I didn't have no chance to come back till along sundown, but, my stars! even in that time there had been a change. Benny's mother had been getting in her deadly work, and the orderlies were bursting mad, not that any of them dared say anything outright or show it except in their faces, which were that long; for, you see, the contract surgeon had taken her side, and had backed her up. But they moved around like mules with their ears down, powerful unwilling, and yet scared to say a word. The hospital had been made a new place, with another tent up that had been laid away and forgotten (you wouldn't think it possible, but it was), and the sick and wounded had been sorted over and washed and made comfortable; and, where before there was no room to turn around, you could walk through wide lanes and wonder what had become of the crowd. She had peeked into the cooking, too, and had found out more things going wrong in five hours than the contract surgeon had in five months. Blest if there wasn't a court-martial laying for every one of the orderlies if they said "boo!" for the swine had been making away scandalous with butter and chocolate and beef—tea and canned table peaches and sparrow-grass and sardines, and all the like of that, belly-robbing the boys right and left perfectly awful.
It was a mighty good account of the contract surgeon that he took it all so well, and was willing to admit how badly he had been done. But he was a splendid young fellow, named Marcus, and what the old lady said, went! He was right sorry he couldn't put her on the strength of the battery, but the regulations kept women nurses at the base-hospitals, and anyway (for we broke everything them days, and there wasn't enough red-tape left to play cat-and-my- cradle with) Captain Howard hated the sight of a petticoat, and was dead set against women anywheres. I don't know what they had ever done to him, but I'm just saying it for a fack. But, however it was, Marcus said the old lady had to be kept out of sight, or else the captain would surely send her to the rear under arrest.
Now, this made it a pretty hard game for the old lady to play, and you can reckon how much dodging she had to do to keep out of the captain's sight. It was hard about her sleeping, too, for she had to do that where she could, not to speak of the pay she might have drawn and didn't, and which, sakes alive! she earned twenty times over. By and by everybody got onto it except the captain, but there wasn't such a skunk in the battery as to tell him, partly because of the joke, but, most of all, on account of the convalescents, who naturally thought a heap of her. Then it got whispered around that she was our mascot, and carried the luck of the battery; and it was certainly RE-markable how it began to change, getting fresh beef quite regular and maple syrup to burn, and nine kegs of Navy pickles by mistake.
You would have thought she was too old to stand it, for we was always on the move, and I have seen her sleeping on what was nothing else but mud, with the rain coming down tremenjous. But she was a tough old customer, and always came to time, outlasting men that could have tossed her in the air, or run with her a block and never taken breath. But, of course, it couldn't be kept up for ever—I mean about the captain—and, sure enough, one day he caught her riding on a gun-carriage, while he was passing along the line on a Filipino pony.
"Good God!" he said, like that, reining in his horse and looking at her campaign hat and the old gingham dress she wore. I wonder she didn't correct him for his profanity, but I allow for once she was scared stiff, and hadn't no answer ready. My! But she kind of shrunk in and looked a million years old.
"Madam," said he, "do you belong to this column?"
"Unofficially, I do," she said, perking up a little.
"Might I inquire where you came from?" said he, doing the ironical perlite.
"Oakland, California," said she.
"And is this your usual mode of locomotion?" said he. "Riding on a gun?" said he. "Like the Goddess of War," said he. "Perching on the belcherous cannon's back," said he.