“That’s the whole secret, son—not to know when you’re licked. Maybe a man can put up as pretty a fight, in his own way, right here at home, as if he were riding a white horse and waving a thirty-dollar sword. I’m going to try to, anyhow.”
“If it’s good enough for you, Dad,” sighed the boy, “I guess it’s good enough for me. We’ll make a try at it, anyhow.”
“That’s the hero-talk,” approved his grandfather. “We’ll be General Jimmie and Colonel Dad. And each evening we’ll have a military conference, and report to each other the day’s victories and reverses. Let’s see if we can’t make it a line of victories as unbroken as Uncle Zach’s, down in Mexico. The crowd won’t be cheering us; but something clear down inside of us will. Shall we try?”
The boy drew himself up at attention.
“I approve your plan, colonel!” he rasped out, military fashion. “It is worthy of the man who helped Uncle Zach lick the greasers. We’re going to win out on this campaign. Take your post, sir, and report to me this evening.”
CHAPTER VII
LEFT BEHIND
MAIN STREET was alive with bunting and with multicolored dresses. Across the thoroughfare hung banners. Flags were draped from window to window. The sidewalks were jammed with people whose attire was gay and whose faces were sad.
From the square at last came the fife-and-drum notes of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” The Ideala Cornet Band took up the strains—half a beat behind. The waiting sidewalk crowds massed to the curb; and Ideala’s twelve policemen were sore put to it to maintain the lines.
Down Main Street, from the square, toward the river wharf where they were to embark for Columbus, marched Ideala’s two recruit companies. The uniforms were new—glaringly new—and as ill fitting as cheap government contract’s ingenuity could make them.
One hundred and ninety-four men, their muskets shouldered, their backs galled by the unwonted chafing of new haversacks, their feet already flinching from the harsh caress of loose army shoes, strode eastward between the double lines of spectators.