She came down the aisle, looking red and white by turns, with all the people necking her way. Before I’d got time to explain why I did it, her mother got nervous, thinking there must be some trouble, and came trailing out after her. Then her kid sister couldn’t stand the strain, and followed suit.
That family reunion on the porch spoiled all the chance that I had to see Susie alone, because when they heard why I came, and how I was going to be Striped Rock’s hero, they were for giving me a Red Cross reception then and there. Only two hours more until train time, and the old lady had to rush me down to the house for lunch—and me with the rest of my life to eat in!
But I shook her and the kid sister at last, and got Susie alone. I tried to tell her—and I couldn’t. I could say that I was going to do my best and maybe die for my country, and there I stalled and balked, her looking the other way all pretty and pink, and giving me not a word either way to bless myself with. Says I finally:
“And if I come back, I suppose that you’ll be married, Susie?” and she says:
“No, I don’t think that I’ll be married when you come back; I don’t think that I’ll ever marry unless he’s a man that I can be proud of.”
Then she looked at me, her big eyes filling—her big eyes, coloured like the edge of the mountains after sunset. I’ve figured it out since that she was more than half proud of me already—me, in a clean, blue suit, and the buttons shiny; me, a ten-cent, camp volunteer. And then the old woman broke in with a bottle of Eilman’s Embrocation for use in camp.
Never another chance had I that side of the station. Of course, she kissed good-by, but that’s only politeness for soldiers. They all did that. So, although it was just like heaven, I knew that it didn’t mean anything particular from her, because her mother did it and her sister, and pretty darned near every other girl in Striped Rock, seeing that the news about having a real hero in town had spread.
Only, when we pulled away and I was leaning out of the window blowing kisses, being afraid to blow at Susie in special because I didn’t like to give myself away, she ran out of the crowd a ways and held up her little finger to show me something over the knuckle, and pulled her hand in quick as if nothing had happened. It was the play kid-ring that I gave her out of the grab-bag, to show that I was going to marry her when I grew up.
That was the last sight of Striped Rock that I got—Susie waving at the station as far as I could see her. It made you feel queer to ride past the fences and the bunch-grass and the foot-hills getting grayey-green with sage-brush, and the mountains away off, all snowy on top, and know that chances were you’d never see them again grayey. And I won’t, I won’t—never again.
Muster at Denver, and the train, and away we went, packed like a herd around salt, and the towns just black, like a steer in fly-time, with people coming out to see us pass, and Red Cross lunches every time the train had to stop for water; next ’Frisco and Camp Merritt. The first time that I saw this town, gray all over like a sage-hill, made out of crazy bay-window houses with fancy-work down the front, I knew that something was going skewgee.