noisome companies, to swarm, heavily buzzing, about the medicine spoons and the tumblers and crawl over the nostrils and mouths of the typhoid patients, too weak and stupid to brush them away. The other sick men would lift their feeble skeletons of hands against them; and a tall soldier who walked between the cots and was the sole nurse on duty, waved his palm-leaf fan at them and swore softly under his breath.

There were ten serious cases in the ward. The soldier was a raw man detailed only the day before and not used to nursing, being a blacksmith in civil life. An overworked surgeon had instructed him in the use of a thermometer; but he was much more confident of the success of his lesson than the instructed one. There was one case in particular bothered the nurse; he returned to the cot where this case lay more than once and eyed the gaunt figure which lay so quietly under the sheet, with a dejected attention. Once he laid his hand shyly on the sick man's forehead, and when he took it away he strangled a desperate sort of sigh. Then he walked to the end of the tent and stared dismally down the camp street, flooded with sunshine. "Well, thank God, there's Spruce!" said he. A man in a khaki uniform, carrying a bale of mosquito netting, was walking smartly through the glare. He stopped at the tent. "How goes it?" said he, cheerfully but in the lowest of tones. He was a short man and thin, but with a good color under his tan, and teeth gleaming at his smile, white as milk.

"Why, I'm kinder worried about Maxwell--"

Before he could finish his sentence, Spruce was at Maxwell's cot. His face changed. "Git the hot-water bottle quick's you can!" he muttered, "and git the screen--the one I made!" As he spoke he was dropping brandy into the corners of Maxwell's mouth. The brandy trickled down the chin.

"He looks awful quiet, don't he?" whispered the nurse with an awestruck glance.

"You git them things!" said Spruce, and he sent a flash of his eyes after his words, whereat the soldier shuffled out of the tent, returning first with the screen and last with the bottles. Then he watched Spruce's rapid but silent movements. At last he ventured to breathe: "Say, he ain't--he ain't--he ain't--?"

Spruce nodded. The other turned a kind of groan into a cough and wiped his face. Awkwardly he helped Spruce wherever there was the chance for a hand; and in a little while his bungling agitation reached the worker, who straightened up and turned a grim face on him.

"Was it me?" he whispered then. "For God's sake, Spruce--I did everything the doctor told me, nigh's I could remember. I didn't disturb him, 'cause he 'peared to be asleep. I--I never saw a man die before!"

"It ain't no fault of yours," said Spruce in the same low whisper. "I'm sorry for you. Did you give him the ice I got?"

"Yes, I did, Sergeant."

"And was there enough for Green and Dick Danvers?"

"Yes, I kept it rolled up in flannel and newspapers. Say, I got a little more, Sergeant."

"How?"

"The doctors or some fellers had a tub of lemonade outside, a little bit further down. I chipped off a bit."

Spruce ground his teeth, but he made no comment. All he said was, "You go git Captain Hale and report. Tell the captain I got his folks' address. They'll want him sent home. They're rich folks and they were coming on; guess they're on the way now. Be quiet!"

The soldier was looking at the placid face. A sob choked him. "He said, 'Thank you,' every time I gave him anything," he gulped. "God! it's murder to put fools like me at nursing; and the country full of women that know how and want to come!"

"S-s-s! 'Tain't no good talking. You done your best. Go and report."

As the wretched soldier lumbered off, Spruce set his teeth on an ugly oath.

"I ought to have stayed, maybe," he thought, "but I've been doing with so little sleep, my head was feeling dirty queer; and the doctor sent me. Collapse, of course; temperature ran down to normal, and poor Tooley didn't notice, and him too weak to talk! Well, I hope I git the G boys through, that's all I ask!"

He went over to the next cot, where lay the nearest of the G boys, greeting him cheerily. "Hello, Dick?"

Dick was a handsome young specter, just beginning to turn the corner in a bad case of typhoid fever. His blue eyes lighted at Spruce's voice; and he sent a smile back at Spruce's smile. "Did you get some sleep?" said he. "What's that you have in your hand?"

"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, Dick," Spruce answered gently.

Dick drew a long, shivering 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 Dick, 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 brass 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 glasses 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 superstitions. 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 damned 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 assurance 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 hardships 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 fashion 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 embarrassing 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 lustily 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 worship 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 blustered 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 snatches 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 gratitude 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 passed 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, Dick?"

"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.

