st familiar to the rank and file as well
as to their superiors was the old-fashioned "plains raised,"
"discipplin furst and rayson aftherwards" class of which Feeny was so
prominent an exponent. Brave to rashness and faithful to the very
death, they had reason to look for respect and appreciation. They were
men whose only education was that picked up in the camps and campaigns
of the famous old regiments to which, when mere recruits, they had
been assigned. They were invaluable in the army, and would have been
utterly misjudged and out of their element anywhere else. That "book
learning" and soldiering could ever go hand in hand no man in the old
dragoons would ever have believed for an instant. Such scholars as had
drifted into the ranks were, as a rule, irreclaimable drunkards, lost
to any chance of redemption at home, and only tolerated in the service
in the rough old days because of their meek and uncomplaining
performance of long hours of extra duty in the troop or regimental
offices when, their whiskey and their money alike exhausted, they
humbly went back to their desks, asking only to live in the hope of
another drunk. Hundreds of the old dragoons could barely sign their
names, many could only touch the pen when called upon to make "his (X)
mark." "Another busted clerk" was the general expression when the
young Californian came forward to enlist. Yet he was the picture of
clear-eyed, athletic manhood, was accepted with much hesitancy by the
officers and undoubted suspicion by the men, yet speedily proved a
splendid horseman, scout, shot, and, as was the final admission,
"all-round trooper," despite the fact that he was well educated and
spoke Spanish like a native. Still, such was the prevailing faith, as
it ever is among veteran soldiers, that the old style was the best, it
was long before he won promotion. No one who has not known both can
begin to imagine the difference between the army of a quarter-century
ago and the army of to-day. Just as Feeny was a resolute specimen of
the old, so was Wing a pioneer of his class in the new. At the moment
when the latter struck spurs to the wearied flanks of poor Dick and
called on him for one more effort, the stalwart and handsome sergeant
sped away on the path of duty, confident of the fact that by this time
every man in his own troop and every soldier who knew him at all would
stake his last dollar on "Bob" Wing's tackling the problem before him
as fearlessly and intel