The Argosy, Vol. 76, No. 3 — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

652 sible. Also, the colonel was interfer- ing with their religion, a thing the Americans had promised not to do. They complained to Manila, and the old man received an official douche of very cold water. He was expected to oppose intrigue with intrigue— to conquer without fighting—and he wouldn’t do it. He did nothing. Conditions got worse, and the higher ups sent that scintillating corypheus of all that is new and scientific in the military art, Captain Frederick Fancher, late of the general staff, to take a troop under the colonel, and, I fear, to make confiden- tial and unofficial reports, so that it might be known just when to relieve the old man, which relief would leave Fancher in command by virtue of seniority—we had no majors. The colonel guessed this mission at once, and the colonel was as frank as a barber-pole. He asked Fancher out- right, and Fancher, who hadn’t ex- pected that, but who could not dis- semble, told him. “ All very well,” roared the colonel. “Your father and I were comrades for twenty years, and he died at Las Guasimas with his hand in mine and a charge concerning you on his lips. I’ve known you since the days you played ride-a-cock-horse on my knee, and I have nothing to say against your motives—but I do say, darn a school that could so pervert the boy you were.” That is how Fancher started. Of course we hated him. We could see nothing good in him. As the days went by we grew colder, and at last he was not our comrade at all. He was a stranger and an enemy in our camp. But he was something of a fighter 1imself. That didn’t deter him. He went straight ahead, doing what he fhought was right. But the feeling strengthened, and at last our respect for his family was all that saved him, from Coventry. Fancher had a little six-year-old elf 9f an acorn-faced, tow-headed son. THE ARGOSY. He was small for his age, was Buzzy Fancher, with a pink and white face that no sun could brown, in which his drooping red mouth, and his china- blue eyes made three fascinated O’s of wonder at the perfectly delightful world about him. He was simply a miniature of his mother in face and mind and fashion, for hers was one of those rare souls that retain the simplicity and the open- hearted admiration of childhood. Be- tween the two was a bond of perfect understanding, and that strange touch of spirit across space, naturally pres- ent in the mystery of motherhood, but so real between Daisy Fancher and her boy that she could—to the amazement of other mothers in that nerve-racking station—allow Buzzy the limits of the walled city and remain tranquil. ’ Buzzy’s particular crony was old Conroy of “K” Troop, the colonel’s orderly. No one could tell better In- dian stories than Conroy, because he had lived the stories at first hand. The little boy haunted the stable, and there in the grain-room it was: “Conroy, uff you don’t mind, let’s hear about the time my. gran’daddy went into Chief Joseph’s camp in the Java beds.” Which tale began: “Tt was after the fust day’s scrap, an’ the redskins got twenty outa fifty good men in K Troop, when the colo- nel called Gran’daddy Fancher in. “* Captain,’ s’e, ‘captain, I want you to pick the bravest solger in the bloody regiment,’ s’e. ‘ You know the one I mean—a fine, han’some young solger wot can ride like a Sioux an’ shoot like a ’Pache, an’ wot ain’t afraid of nothin’ that moves! in earth, air, or water.” Buzzy’s eyes were always bulging by this time, but he managed to ask breathlessly: “And gran’daddy picked you—” | “'W’y, I was there; wasn't I, Buzzy?” &¢ Ye-es.”’ “Very well, then.” It was concerning Conroy that Fan- cher’s first serious clash with the colo- COMicdoo S CO@