bout the rear, Aydelot. One engagement may whip this
line about, end to end, or it may scale off all that's in front of us and
leave nothing but the rear. All this before we have time to change collars
again. We'll let you or Tasker here lead into Peking," an Indiana
University man declared.

"That's good of you, Binford. Some Kansas man will be first to carry the
flag into Peking. It might as well be Aydelot."

This from Tasker, a slender young fellow from a Kansas railroad office.

So they joked as they tramped along. It was nearly midnight when they
pitched camp before the little village of Peit-Tsang beside the Peiho.

In the dim dawning of the August morning Little Kemper's bugle sounded the
morning reveille. Thaine was just dreaming of home and he thought the
first bugle note was the call for him up the stairway of the Sunflower
Inn. His windows looked out on the Aydelot wheatfields and the grove
beyond, and every morning the sunrise across the level eastern prairie
made a picture only the hand of the Infinite could paint. This morning he
opened his eyes on a far different scene. The reveille became a call to
arms and the troops fell into line ready for battle.

Before the sun had reached the zenith the line was whipped end to end, as
Binford of Indiana had said it might be. In this engagement on the sandy
plain about the little village of Peit-Tsang, Thaine with his comrades
saw what it meant to lead that battle line. He saw the brave little
Japanese mowed down like standing grain before the reaper's sickle. He saw
the ranks move swiftly up to take the places of the fallen, never wavering
nor retreating, rushing to certain death as to places of vantage in a
coronal pageantry. The Filipino's Mauser was as deadly as the older style
gun of the Boxer. A bullet aimed true does a bullet's work. But in this
battle that raged about Peit-Tsang Thaine quickly discovered that this was
no fight in a Filipino jungle. Here was real war, as big and terrible
above the campaigns he had known in Luzon as the purpose in it was big
above loyalty to the flag and extension of American dominion and ideals.

When the thing was ended with the routing of the Boxer forces, of the
sixteen thousand that went into battle a tithe of one-tenth of their
number lay dead on the plains--sixteen hundred men, the cost of conquest
in a far wilderness. The heaviest toll fell on the brave Japanese who had
led in the attack.

Thaine Aydelot did not