First, I was for writing to Susie and telling her all about it, but I just couldn’t. I put it off, saying that I’d go back and tell her all about it myself, and I went to mooning around camp like a ghost. And then along came a copy of the Leader that settled it. All about the big feed that they gave the regiment at Honolulu, and how Admeh Drake had responded for the men of Company N. Captain Fletcher was getting in his deadly work. It said that I was justly popular, and my engagement to one of Striped Rock’s fairest daughters was whispered. It treated me like I was running for Congress on the Leader ticket. I began to wonder if I saw a way to Susie.
After they got to the Islands, I dragged the cascos through the surf and rescued a squad of Company N from drowning. All that was in the Leader. The night they scrapped in front of the town, I stood and cheered on a detachment when they faltered before the foe. After they got to Manila and did nothing but lay around, Captain Fletcher had me rescue a man from a fire.
After that, I began to get next to myself, knowing that I’d have done best to stop it at the start and go straight back to Striped Rock. I’d been a darned fool to put it off so long. Now I could never go back and face the joshing. I wrote the captain a letter about it, and he never paid any attention. Instead of that, he sent me back a bunch of her letters. Knowing how things stood, what I was doing and what she thought that I was doing, I could hardly open them. They made me feel as small as buckshot in a barrel. They hinted about being proud of me—and prayed that I’d come home alive—and I knew, in spite of being ashamed, that I had her.
Next thing, the natives got off the reservation. There’s where Captain Fletcher went clean, plumb loco. One day the Leader came out with circus scare-heads about the “Hero of Pago Bridge.” They printed my biography and a picture of me. It didn’t look like me, but it was a nice picture. I’d broke through a withering fire and carried a Kansas lieutenant across to safety after he had been helplessly wounded—and never turned a hair.
What was I doing all that time? Laying pretty low. I was afraid to leave town because I wanted to keep an eye on the Leader, which was coming regularly to the Public Library, and afraid to get a regular daylight job for fear that somebody from Striped Rock would come along and see me. I was nearly busted when I ran onto old Doctor Morgan, the Indian Root Specialist. He gave me a job as his outside man. All I had to do was to hang around watching for sick-looking strays from the country. You know the lay. I told them how Doctor Morgan had cured me of the same lingering disease and how I was a well man, thanks to his secrets, babying them along kind of easy until they went to the doctor. He did the rest, and I collected twenty-five per cent.
Striped Rock acted as though I was the mayor. They named their new boulevard Drake Way. Come Fourth of July, they set me up alongside of Lincoln. They talked about running me for the Assembly. There came another bunch of her letters—I had answered the last lot that Cap sent, mailed them all the way to the Philippines, to be forwarded just to gain time—they were heaven mixed with hell.
The regiment was coming back in a week, and then I began to think it over and cuss myself harder than ever for a natural-born fool that didn’t have enough sand to throw up the game at first and go home and face the music. It was too late then, and I couldn’t go back to Striped Rock and take all the glory that was coming to me and face Susie knowing that I was a fake. Besides, I knew the boys from Range City were liable to go up to Striped Rock any time and tell the whole story, and it froze me, inside. I didn’t know what to do, but the first thing that I had on hand was to catch them at the dock and tell them all that it meant to me and get them to promise that they wouldn’t tell. Whether I’d dare to go back and try to get Susie, I couldn’t even think.
I threw up my job with the doctor and went down to the transport office to see just when they expected the boys. Little house on the dock; little hole rooms that you could scarcely turn around in. They said that the boss transport man was in the next room. I walked in.
There—face to face—was Susie—Susie, pinky and whitey, her eyes just growing and growing. I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t run, I could just hang tight onto the door-knob and study the floor. The transport man went out and left us alone.
And she said: