Adventure, June 1911 — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

210 witat his blistered finger and opened the breech to let the air through the barrel more freely. “Thirty rounds and you could boil coffee on ’em!’’ he complained to the drab man. The latter nodded agreeably and offered Jenks : a, cigarette from a leather case. Jenks took it in*his big, brown, blunt-nailed fin- ' gers and looked at it critically. “Tryin’ to get a real smoke out of a cigarette, he averred, “is like tryin’ to plow a forty-acre field with a penknife!”’ The newspaper man laughed and scratched a match on the sole of his boot. “You come off a farm?” he asked casually. Jenks stared at the end of his glowing cigarette and nddded soberly several times. “And God knows why!” he added seri- ously. “Maybe you came because of the same reason that drove me,” suggested the jour- nalist. ‘‘I wanted to see what this business was like,” The wagging of Jenks’ head was a de- cided: negative. “Nope,” hegsaid, “I ain’t ,got no such sized curiosity. I got cured o’ that when I was a kid. I wanted to see just how hard a cow could kick! I found out all right, and I can’t say I was any better off for knowin.’ Nope, I didn’t care none what war was like. I didn’t think it was goin’ to be fun. I just sort of thought I ought to go. Dunno why, ’zactly. Old Man White come round and talked to a lot of us fellers down at the corners ’bout our duty. ‘You oughter go,’ he says. ‘It’s your country callin’ ye, the place that give birth to ye, the land of yer fathers! It’s yer duty!” Jenks paused to snap the butt of his cigarette at the stalk of a milkweed. “Now me an’ the U-nited States ain’t never got very close together,” he con- tinued. “TI allus felt that if either me or the country died overnight we wouldn’t notice it none if nobody told us. But Old Man White kind o’ set me to thinkin’. I never took no interest in politics; never went out to vote—didn’t even enroll. the U-nited States meant to me was an eagle on the few dollars that come my way. Old Man White used to tell me I ought to be ashamed of myself. Said I wa’n’t no citizen. Maybe he was right. I was keepin’ my woman an’ the kids fed an’ runnin’ my farm, but that’s ’bout as far as my bein’ a citizen did go, I guess.” All Adventure Jenks was interrupted again by the clat- ter of a short-lived fusillade along another portion of the thin skirmish-line, hidden by a twist of the ridge. He raised his eyes from the ground to watch the distant passage of. an officer’s patrol of cavalrymen in wide, flapping hats. The correspondent held out the leather case again, and Jenks selected another cigarette less critically. ‘““They’re so durned. small,” he said, as though to apologize for smoking another, “that a feller has to smoke another to re- ‘member what the last one tasted like! Yes, I guess Old Man White drove me off here. I got to thinkin’ ’bout things a whole lot, and I just made up my mind that maybe the debt was on my side. I hadn’t done very much for the country, and I judged from what I see in the papers that about a hundred thousand chaps about my size an’ age would come in pretty handy, so I sent Millie an’ the kids to her folks an’ just come along.” He stopped abruptly, as though having reached a natural conclusion, and sat star- ing out at the hot ridge opposite, its tum- bling, rugged rocks climbing high above the level on which he sat. His companion looked: at him narrowly and shifted his position on the warm earth. - “Glad you came?” the cone peddoul asked lazily, chewing his words as he shifted the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth with his tongue so that he might not have to move his hands, “No,” answered Jenks with surprising alacrity, “T ain’t! I hadn’t ought to have done it. Three months, now, I’ve grubbed around this landscape, shootin’ at people I ain’t got nothin’ against, and gettin’ shot at by them. Now there’s that chap a few minutes back. I was layin’ for him same’s I’ve laid for woodchucks. I was plain mad at him for no reason ’t all ’cept I couldn’t hit him—an’ now he’s doubled up, and maybe he’s got-a wife an’ kids like mine. But that ain’t the point! I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ against this here war. Maybe it’s all right; I dunno nothin’ about it. But I ain’t no business here; I ought ’a’ stayed to home! Three months gone, an’ my farm’s goin’ to rack. When I get back I'll hev t’ borrow money to get things squared up, an’ it’ll take me the Lord’s own while to pay it up. “An’ I ain't no real USE. pare! T ain't doin’ half as much good -potterin’ round Go DOOKS EO ANUC