. You know as well as I do that Bob
Turner was one of the whitest fellows that ever threw a leg over a
saddle, and now these wirepullers in Washington have fixed his clock.
He's politically and ostensibly dead. It ain't fair. Why should they
keep this thing up? If they want Spain licked, why don't they turn
the San Augustine Rifles and Joe Seely's ranger company and a car-load
of West Texas deputy-sheriffs onto these Spaniards, and let us
exonerate them from the face of the earth? I never did,' says I,
'care much about fighting by the Lord Chesterfield ring rules. I'm
going to hand in my resignation and go home if anybody else I am
personally acquainted with gets hurt in this war. If you can get
somebody in my place, Sam,' says I, 'I'll quit the first of next week.
I don't want to work in an army that don't give its help a chance.
Never mind my wages,' says I; 'let the Secretary of the Treasury keep
'em.'

"'Well, Ben,' says the captain to me, 'your allegations and estimations
of the tactics of war, government, patriotism, guard-mounting,
and democracy are all right. But I've looked into the system of
international arbitration and the ethics of justifiable slaughter
a little closer, maybe, than you have. Now, you can hand in your
resignation the first of next week if you are so minded. But if you
do,' says Sam, 'I'll order a corporal's guard to take you over by
that limestone bluff on the creek and shoot enough lead into you to
ballast a submarine air-ship. I'm captain of this company, and I've
swore allegiance to the Amalgamated States regardless of sectional,
secessional, and Congressional differences. Have you got any
smoking-tobacco?' winds up Sam. 'Mine got wet when I swum the creek
this morning.'

"The reason I drag all this _non ex parte_ evidence in is because Willie
Robbins was standing there listening to us. I was a second sergeant
and he was a private then, but among us Texans and Westerners there
never was as much tactics and subordination as there was in the
regular army. We never called our captain anything but 'Sam' except
when there was a lot of major-generals and admirals around, so as to
preserve the discipline.

"And says Willie Robbins to me, in a sharp construction of voice much
unbecoming to his light hair and previous record:

"'You ought to be shot, Ben, for emitting any such sentiments. A man
that won't fight for his country is worse than a horse-thief. If I
was the cap, I'd put you in the