d around
on a white horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers
and a Good Templar's hat, and wasn't allowed by the regulations to
speak to us. And Willie Robbins was made captain of our company.

"And maybe he didn't go after the wreath of fame then! As far as
I could see it was him that ended the war. He got eighteen of us
boys--friends of his, too--killed in battles that he stirred up
himself, and that didn't seem to me necessary at all. One night he took
twelve of us and waded through a little rill about a hundred and ninety
yards wide, and climbed a couple of mountains, and sneaked through a
mile of neglected shrubbery and a couple of rock-quarries and into a
rye-straw village, and captured a Spanish general named, as they said,
Benny Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, being a
blackish man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious to surrender and throw
himself on the commissary of his foe.

"But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine
_News_ and the Galveston, St. Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers
printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine
simply went crazy over its 'gallant son.' The _News_ had an editorial
tearfully begging the Government to call off the regular army and
the national guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war
single-handed. It said that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a
proof that the Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as
ever.

"If the war hadn't ended pretty soon, I don't know to what heights of
gold braid and encomiums Willie would have climbed; but it did. There
was a secession of hostilities just three days after he was appointed
a colonel, and got in three more medals by registered mail, and shot
two Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an ambuscade.

"Our company went back to San Augustine when the war was over. There
wasn't anywhere else for it to go. And what do you think? The old
town notified us in print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a
nigger named Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was
going to give us the biggest blow-out, complimentary, alimentary, and
elementary, that ever disturbed the kildees on the sand-flats outside
of the immediate contiguity of the city.

"I say 'we,' but it was all meant for ex-Private, Captain _de facto_,
and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They
notified us that the reception t