"Do you mean because you are an Indian? That is rot!"
"No, it is good sense. You think about it hard as I have thought about it day and night. They don't say I don't know my job. The captain told me the colonel was right and everybody knew it when he said I should make the best scout officer in the brigade; and the men like me, you know that; but the men don't want an Injun for an officer. They are white men. I am a Malecite—red. That is right. I don't go back with my officer stars."
"Do you mean that you won't take your commission?" asked Dick.
"No. I take it, sure. But not in the 26th."
Dick did not argue. He had never considered his friend's case in that light before, but now he knew that Sacobie was right. The noncommissioned officers and men would not question Frank's military qualifications, his ability or his personal merits. His race was the only thing about him to which they objected—and that appeared objectionable in him only when they considered him as an officer. As a "non-com" he was one of themselves, but as an officer they must consider him impersonally as a superior. There was where the New Brunswick soldiers would cease to consider their friend and comrade Frank Sacobie and see only a member of an inferior race. Their point of view would immediately revert to that of the old days before the war, when they would have laughed at a Malecite's undertaking to perform any task except paddling a canoe.
"Will you transfer to another battalion?" asked Dick, as a result of his reflections.
Frank shook his head but made no reply.
"Then to an English battalion?" Dick persisted. "There are dozens that would be glad to have you, Frank. A Canadian with your record would not have to look far for a job in this war. Jack Davenport's old regiment would snap you up quick as a wink, commission and all, I bet a dollar."
The other smiled gravely. "That is right," he said. "Capt. Davenport is my friend and knows what I am; but most English people want me to be some kind of prince from India. I am myself—a Canadian soldier. I don't want to play the monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big chief, with his salmon spear and sometimes nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the wood and carried the water. I am not a prince, nor I'm not a monkey. I come to the war, and the English people call me rajah; but the Englishman come to our country and hire me for a guide in the woods and call me a nigger. No, I am myself with what good I have in me. I can do to fight the Germans, and that is all I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King will make me an officer. That is good. I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then they will name me for what I am by what I do."
Dick gripped Frank's right hand in a hearty clasp of respect and admiration.