“Promotion is slow in the artillery; the only chance is a foreign war, and I don’t see any prospect of that. The Indian troubles in the Southwest give the cavalry plenty to do. Geronimo and the rest are making things lively, and whoever goes down there won’t be allowed to rust to death.”
“No,” smiled his friend, “it will be a poisoned arrow or a rifle bullet or scalping knife. Then the climate is something like that of hades.”
“All that may be as you say, but after an experience of a few years there a fellow will be able to appreciate the soft snaps elsewhere.”
“But some of those posts in Arizona and New Mexico,” persisted his classmate, “are enough to drive a fellow wild. A cousin of mine, now a captain of cavalry, told me that the years he spent at Fort Grant were such that he would not go through again for the biggest fortune in the world. The hot sun, the daily parade and grind, the same old round of duty day in and out for weeks, months and years in that confounded climate were enough to drive a person crazy.”
“Didn’t he have any campaigning?”
“Not a bit of it; everything was as calm as a mill pond.”
“That’s the difference; it would be the last place I would go, if it were not for the prospect of something in the way of fighting. I have been studying matters and making inquiries, and there is reason to hope that things will hum in the Southwest before you and I have time to grow our mustaches.”
“Well, Decker, you are welcome to it; give me the artillery.”
So it came about in the natural order of things that Second-Lieutenant Decker was assigned to Fort Reno in Arizona. Full of ambition and hope, he bade his friends good-by and made the long journey to that section, his spirits unaffected by the flaming weather and the desolate appearance of the half civilized region through which he was compelled to pass, a portion by stage and much by horseback.