THE CORPORAL’S STORY

When Pancho Villa made the Columbus raid our regiment was shipped to San Diego and from there marched to a small town, half way to the border, where the regimental headquarters were established, and from where the various companies were sent out as patrols. “B” company was stationed just opposite the old fort at Tia Juana, near a little border village. Officially we were to repel any attempted invasion. But we old timers knew perfectly well that there would never be any such invasion. Governor Cantu was making considerable money by being friendly to the tourists that daily swarmed across the line to the race track and the casino. We were simply a part of the theory that the War College was working out.

Nevertheless the young bloods who had enlisted at the President’s call found it perfectly thrilling, so to speak. All the elements of romance were present, and their imaginations worked overtime. They gathered on the knoll of the hill and gazed ominously across the valley at the rickety old fort and spoke seriously of our being bombarded; in reality there was only one cannon in the fort and that too old to be safely fired. They spied a group of men digging on the crest of the opposite hill and conceived it to be the advance guard of the enemy throwing up earthworks; it turned out to be a few Mexican farmers building a barn. In the evenings the young lads on sentry duty peered intently into the shadow of the river bank, and every rustle of the bushes brought their guns down to the “ready,” waiting for the Mexican army to emerge from the thicket; more often than not the noise was caused by some cow grazing. Off duty they went down to the village and hung around, glancing admiringly at the few Spanish girls there, or walking with them along the straight road that led to the boundary, under the stars, in the soft southern shadows.

Romance! Romance! It’s a precious thing, but it never comes to an old time soldier. To many of the lads this was their first taste of life, and it fairly intoxicated them. They took everything for granted and let their imagination supply the missing details. They were continually moving about, investigating this or that, hunting rattlesnakes, exploring abandoned wells, working off their surplus energy. We old timers smoked our pipes and in the evenings pitched horseshoes while the light lasted, then “reminisced” a bit, and turned in. We had been doing this sort of a thing for a good many years.

Of all these young fellows Dale Hawkins was, I suppose, the most imaginative, and the cleanest cut. He was a good looking boy with his black eyes that were constantly sparkling with enthusiasm, his fresh smooth face, and his slim frame, and brown, curly hair. Most any girl would have liked him, and I saw many glance at him rather wistfully. He was so young and unspoiled. I remember the night he came into the squad tent all excited. He had to wake me up to tell me all about it.

“Corp.?” He always called me “corp.,” and I never had the heart to scold him for this minor infraction of discipline. “Corp., I’ve run onto the girl! Oh, Lord, but I wish you could see her! She’s a peach, Corp. There ain’t another girl like her in the whole darned U. S. The blackest eyes ever! And red lips, and—and—well, there just ain’t another girl like her, Corp.”

“I’ll give you just three minutes to crawl into your bunk, Hawkins,” I said, “or I’ll have you put on K. P. for a week.” I suppose I sounded harsh to the boy, for he crawled off without saying another word. But eleven o’clock is no time to wake a man up. And my leg was bothering me again—rheumatism I got in Cuba, standing all night, hip-deep in water.

I made up to him the next day and got the particulars. I had been thinking about the matter—sort of liked the lad and felt it my duty to look after him. So I pumped him a bit.

“She works down at the store, Corp. I sorta hung around and got acquainted. She’s a peach, Corp. They don’t make ’em any finer.” That’s about all I could get from him that was coherent.

I made it my business to amble down to the store and take a look for myself. She was easy to look at, no mistake. Regulation Spanish—glossy black hair, dazzling smile, big luring eyes, crimson lips—I found myself thinking about another little girl down Juarez way; years ago that was. Then I looked again and something about her struck me funny. She saw me and came down to where I stood.

“What will you have, Senor Corporal?”

“Give me a sack of Union Leader,” I said, looking at her hand.

She reached back, got the tobacco and threw it on the counter, smiling at me—the sort of smile that gets men going.

“Senor Corporal has seen much service?”

Flattery, thought I, but agreeable. “How do you figure that out, young lady?”

“Oh, I can see it on the Corporal’s face. He looks wise. He has seen things, and he knows things.”

I thought on this a while. “Well, maybe,” I reflected. “Maybe, Senorita. But there is one thing I don’t know much about.”

“What is that, Corporal?” she asked, leaning over the counter and giving me another one of those heart shockers.

“Women,” said I.

She pouted. I’ll admit it certainly made her look attractive. “But they are so easy to understand, Senor. Perhaps you have never really tried?”

An opening left for me, I said to myself. “I’ve known quite a few of them in my time, Senorita.”

“Good women?”

“Both kinds,” I said, looking her squarely in the face.

She made a gesture—everything the woman did added to her charm.

“Quite a few of the boys seem to have a lot to say about you,” I remarked, filling my briar and lighting it.

She made another of those gestures. “Silly boys, Corporal, and all so young. They don’t know their minds. Now a man like the Corporal would know what he was doing—” I can’t describe the look she gave me. If I had been ten years younger—but I have grown past that stage. I strolled to the door.

