“Nor I, Schwoebel,” Thaine declared. “I came out with Funston’s ’Fighting Twentieth.’ I’m used to being called back, not tolled along after the rear.”
“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!” roared Schwoebel in a tremendous bellow.
“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!” a Pennsylvania University man named McLearn followed Schwoebel.
“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!” went down the whole line of infantry.
The old Kansas University yell, taken to the Philippines by college men, became the battle cry of the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, who when they returned to civil life, left it there for the American, army—and “Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!” became the American watchword and cry 370 of all that “far flung battle line” marching on through dust and heat to rescue the imperiled Christians in a beleagured fortress inside the impregnable city of Peking.
“You needn’t worry about the rear, Aydelot. One engagement may whip this line about, end to end, or it may scale off all that’s in front of us and leave nothing but the rear. All this before we have time to change collars again. We’ll let you or Tasker here lead into Peking,” an Indiana University man declared.
“That’s good of you, Binford. Some Kansas man will be first to carry the flag into Peking. It might as well be Aydelot.”
This from Tasker, a slender young fellow from a Kansas railroad office.
So they joked as they tramped along. It was nearly midnight when they pitched camp before the little village of Peit-Tsang beside the Peiho.
In the dim dawning of the August morning Little Kemper’s bugle sounded the morning reveille. Thaine was just dreaming of home and he thought the first bugle note was the call for him up the stairway of the Sunflower Inn. His windows looked out on the Aydelot wheatfields and the grove beyond, and every morning the sunrise across the level eastern prairie made a picture only the hand of the Infinite could paint. This morning he opened his eyes on a far different scene. The reveille became a call to arms and the troops fell into line ready for battle.