It was evident that Johnny had become soldierly timber, and it was not long before the captains vied with each other in coaxing him to apply for a transfer to their companies. Captain Harkins alone refrained from urging the boy to return to the ranks. He might simply have assigned him back to company duty, but as he remarked to the colonel, he felt that “Johnny belonged to the man who had made a soldier out of him.”
The major was not ignorant of the change in sentiment regarding his protegé. Desiring to be fair with him he said, “Johnny, some of the officers are beginning to think a little better of you than they used to. Captain Harkins is entitled to you, but seems to think you ought to have a chance to use your own discretion in the matter of going back to the ranks. Taking care of my horse and tent, and rolling bandages for me is possibly not so much to your liking as being a real, fighting soldier. We shall probably go to the front soon. The war isn’t over yet, and they can’t keep us in Florida forever, so we are likely to see some pretty hot times in Cuba. If you want to go back to the company just say the word, and back you shall go.”
Johnny stood at the door of the major’s tent for a moment looking at the gorgeous southern sky. When he turned toward his patron his eyes were wet.
“Did you think I’d do that, sir?”
And the major replied, “No, Johnny, I didn’t think you would.”
But the war did end very soon, and the pride of the Brigade, the —th Illinois,—athletes, every mother’s son of them,—did not get out of Florida and into Cuba until there was nothing remaining to be done save policing that fair and unfortunate island. As soon as orders came to leave for Cuba, Major Brice tendered his resignation, intending to return to civil life and resume his practice. Johnny was disconsolate. Police duty in Cuba was not an inviting prospect—he recalled that he never did like the policeman or his works, on principle. Chicago had no attraction for him. He had been born in the army. His previous existence, he said, “didn’t count.” He had begun life in the major’s tent, and when that tent came down there would be no longer home life for him. The major was deeply touched by his protegé’s devotion, and, quite alive to the fact that Johnny would be a pretty helpless member of any society but the army, interested the brigade commander, who had been assigned for duty in the Philippines, in his case.
Through the combined influence of the general and the major, the boy received his discharge, and was immediately reenlisted in the —th Montana, then preparing to start for Manila. The bluff old general said: “Everything’s over in Cuba, but I suspect that nothing’s begun in the Philippines; In my opinion, h—l’s brewing in Manila, and unless my experience in fighting Indians is worthless, I feel pretty safe in saying that those d—d brown-skinned fellows out yonder are going to give your Uncle Samuel a devil of a lot of trouble before we get through with ’em. Dewey didn’t do a thing to us, not to the Spaniards, when he took Manila. That Montana regiment is as liable to get into a mix up as any of ’em—they’re scrappers all right—and it’s just as well for that orderly of yours to get in on the ground floor. But, Major, will he fight?”
The major’s eyes twinkled as he replied, “Don’t worry yourself about Johnny, my dear General. He’ll give a good account of himself. He is a good soldier by profession, even though I could never cure him of profanity nor teach him what patriotism means. He regards fighting as a vocation, but believes in attending to it for all he is worth.”
As the general had said, trouble had not yet begun in the Philippines. It came soon enough, and Johnny got in on the ground floor with a vengeance. When the fighting finally began he was, to use his own vernacular, “on the spot,” which fact, as he jestingly remarked, gave him for the first time the privilege of enjoying “the luxury of more name than ‘Johnny’.” His comrades exclaimed, apropos of his new cognomen, “Holy smoke! how it fits.”
The —th Montana had its troubles out there in those tropic isles. Few realize what it means to plunge a raw volunteer regiment from a temperate climate into tropic wilds infested with a foe that recognizes no rule in warfare save implacable, relentless murder of the enemy, by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul. A foe that fights manfully and fairly, whether at long range or close quarters, is bad enough for “raw ones” to face, even though they be the best in the world—the which is stenographic for American boys.