"Great, isn't it?" said Danvers. "I wish they'd waited two weeks and given us fellows a show, but I dare say there won't be any show by that time, the way they are after the dons at Santiago. Can't you get off now, to pack? But--you'll be sure to come back and say good-by, Chris!"

"I ain't off yet," said Spruce, "and I ain't too sure I will be. They're always gitting orders and making an everlasting hustle to pack up, and then unpacking. You go to sleep."

He was about to move away, but Danvers detained him, saying that he wanted to be turned; and as the soldier gently turned him, the boy got one of his hands and gave it a squeeze. He tried to say something, but was barely able to give Spruce a foolish smile. "Spruce, you're a soldier and a gentleman!" he stammered. He turned away his head to hide the tears in his eyes. But Spruce had seen them. Of course he made no sign, stepping away briskly, with a little pat on the lean shoulder.

He came back softly in a little while. He looked at Danvers, who was simulating sleep, with his dark lashes fallen over red eyelids, and he shook his head. During his absence he had found that the orders were no rumor. The regiment was going to Porto Rico sure enough. Spruce stood a moment, before he sat down by Danvers' side. But he barely was seated ere he was on his feet again, in a nervous irritation which none had ever seen in Spruce. He walked to the door of the tent and gazed, in the same attitude that the nurse had gazed, an hour earlier, at the low, white streets. Two great buzzards were flying low against the hot, cloudless vault of blue.

"Them boys'll be all broke up if I go!" said Spruce.

He frowned and fidgeted. In fact, he displayed every symptom of a man struggling with a fit of furious temper. What really was buffeting Spruce's soul was not, however, anger, it was the temptation of his life. Spruce had known few temptations; at least, he had recognized few. His morality was the lenient, rough-hewn article which satisfies a soldier's conscience. He had no squeamishness about the sins outside his limited category; he fell into them blithely and had no remorse when he remembered them, wherefore he preserved a certain incongruous innocence even in his vices, as has happened to many a man before. It is, perhaps, the moral nature's own defense; and keeps untouched and ever fresh little nooks and corners of a sinner's soul, into which the conscience may retreat and from which sometimes she sallies forth to conquer the abandoned territory. What Spruce called his duty he had done quite as a matter of course. He had not wavered any more than he wavered when the war bonnets were swooping down on his old captain's crumpled-up form. But this--this was different. The boys needed him. But if he stayed with the boys, there was the regiment and the company and the captain and the chance to distinguish himself and march back in glory to his town.

"I guess most folks would say I'd ought to follow the colors," he thought; "raw fellers like them, they need a steady, old hand. Well, they've got Bates." (Bates was an old regular, also, of less enterprising genius than Spruce, but an admirable soldier.) "I s'pose,"--grudgingly--"that Bates would keep 'em steady. And captain can fight, and the colonel was a West Point man, though he's been out of the army ten years, fooling with the millish. I guess they don't need me so awful bad this week; and these 'ere boys--Oh, damn it all!" He walked out of the tent. There was a little group about a wagon, at which he frowned and sighed. "Poor Maxwell!" he said. Then he tossed his head and stamped his foot. "Oh, damn it all!" said he again, between his teeth.

But his face and manner were back on their old level of good cheer when he bent over Danvers, half an hour later.

"Sa--y! Dick!"

"Yes, Chris. You come to say good-by! Well, it's good luck to you and God bless you from every boy here; and we know what you've done for us, and we won't forget it; and we'll all hurry up to get well and join you!" Danvers' voice was steady enough now and a pathetic effort at a cheer came from all the cots.

Spruce lifted his fist and shook it severely. "You shut up! All of you! You'll raise your temperature! I ain't going, neither. Be quiet. It's all settled. I've seen captain, and he wants me to stay and see you boys through; all the G boys. Then we're all going together. I tell you, keep quiet."

Dick Danvers was keeping quiet enough, for one; he was wiping away the tears that rolled down his cheeks.

The others in general shared his relief in greater or less measure; but they were too ill to think much about anything except themselves. In some way, however, every one in the tent showed to Spruce that he felt that a sacrifice had been made.

"I know you hated it like the devil, and just stayed for fear some of your precious chickens would come to mischief if they got from under your wings, you old hen!" was Dick's tribute; "and I know why you went into town yesterday when the boys went off. It is rough, Chris, and that's the truth!"

