“Three generations of them,” he mumbled, half-aloud. “Fighters all. And I don’t know how many generations before that. One in every one of our wars. And I was the fourth. I guess it meant more to me than to any of them.
“‘Dishonorably dismissed from the service you have disgraced’—‘Herewith degraded from rank,’” he added, another sentence of the fearful condemnation flashing into his thoughts.
He did not know how long he had traveled. He knew—some sixth sense told him—he was moving in the right direction for home.
Home! The lively little Ohio town through whose main street he had ridden so proudly, at the head of his company, not two years before! What would his return be like?
The fancy stung Brinton to new anguish. He halted; and was minded to shift his course for some refuge where his name and his disgrace would not be known; where he could begin all over again.
Then came the thought—not of his stay-at-home son, but of the grandson he had never seen. And into the man’s burning hot eyes came a mist of unbidden tears.
His baby grandson—and Brinton plodded along his former course.
He expected little sympathy from his severely correct if unwarlike son; the worthy youth who had so smugly refused to join his father in going to the front on the plea that the business would suffer if both senior and junior partner were away for so long a time. But the grandson—
Brinton passed his hand over the unshaven stubble of his chin; and sought to gauge by its length the time his march had lasted. He seemed to have been tramping for an eternity on swollen and tender feet under a murderous hot sun. Yet for days he continued; once bartering his watch for another batch of tortillas.
At last nature gave out.