Part 45

"That's what I say! Anything for a change. There'd be some excitement in a picture where a man was liable to show up. It's more than I've got now. I do declare it's just scandalous the way we're gigglin', an' the poor soul hardly out o' hearin'. She had a kind heart, Mis' Morris had, an' she made herself happy with a mighty slim chance----"

"Yes, she did--and I only wish there'd been a better man waitin' for her in that hotel."

THE GHOST THAT GOT THE BUTTON

BY WILL ADAMS

From Collier's Weekly, May 24, 1913. By permission of Collier's Weekly and Will Adams.

The Ghost that Got the Button

BY WILL ADAMS

One autumn evening, when the days were shortening and the darkness fell early on Hotchkiss and the frost was beginning to adorn with its fine glistening lace the carbine barrels of the night sentries as they walked post, Sergeants Hansen and Whitney and Corporal Whitehall had come to Stone's room after supper, feeling the need common to all men in the first cold nights of the year for a cozy room, a good smoke, and congenial companionship.

The steam heat, newly turned on, wheezed and whined through the radiator: the air was blue and dense with tobacco smoke; the three sergeants reposed in restful, if inelegant attitudes, and Whitehall, his feet on the window sill and his wooden chair tilted back, was holding forth between puffs at a very battered pipe about an old colored woman who kept a little saloon in town.

"So she got mad at those K troop men," he said. "An' nex' day when Turner stopped there for a drink she says: 'You git outer yere! You men fum de Arsenic wid de crossbones on you caps, I ain't lettin' you in; but de Medical Corpses an' de Non-efficient Officers, dey may come.'"

The laugh that followed was interrupted by the approach of a raucous, shrieking noise that rose and fell in lugubrious cadence. "What the deuce!" exclaimed Whitehall, starting up.

"That's Bill," explained Stone. "Bill Sullivan. He thinks he's singin'. Funny you never heard him before, Kid, but then he's not often taken that way, thank the Lord."

"Come in, Bill," he called, "an' tell us what's the matter. Feel sick? Where's the pain?" he asked as big Bill appeared in the doorway.

"Come in, hombre, an' rest yo'self," invited Whitney, and hospitably handed over his tobacco-pouch. "What was that tune yo'all were singin' out yonder?"

"Thanks," responded Bill, settling down. "That there tune was 'I Wonder Where You Are To-night, My Love.'"

"Sounded like 'Sister's Teeth Are Plugged with Zinc,'" commented Whitney.

"Or 'Lookin' Through the Knot Hole in Papa's Wooden Leg,'" said Whitehall.

"Or 'He Won't Buy the Ashman a Manicure Set,'" added Stone.

"No," reiterated Bill solemnly. "It was like I told yer; 'I Wonder Where You Are To-night, My Love,' and it's a corker, too! I seen a feller an' a goil sing it in Kelly's Voddyville Palace out ter Cheyenne onct. Foist he'd sing one voise an' then she'd sing the nex'. He was dressed like a soldier, an' while he sang they was showin' tabloids o' what the goil was a-doin' behind him; an' then when she sang her voise he'd be in the tabloid, an' when it got ter the last voise, an' he was dyin' on a stretcher in a ambulance, everybody in the house was a-cryin' so yer could hardly hear her. It was great! My!" continued Bill, spreading out his great paws over the radiator, "ain't this the snappy evenin'? Real cold. Somehow it 'minds me of the cold we had in China that time of the Boxers, after we'd got ter the Legations; the nights was cold just like this is."

"Why, Bill," said Whitney, "I never knew yo'all were there then. Why did yo' never tell us befo'? What were yo' with?"

"Fourteenth Infantry," responded Bill proudly. "It's a great ol' regiment--don't care if they are doughboys."

"What company was you in?" inquired Hansen, ponderously taking his pipe from his mouth and breaking silence for the first time.

"J Company, same as this."

At this reply Stone opened his mouth abruptly to say something, but thought better of it and shut up again.

"It was blame cold them nights a week or so after we was camped in the Temple of Agriculture (that's what they called it--I dunno why), but say! the heat comin' up from Tientsin was fryin'! It was jus' boilin', bakin', an' bubblin'--worse a heap than anythin' we'd had in the islands. We chucked away mos' every last thing on that hike but canteens an' rifles. It was a darn fool thing ter do--the chuckin' was, o' course--but it come out all right, 'cause extree supplies follered us up on the Pie-ho in junks. Ain't that a funny name fer a river? Pie-ho? Every time I got homesick I'd say that river, an' then I'd see Hogan's Dairy Lunch fer Ladies an' Gents on the ol' Bowery an' hear the kid Mick Hogan yellin': 'Draw one in the dark! White wings--let her flop! Pie-ho!' an' it helped me a heap." Bill settled himself and stretched.

"But what I really wanted to tell youse about," said he, "was somepin' that happened one o' these here cold nights. It gits almighty cold there in September, an' it was sure the spookiest show I ever seen. Even Marm Haggerty's table rappin's in Hester Street never come up to it.

"There was three of us fellers who ran in a bunch them days: me an' Buck Dugan, my bunkie, from the Bowery like me (he was a corporal), an' Ranch Fields--we called him that 'cause he always woiked on a ranch before he come into the Fourteenth. They was great fellers, Buck an' Ranch was. Buck, now--yer couldn't phase him, yer couldn't never phase him, no matter what sort o' job yer put him up against he'd slide through slick as a greased rat. The Cap'n, he knew it, too. Onct when we was fightin' an' hadn't no men to spare, he lef' Buck on guard over about twenty-five Boxer prisoners in a courtyard an' tells him he dassent let one escape. But Buck wants ter git into the fight with the rest of the boys, an' when he finds that if he leaves them Chinos loose in the yard alone they'll git out plenty quick, what does he do but tie 'em tight up by their pigtails to some posts. He knows they can't undo them tight knots backwards, an' no Chink would cut his pigtail if he did have a knife--he'd die foist--an' so Buck skidoos off to the fight, an', sure enough, when the Cap'n wants them Boxers, they're ready, tied up an' waitin'. That was his sort, an', gee, but he was smart!

"We was all right int'rested in them Allies, o' course, an' watched 'em clost; but, 'Bill,' says Buck ter me one night, 'its been woikin in me nut that these here fellers ain't so different from what we know a'ready. Excep' fer their uniform an' outfits, we've met 'em all before but the Japs. Why, look a-here,' says he, 'foist, there's the white men--the English--ain't they jus' like us excep' that they're thicker an' we're longer? An' their Injun niggers--ain't we seen their clothes in the comic op'ras an' them without their clothes in the monkey cage at Central Park? An' their Hong-kong China Regiment an' all the other Chinos is jus' the same as yer meet in the pipe joints in Mott Street. Then,' says he, 'come all the Dagos. These leather necks of Macaroni Dagos we've seen a swarmin' all over Mulberry Bend an' Five Points; the Sauerkraut Dagos looks fer all the woild like they was goin' ter a Schützenfest up by High Bridge; the Froggie Dagos you'll find packed in them Frenchy restaraws in the Thirties--where yer git blue wine--and them Vodki Dagos only needs a pushcart ter make yer think yer in Baxter Street.'