The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

ri icks eon HE higher ups were “after” E our good old blustering colonel. They wanted him to thread the labyrinth of native politics, and subdue the fanatical Moro tribesmen by diplo- macy—a thing that he protested could not be done. There was another count. He was an old Indian fighter, and he consist- ently refused to take up the new Ger- man school of scientific soldiering. He could mix a julep to tempt a Turk, and quote Tom Moore by the lineal yard, but he did not know “De Gallifet’’ from “ Die Vacht am Rhine,” and when they sent a soft- spoken exponent of the new era to suggest that he either get abreast of the times or apply to retire, he plied the lad with juleps and sent him back uncertain whether the old man had promised to brush up on the Germans or to give a German on the anniver- sary of the battle of Wounded Knee, though convinced that there had been some promise. This was at the very flood of the great unrest when Yolo was seething with Mohammedan intrigue, as India seethed before the mutiny. 651 Hugh Johnson It was ticklish business for the regi- ment, and after it had had one outpost massacred and seen three of its men cut up in the open market, outside the walled city, and in the midst of their armed comrades, it began to realize the dynamite charge it was sitting over. The colonel couldn’t understand it. If they had been Apaches who would get out and take the war-path, he would have gone out after them, and he would have brought them in. But-they weren’t. There was just the dark jungle, with its ugly menace of skulking murderers—nothing tangible, nothing above board, only the silent danger, the everlasting threat. After the third outrage the colonel grew frantic. He rounded up half a hundred dattos and priests of the Prophet and read them the riot act— said that he held them accountable for juramentados running amuck; said he’d hang them to their own roof-trees if it happened again. Then wasn’t there a_ hullabaloo! The murderers were madmen, the dattos said, touched by the finger of Allah, and no one must be held respon- COMicdoo S CO@