Joining Hands with Uncle Sam

Captain Pratt, recruiting officer, glanced up to see two young fellows approaching, evidently with some intention of engaging his services. And for the big and important cause he was appointed to aid he was more than willing that his services should be engaged, heavily engaged, at any and all times.

The world was at war; his beloved country was mixed up in this contest, hopefully for the right and as humanely as it is possible to be when fighting. It required soldiers to fight and men and more men and still more men out of which to make these soldiers which were to win in a glorious cause for liberty and honor.

And so, because of the position of his office and the considerable number of students coming to him there, he may have been a little less careful about sticking to the precise regulations concerning very young applicants. The captain had a weakness for youngsters, being something of an overgrown boy himself at times, and this may have had much to do with his leniency.

The upshot of it was that, a little while later, after some information had been exchanged, questions had been asked mostly on the part of the captain, and oaths had been taken, the military gentleman dismissed the two young fellows with this parting injunction:

"Now you understand. Both of you report to the commanding officer at Camp Wheeler as soon as you can arrange matters. Come to me for cards to him. I need hear nothing more from you, Whitcomb, as you say your guardian will be willing and anxious for you to enlist. I'll want a letter of consent from your father, Flynn. Flynn? That might be somewhat of a Celtic name, eh?"

"Yiss, sorr!" said Roy, standing very straight and saluting in the most approved manner, at which the captain laughed heartily.

"Well, go your ways, lads, and report to me as soon as you can get away from school in the proper manner. I rather think that Uncle Sam can make very promising soldiers of you both, especially considering the shooting practice you've had."

"Say, Herb," said Roy, as soon as the two had got well away from the office, "that guy thought I could shoot, too, but I didn't tell him so. I only bragged you up."

"Too much; I don't like it, Roy. But it's natural; you will blarney, you dear, old chump. You made it so strong that I guess he thought we're an entire regiment of experts. Well, you can't help it now. The only thing to do is for you to learn to shoot."

"But could I, Herb?"

"Of course."

"Glory be! Hearken, me lad! Come along. I'm goin' to get me a rifle and ammunition and you get your gun and we'll go out and blow the face off of nature. I'll buy your ammunition and you teach me; see? Come on."

In vain Herbert protested that it was needless to spend money for a gun; that Roy could practise with Herb's own, a splendid repeating weapon, of .30-caliber, won by the boy at the individual shoot of the Interstate Prep School Match a month before.

No; Roy must have his own gun.

From tiny boyhood, when a chummy father had put into the youngster's hands his first air-gun, Herbert had shown a marked genius, if it may be so called, for aiming straight and knowing just when to press a trigger. Then, with his first cartridge gun, a light target 22, which he had brought to school and taken on many a hike into the broad country, the boy had become, as Roy put it, almost unreasonably expert, knocking acorns and chestnut burs from high limbs, cutting tall weeds and hanging vines in half with the first shot, tossing a stone or a tin can in air with one hand and nine times out of ten plunking it fairly before it reached the ground.

But with all this ability to put a bullet just where he wanted it to go, the lad was unwilling to use his skill in taking the life of any creature. He would not kill even a hawk or a crow, though sometimes sorely tempted to try a shot at such birds on the wing. Once he sat on a log, with rifle across his knees, while a fox leaped on a fence not forty yards away and stood balancing and curious for half a minute.

"We've got no real right to kill these things," he said to Roy, who was always with him. "They've got as much right to live as we have and they were here before we were. A fellow might shoot something if he were hungry, but not decently just for sport. These animals, birds and things, are getting too scarce as it is."

The town supported a first-class hardware store and its stock of guns was sufficient for the most exacting selection to be made therefrom. When the boys reached their room in the dormitory an hour later and the new gun was unpacked, Herb took it up and toyed with it lovingly. It was one of the most modern of sporting rifles, also shooting a 30-30-160 cartridge, the first figure referring to the caliber, the second to the grains of powder by weight and the third to grains of lead. The workmanship, the finish, the design were perfect.

Herb, perforce, must make potent remarks concerning the weapon.

"Now you have something that you can rely on whenever you look over the barrel and press the trigger in the right way. It'll do the trick and never fail you if you treat it as it deserves; keep it clean. Remember to do that. We'll take the stock off, unlimber the breech, warm all the parts and run melted vaseline all through it; then, when it gets cold, that sticks in there as grease, which beats any liquid oil all to pieces. In the barrel only always use but a drop or two of oil on your rag or brush and with that brass-jointed cleaning rod you can clean from either end. If you use an iron rod, clean only from the breech end; I'll bet they'll tell us that in the army.

"And, Roy, you've got to be careful how you shoot, what you shoot at and what's back of it around here. If it goes off accidentally some old time, or there isn't anything back of what you shoot at to stop the bullet, why, the blamed thing is apt to go on and kill a cow in the next county. These steel-jacketed bullets will punch through six inches of seasoned oak, twice as much pine, and clean through an ordinary tree of green wood. But say, Roy, you don't care how you spend your money; a thousand cartridges! I'll use about two hundred of them and I want to pay you——"

"You go plumb to smash; will you? Pay nothin'! Ain't you goin' to teach me how to hit a bumble-bee at half a mile? We'll start to-morrow and work regular until Commencement."

It was even so, except the bumble-bee stunt. Excellence generally follows determination where all else is favorable, and Roy possessed good eyes, steady nerves and faith in his own ability and that of his teacher. The result was that before the cartridges were half spent the one-time disinterested greenhorn was that no longer; he could put ten shots within a six-inch circle and do it pretty quickly, too, and he had completely fallen in love with what he called "the fun and fine art of firearms; hooray!"

But however interested he became in his own efforts, it was as nothing to his intense delight over Herbert's wonderful skill. He ran back and forth between target and gunner like a playful dog chasing a thrown stick.

"Ye've got the center pushed into one big hole now!" he would shout, "and ye've got only one or mebbe two outside the center and none near the ring! It's wonderful! I might shoot lead enough into yon old quarry bank to make a ten-million-dollar mine of it and never be as certain of hittin' the center as what you are each time you let her go. Shooters, like poets, are sure born and not made."

The departure from dear old Brighton, the saying of farewells that might be final, the leaving of scenes that would always be reminiscent of happy days and worthy efforts with benefits for life, came all too soon.

With his one bag and gun case, his sole possessions, Herbert Whitcomb stood on the station platform waiting until Roy Flynn had checked his numerous trunks and boxes. He glanced again at the letter from Captain Pratt, the recruiting officer, introducing both boys to Brigadier-General Harding in command at Camp Wheeler. The captain had invited them to peruse it and emotional Roy had been greatly tickled by the contents. It read in part:

"I write you about these boys because they are younger than we have been accepting them, those from the same school heretofore having been seniors. But these are manly fellows, athletes in training, spending much of their time out of doors on long hikes and week-end camping trips and, most important of all, they are both very excellent shots, Whitcomb excelling almost anything that I have ever heard of, as I have it from good authority. In view of the Special Inquiry No. 10, June 1st, I believed this would interest you."

Special Inquiry, eh? The captain had not explained that. It was probably a matter for higher authorities to explain and no doubt they would hear of it again. Surely it related to shooting, and most certainly the ability to handle a gun much better than the average man must be an important thing in relation to soldiering.

Roy returned just as the train pulled in and the two went aboard. The boys were now on their way for a few days' visit to the elegant Flynn home and, from a previous experience, Herb knew he would be made most welcome.

After that came the journey and the introduction to Camp Wheeler.