“Yes, you’re right, Senorita. I’d know what I was doing.”

She gave me a throaty laugh. “I shall see you again, Corporal?”

“You will,” I answered.

She troubled me. I couldn’t prove that she was bad; but I’ve seen a good many of those kind of women, women of that race. They are of a different morality, and I didn’t want Dale to be mixed up in anything, if I could help it. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have cared. A man has to learn a lot of things in this world before he gets through it and the sooner he gets his knowledge the better off he is. But somehow Dale’s very freshness and air of buoyant youth made me want to protect him. Some people do affect us that way. But do you suppose he would listen to me? He came near striking me with the butt of his gun.

“Dale, my son,” I began, very troubled, “I’m an old man. I’ve seen all kinds of these women. They ain’t like our women. And you can’t ever tell what they’ll do. Angels grow around Tia Juana. She’s dangerous, lad. Take my advice and stay away. I wouldn’t want you to go back home all smutted up.”

He was so angry that he was crying. “Just because you’re my corporal isn’t any sign that you can insult her. She’s as good as any other woman on earth. How do you know she’s bad? You’re just evil-minded. She’s absolutely pure, I tell you. Don’t dare say anything against her. I’m going to marry her, if she’ll have me.” And he flung himself out of the tent.

“That far, is it?” I said to myself. But I think it was only the statement of a loyal clean boy, who, in order to demonstrate his faith in her, anxious to prove her goodness, said the most convincing thing he could. Such lads are that way.

Well, I saw that I couldn’t do much except keep an eye open and learn all I could of the woman. Carmencita was her name—Carmencita something-or-other. I questioned the natives but they were a clannish and taciturn lot and I didn’t get anything from them. There was one thing, however, which I didn’t give much attention to at the time, and that was the appearance of a mulatto in the village about every other evening. Evidently he came from the settlement near the race track, a short ways below us. He would come trudging up the road in the dusk, disappear, and later come trudging back.

So it drifted along. I would lay awake nights waiting for Dale to come in. He never got in before taps, yet I hadn’t the heart to scold him as he came stumbling through the door of the tent, stood with face turned to the sky for a minute or so, then go toward his bunk with a deep sigh.

One thing about the lad, he never talked to other men, except to me, about her. She was a sort of shrine to him, I think; something to be very reverently and deeply loved, and not to be profaned by being discussed in men’s mouths. I guess he rather shrank from hearing her name bandied about, and associated with the inevitable crude remarks that soldiers are apt to make. And incidentally I ran across a diary he was keeping, one day. What that boy had poured out on paper! He’d simply turned to fire and wrote—with all the feeling of young, first love.

Then we got our orders to move back to headquarters at Imperial Beach—being relieved by another company. Of course, several of the boys had gone pretty sweet on the few girls about the village, and they got up a dance as a sort of farewell. I strolled over to watch the proceedings. And I got an eyeful. Any one but a lovesick lad could have seen through the girl by her actions. She flirted with every man in the place, and treated Dale miserably, then she would apparently relent and the two would disappear in the shadows of the porch for a while, and when they came back Dale would be lit up like a house afire.

She saw me and motioned for me to come over. I can’t dance, so we slid out on the porch.

“Senorita,” I said, “what are you going to do with Dale Hawkins?”

She looked at me with well-feigned surprise. “Do, Corporal? I haven’t anything to do with him.”

“Stuff!” I exclaimed. “There’s a lot of men about the place, Senorita, that’ll give you amusement. Dale’s only an inexperienced boy. Do me a favor and send him on his way. He’s too young to be mixed up in anything serious.”

She didn’t take that very easy. “And who am I, Senor,” she said with an angry glitter in her eyes; “Who am I to spoil your young friend?”

“Come, come, you know what I mean. You are causing him a lot of unnecessary trouble.”

“I have nothing to do about it. He comes and goes at his own will.”

“Stuff! He comes and goes when you jerk the strings. I have a little sense, Senorita.”

She flared up again and started for the door. But I wasn’t finished yet, so I stepped in front of her. Man! The look she gave me! Fire and daggers! That’s the Spanish for you.

“Come, Senorita; you haven’t answered my question yet. What are you going to do with him? There’s plenty of men around here that you can play with—real men—without having to pick on a young boy.”

“Bah!” she flares back at me. “Men! You mean animals. They all are animals that watch me with the same look in their faces; they all have the same question to ask. Don’t you suppose I have a little sense too? Dale—” she pronounced the name with a funny note in her voice—“is the only man in the company who doesn’t insult me.”

I figured it was time to speak plainly. “Come off your high horse, Senorita! I’ve got eyes, and you’re no angel. I guess maybe there’s a reason for the boys giving you the wicked once over.” Then I tried the flattery argument. “You’re too good looking to be wasting time on Hawkins. Pick some of the boys that know the ropes.”

