“General Chick,” she said, “is dead.”
He had died in the full belief that the great ambition of his life had been fulfilled, that he was a soldier of the Guard, and that, in the embarkation for the great war, he had not been left behind. And so his death came joyfully. He had, indeed, gone “across the sea,” not to fight under any earthly flag, but to march and sing forever under the stainless banner of the Lord of Hosts.
In August following the annual July encampment the regiment to which Company E belonged was mobilized at Mount Gretna, along with other National Guard units, was mustered into the federal service, and, in October, was sent to the Mexican border. It went into camp at Camp Stewart, seven miles north of El Paso, and remained there during the entire winter. The regiment saw no active service; it was not even called upon to patrol the border.
Not that the men did not have their experiences, their pleasures and their hardships. But, what with the daily drill, the camp entertainments, the trips to the city, and the letters and parcels from home, life on the sand plains of the Rio Grande valley did not become especially monotonous. The troops would have preferred to march and fight; they would have been delighted to be with Pershing’s regulars in the heart of Mexico, but there was little murmuring and there were few complaints. They were soldiers in the service of the federal government; they were being well cared for, it was their business to obey orders and be content.
This was especially true of the men of Company E. They spent no time nor wasted any breath in useless murmuring. They performed their duties as soldiers with skill and alacrity. Theirs became the crack company in the regiment. Lieutenant McCormack, their commander, had not only their respect but their affection. From the day of the riot his place in their minds and hearts was fixed and unalterable. As for Barriscale, the old prejudice against him had worn gradually away until he had become in fact as well as in theory a comrade. As a private in the ranks he performed every duty with painstaking care and fidelity. The old sense of self-importance had disappeared; he was simply Private Barriscale, in the service of his country, no better nor worse than the men who surrounded him. As Brownell put it one day, he had become “really human.”
The breach between him and McCormack had, apparently, not yet been fully closed. It is certain that there was no familiar companionship between them. Barriscale had made formal apology to the first lieutenant, his apology had been accepted and his offense kindly minimized, and there the matter had ended. They were soldiers and gentlemen in their relations with each other, that was all. Whether a bit of the old resentment still dwelt in the heart of each of them, or whether it was a natural diffidence and hesitancy that prevented them from approaching one another on what was of necessity a delicate subject, perhaps neither of them could have told.
But an incident happened one day that in its consequences brought about a change in the relations between the two men.
Plodding back from the city of El Paso to camp in the afternoon of a December day, Barriscale was caught in one of the violent sandstorms characteristic of that region. Swept, buffeted, blinded, drenched with the terrific downpour of rain, he reached the camp battered, breathless and exhausted. After three days of partial disability he developed a full case of pneumonia. The disease was not of the most severe type, however, and at no time was he considered to be desperately or even critically ill.
But Lieutenant McCormack, the company commander, deemed it advisable to telegraph to Barriscale’s father the fact of his son’s illness.