It was hard for him to believe that he really was going to war, even
now, when the long sail was near an end and the ships were running
fearlessly along the big, grim coast-mountains of Cuba, with bands
playing and colors to the breeze; hard to realize that he was not to
land in peace and safety and, in peace and safety, go back as he came;
that a little further down those gashed mountains, showing ever clearer
through the mist, were men with whom the quiet officers and men around
him would soon be in a death-grapple. The thought stirred him, and he
looked around at the big, strong fellows--intelligent, orderly,
obedient, good-natured, and patient; patient, restless, and sick as they
were from the dreadful hencoop life they had led for so many
days--patient beyond words. He had risen early that morning. The rose
light over the eastern water was whitening, and all over the deck his
comrades lay asleep, their faces gray in the coming dawn and their
attitudes suggesting ghastly premonitions--premonitions that would come
true fast enough for some of the poor fellows--perhaps for him. Stepping
between and over the prostrate bodies, he made his way forward and
leaned over the prow, with his hat in his hand and his hair blowing back
from his forehead.
Already his face had suffered a change. For more than three long weeks
he had been merely a plain man among plain men. At once when he became
Private Crittenden, No. 63, Company C, --th United States Regular
Cavalry, at Tampa, he was shorn of his former estate as completely as
though in the process he had been wholly merged into some other man. The
officers, at whose table he had once sat, answered his salute precisely
as they answered any soldier's. He had seen Rivers but seldom--but once
only on the old footing, and that was on the night he went on board,
when Rivers came to tell him good-by and to bitterly bemoan the luck
that, as was his fear from the beginning, had put him among the
ill-starred ones chosen to stay behind at Tampa and take care of the
horses; as hostlers, he said, with deep disgust, adding hungrily: "I wish I were in your place."
With the men, Crittenden was popular, for he did his work thoroughly,
asked no favors, shirked no duties. There were several officers' sons
among them working for commissions, and, naturally, he drifted to them,
and he found them all good fellows. Of Blackford, he was rather wary,
after Rivers's short history of him, but as he was friendly, unselfish,
had a high sense of personal honour, and a peculiar reverence for women,
Crittenden asked no further questions, and was sorry, when he came back
to Tampa, to find him gone with the Rough Riders. With Reynolds, he was
particularly popular, and he never knew that the story of the Tampa
fight had gone to all the line officers of the regiment, and that nearly
every one of them knew him by sight and knew his history. Only once from
an officer, however, and steadily always from the old Sergeant, could he
feel that he was regarded in a different light from the humblest soldier
in the ranks--which is just what he would have asked. The Colonel had
cast an envious eye on Raincrow at Tampa, and, straightway, he had taken
the liberty of getting the Sergeant to take the horse to the Colonel's
tent with the request that he use him throughout the campaign. The horse
came back with the Colonel's thanks; but, when the order came that the
cavalry was to go unmounted, the Colonel sent word that he would take
the horse now, as the soldier could not use him. So Raincrow was aboard
the ship, and the old Colonel, coming down to look at the horse one day,
found Crittenden feeding him, and thanked him and asked him how he was
getting along; and, while there was a smile about his humorous mouth,
there was a kindly look in his blue eyes that pleased Crittenden
mightily. As for the old Sergeant, he could never forget that the
soldier was a Crittenden--one of his revered Crittendens. And, while he
was particularly stern with him in the presence of his comrades, for
fear that he might be betrayed into showing partiality--he was always
drifting around to give him a word of advice and to shake his head over
the step that Crittenden had taken.