"Oh, it's only putting things off a bit; the captain told me so himself," said Spruce, very light and airy. But his heart was sore. The G boys understood; he wasn't so sure that all the others did understand. He caught his name on one gossiping group's lips, and was conscious that they gazed after him curiously. "Wonder if I'm scared that I stayed home, I guess," he muttered, being a sensitive fellow like all vain men. "I wish they'd see the things I've been in! Damn 'em!"

The men really were discussing his various Indian experiences and admiring him in their boyish hearts. But he was unluckily out of earshot. Unluckily, also, he was not out of earshot when a lieutenant of another regiment who had had a difference about a right of way with Spruce's captain and been worsted by Spruce's knowledge of military traditions freed his mind about that "bumptious regular who was so keen to fight, but (he noticed) was hanging on to his sick detail, now the regiment had a chance to see a few Spaniards." Spruce, in his properly buttoned uniform, his face red with the heat and something of the words, saluted rigorously and passed by, not a single muscle twitching. All the while he was thinking: "I'm glad he don't belong to my town! God! If anybody was to write them things about me!"

By this time the town was not only his town, but he was sure that he was a figure in the conversation of the place. Thus his anxiety of mind increased daily. He kept it from his charges, who grew stronger all the week, and the next; and he read such papers as drifted out to the camp and such shreds of news about the fighting with frantic interest. Danvers was able to sit up at the end of three weeks, but most of the boys were further along, walking about the wards, or gone back to their regiment.

"You get out, Chris," said Danvers, "we all know you're on your head with aching to go. We're all right; and I'm off home on furlough to-morrow; I'll get straightened out there quicker, and I'll be after you next week, see if I don't! I knew you'd be hanging on, so I won't give you the excuse. My sister's coming to-morrow."

"Really, Dick," gasped Spruce, "and you--you're sure the other boys are so's I can leave?"

"Well, you know there are going to be some women from the Red Cross, last of the week--Oh, by the time we are all out of it, this will be a swell hospital, with all the luxuries! Spruce, go, and don't get hurt, or I'll murder you!"

Spruce giggled like a happy girl. He was on his way to put in his application to join his regiment the next day--after Dick Danvers' sister had arrived, when something happened. He did not exactly know what it was himself, until he felt the water on his forehead and tried to lift himself up from the sand, catching the arm of the surgeon-in-chief. "Sunstroke, doctor?" he whispered.

"Just fainted," the surgeon answered cheerfully, "you've been overdoing it in this heat. Be careful."

"Oh, it's nothing, sir," Spruce grinned back; "had it lots of times, only not so bad. All the boys git giddy heads--"

Somehow the ready words faltered off his tongue; the surgeon had been fumbling at his blouse, under the pretext of opening it for air, he was looking in a queer, intent way at Spruce's chest.

Of a sudden the eyes of doctor and soldier, who had been nurse, met and challenged each other. There was a dumb terror in the soldier's eyes, a grave pity in the surgeon's. "I seen them spots yesterday," said Spruce, slowly, in a toneless voice, "but I wouldn't believe they was typhoid spots, nor they ain't!"

"You get inside and get a drink, Spruce, and go to bed," said the doctor. "Of course, I'm not certain, but as good a nurse as you knows that it isn't safe to try to bluff typhoid fever."

By this time Spruce was on his feet, able to salute with his reply: "That's all right, Major, but--I got to keep up till Danvers gits off with his folks, or he'd be kicking and want to stay. Jest let me see him off, and I'll go straight to bed."

"No walking about, mind, though," said the doctor, not well pleased, yet knowing enough of the two men to perceive the point of the argument.

Spruce saw Danvers off, with a joke and a grin, and an awkward bow for Danvers' sister. Then he went back to the hospital and went to bed, having written his aunt's address on a prescription pad (one of his acquirements in his foraging trips) with a remarkably spelled request that his pay be sent her, and his other property be given his friend, R. E. Danvers, to divide among his friends, giving the captain first choice.

"Lots of folks die of typhoid fever," he remarked quite easily, "and it don't hurt to be ready. I feel like I was in for a bad time, and I ain't stuck on the nursing here a little bit."

Before the week was out he recognized as well as the doctors that he was a very sick man.

"If you'd only gone off with your regiment three weeks ago," the doctor growled one day, "you'd have missed this, Spruce."

"That's all right," said Spruce, "but some of the boys are home that wouldn't be, maybe. I guess it's all right. Only, you know captain and Danvers; I wish you'd write back to the old town and tell the committee I done my duty. I can't be a credit to the company, but I done my duty, though I expect there's folks in town may think I was malingering."

