I explained further that I should require him to do his duty as they did theirs.
“You have managed to make for yourself,” I said, “the reputation of a coward. You have now one last chance to redeem yourself. You must do that, or you must die.”
The sharp-shooters were, in the meantime, picking at us most uncomfortably as we sat there. My experience as an old soldier strongly suggested to me that we ought to move. The position was of that kind that military men call untenable. Nevertheless, I thought it best to keep Si Tucker there a minute longer, for purposes of observation, if nothing else.
“At our pits,” I said, “we have one uniform rule of procedure. When a bombardment begins, the men go to their guns. I take my stand on top of the magazine mound to watch the enemy’s fire and direct our own. If I see that a mortar shell is about to fall into one of the gun pits, I call out the pit number, and the men run into the bomb-proof until the explosion is over. No man ever goes into a bomb-proof till this order is given. You must do as the rest do. If you run to a bomb-proof before I have given the order, it will be my imperative duty to shoot you then and there; and I shall certainly discharge that duty. Do you fully understand that, Si?”
He thought he did, and as the sharp-shooters were by this time becoming pestilently personal in their attentions, we resumed our walk.
Half an hour after our arrival at Fort Lamkin, a bombardment began.
I didn’t want to shoot that boy. I distinctly preferred to make a soldier rather than a “stiff” out of him. So, instead of taking my customary stand on the mound of earth over the magazine, I ordered Joe to that post, and placed myself in the gun pit to which Si Tucker had been assigned, taking care to stand between him and the mouth of the bomb-proof. I spoke to him as I passed.
“Remember what I told you. If you forget, it is instant death.”
He remembered. For nearly two hours he stood there quaking and quivering, but not daring to seek safety by retreat to a bomb-proof.
By the time that the outburst was over, Si Tucker had learned his first lesson in war. He had learned to realize that a man may endure a lot of very savage fire, and yet come out of it alive.