Then she did speak! Called me all the names in the Spanish calendar of devils. “Don’t you think, Senor,” she said, fairly spitting it at me, “that I like men who look at me with clean eyes—who give me clean love—and use clean words? Don’t you think I ever get tired of those men—those beasts that ‘know the ropes’?” She stopped to get her breath, her eyes blazing with fire. Lord, but she looked beautiful! I remember feeling a pity for her, at the time—pity that such a thing of beauty, so full of life, should throw all that beauty and life away to the chance bidder, in a dingy village. Maybe it wasn’t so much pity as a sense of waste that struck me.

“——You don’t know women, Senor, and you never will. Bad women are bad—to you—all the time. Let me by.”

“Hold on,” I said, taking her by the wrist. “I ain’t said anything to Dale yet—not much—but if you don’t let go of him I’ll tell him the whole works.”

She flung her head in a kind of scorn. “He wouldn’t believe you! He wouldn’t believe you! He thinks clean!”

“More’s the pity,” I returned, “that he should be brought to think otherwise—and that’s what you’ll do.”

“That’s what you think—bad women are bad—all the time. Let me go!” And she rushed into the building.

Well, sir, that woman gave me a bad half hour with her heroics. I couldn’t figure out how much of it she meant, and I wondered as I slid into my bunk, if the lad’s cleanness had struck home. But tush! The woman was only a jade; it couldn’t have been so.

On the march back to headquarters Dale was moody and silent, and once established in our new quarters he moped around and took long hikes by himself. Then one night I missed him and woke up about three o’clock the next morning, just in time to hear him turning in. Of course, I rode him hard and demanded an explanation. And where do you suppose he had been? He had walked back to our old outpost—ten miles—to see that woman. Ten miles down and ten back, in the course of the night! Well, I should have raised hob with him, and had him confined to quarters for leaving camp without a pass. But I let him off with a few harsh words and some talk about the regiment getting a short moving notice and leaving him behind. But it didn’t do any good. A couple of nights later he repeated the trick. And it got to be a regular every other night performance. I threatened and scolded and argued; but it didn’t do any good, and I didn’t see how I could mend matters any by confining him to camp.

I had an old bunky in the outfit that had relieved us and I dropped him a line and asked him to just keep an eye on the couple for me. It was partly through him, and partly through what Dale told me himself that I was able to piece together what happened afterwards.

I can picture the lad striding down the lonely road, hurrying to see the girl, and I can see him come stumbling home, refusing rides from passing automobiles, desiring to be alone to nurse the pangs of sorrow and happiness, jealousy and remorse—all the hodge-podge of feelings and tangled emotions that a lad of eighteen is possessed of—with all the intensity of youthful passion.

Some nights he found other men on the porch—men from the company that had relieved us—and he would sulk in the shadows for a time, then stumble home. In the mornings I found him alternately happy and dejected, silent and voluble. He hinted of marriage in mysterious tones, and the very next day sat on the edge of his bunk and eyed the guns in the rack with a look of despair.

Then one evening as he emerged unexpectedly from the shadows, walking toward the house, he saw Carmencita standing, talking with another man. He heard the man mention something about “the same place the next time,” as he handed her a paper bill; he saw him seize her roughly and kiss her; then he heard the girl laugh lightly and push him away, and when the man turned Dale saw that it was the mulatto, the one I had observed around the village so frequently.

I was frightened at the boy’s behavior after that, he was so white and so still. He drilled in a sort of daze and twice I had to send him to the rookie squad in punishment. And he kept strictly to himself and disappeared for long stretches of time, when off duty.

He stepped up to me one afternoon when I was washing a pair of socks in front of the tent.

“Excuse me, Corporal,” says the lad, with a hard-bitten look on his face. “I apologize for getting mad at you, that time.”

“All right, Dale,” I said, trying to be funny. It embarrassed me, somehow. “But don’t try to lick your old non-com again.”

There was a hole in the sock I was washing and I remembered thinking, at the time, that socks and people were considerably alike; some wore like iron, while others went to pieces on the first march. You never can tell what is shoddy or pure by just looking.

The Government got tired of playing tag with Villa and the regiment went back to its station, and Dale was discharged soon after, and returned to school. I happened to be in the orderly room when the skipper gave him his discharge.

“You are a very lucky lad, Hawkins,” said the old man. “You’ve had a first-class vacation on government pay, and you have seen things that will turn your chums green with envy. Now if you run across a likely chap that wants to enlist, steer him to company ‘B’.”

But I think it left a scar. Consider the case. There he was, on the flood-tide of romance—a soldier in southern lands, under a southern moon—all his imagination stirred by romantic fancies—then a southern love, the very height of romance—then the sudden, drab, sordid end of it all. I think that if it had been a white man instead of the mulatto that the boy, in the cleanness of his being and in the extravagant chivalry of his age, would have excused her, and continued to worship. Such lads are capable of that.

Impetuous youth! They bruise themselves sorely in the eager search for romance, instead of growing out of their illusions and into experience gently. But long, long ago the Kingdom of Romance closed to me. So I am no judge.