"Stop talking!" commanded the doctor. "Did you know the women are coming to-morrow; you are to have a nurse of your own here?"

"Time," said Spruce; "if my town had its way they'd been here long ago. Ever been in my town, Major?"

"No. Good-by, Spruce; keep quiet."

"It's the bulliest town in the country, and the prettiest. And when G company goes back--Oh, Lord, I won't be with 'em!"

The surgeon's hand on his shoulder prevented the movement which he would have made, and he apologized; "I didn't mean to do that! Moving's so bad. Tell you, I'd a time keeping the boys still; they would turn when they got a little off. Say, I got to talk, Major, something's broke loose in me and I got to talk. I don't want to, I just got to."

When the nurse came he was so light-headed as to have no control of his words, yet quite able to recognize her and welcome her with an apologetic politeness.

"I'd have had some lemonade for you if I'd been up myself, ma'am. We're glad to see you. All the G boys are convalescing; most of 'em's gone. We all come from the same city; it's an awful pretty town. I got a lot of friends there that maybe don't take it in why I'm here 'stead of with my regiment, with the old man. I got a good reason; only I can't remember it now."

* * * * *

The captain's father stood outside the telegraph office in Spruce's town. Beside him was the chairman of the relief committee.

"Too bad about that regular," said the chairman. "Spruce--isn't that his name? One of the boys telegraphed he couldn't live through the day. Better have him brought here for the funeral, I guess; he's been very faithful. Young Danvers wanted to go right down to Florida; but he had a relapse after he got home and he's flat on his back."

"I heard," said the captain's father; "I've just telegraphed, on my own responsibility, for them to send him here. It won't make any difference to him, poor fellow; but we owe it to him. I wish we could do something that would help him, but I don't see anything."

"We have told them to spare no expense, and he's got plenty of money. No, you have done everything. Well, good-by; remember me to the captain; we're all proud of him."

The captain's father thanked him with rather an absent air. "I wish we could do something for that fellow," he was thinking; "I don't suppose a message to him would--when a fellow's dying, messages are nonsense--it's a bit of sentiment--I don't care, I'll do it!" He turned and went back into the office.

* * * * *

"I am afraid there is not a chance," said the doctor; "too bad, he was a good fellow. Well, you can give him all the morphine he needs--and strychnine, though he's past strychnine, I fear; morphine's the one chance, and that's mighty little."

"He talked about wanting to see you," said the nurse. She had a sweet voice, plainly a lady's voice; and her slim figure, in the blue-striped gown and white surplice, had a lady's grace. Her face was not handsome, nor was it very young, but it had a touch of her voice's sweetness. The doctor found himself glad to look at her; and forgetting his patients in his interest in the nurse.

"Oh, yes,"--he roused himself--"I'll look 'round later; I suppose he is delirious?"

"Not so much that he does not recognize us. He talks all the time of his town, poor fellow, and seems to want to have them understand that he hasn't neglected his duty. He only once has spoken of any relations. It's all the town, and the captain and Danvers making it right there; and the boys going back--I suppose he has lived there all his life and--"

"Not a bit of it; Danvers told me he merely enlisted from there. But they are making a great time over him. Telegraphed to have his body sent there; and here's another telegram. See--"

"I'll let him see," said the nurse, taking it, "may I, Doctor?"

"Yes, but not the first part about sending him back; that's a little too previous."

The nurse's touch roused Spruce. "Dick," he murmured, "Dick, you tell the folks. I couldn't go with the regiment--you know why."

"They know why, too; here's a telegram from your captain's father: 'Tell Spruce he's the hero of Company G.'"

"Read it again!"

She read it. His hand tightened on hers. Her trained eyes were on his face.

"Ain't it the--the bulliest town! I wisht I'd enough money to go back; but you see my folks got to have my pay. But I wisht--"

Her eyes, not the nurse's now, but a woman's, sought the doctor's in a glance of question and appeal. He nodded.

Her sweet voice said: "And the town has telegraphed that no expense must be spared to cure you; but if you don't recover you are to go back to them."

Spruce drew a long, ecstatic sigh. "Oh--didn't I tell you? Ain't it the bulliest town!"

A minute later he murmured, "Thank you, Dick," and, still holding the nurse's hand, Spruce went to see his town.

[The end]
Octave Thanet's short story: Hero Of Company G

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