cers that were hard to fill.

My regiment, the 18th Infantry, was too far away to go, and besides,
the Rio Grande frontier, with Senor Garza and his band of cutthroats
prowling around loose, could not be left unprotected. There would be too
big a howl from the Texans if that occurred.

During all these trying times my telegraph office was naturally the
center of interest, and I had made an arrangement with the chief
operator at San Antonio to send me bulletins of any important news. I
always made two copies, posting one on the bulletin board in front of my
office, and delivering the other to the colonel in person.

Soldiers are very loquacious as a rule and give them a thread upon which
to hang an argument, and in a minute a free silver, demo-popocrat
convention would sound tame in comparison. Go into a squad-room at any
time the men are off duty, and you can have a discussion on almost any
old subject from the result of the coming prize fight to the deepest
question of the bible and theology. Many times the argument will become
so warm between Privates "Hicky" Flynn and "Pie Faced" Sullivan that
theology will be settled _a la_ Queensbury out behind the wash-house.
Among soldiers this argumentative spirit is called "chewing the rag."

One morning shortly after Wounded Knee with its direful results had
been fought, I thought it would be a great joke to post a startling
bulletin, just to start the men's tongues a-wagging.

So I wrote the following:

"Bulletin

"San Antonio, Texas, 12 | 26, 1890.

"Reported that the 6th and 9th Cavalry were ambuscaded yesterday by
Sioux Indians under Crazy Horse, and completely wiped out of
existence. Custer's Little Big Horn massacre outdone. Not a man
escaped."

I chuckled with fiendish glee as I posted this on the bulletin board and
then started for breakfast. I thought some soldier would read it, tell
it to the men of his company, and in that way the fun would commence. My
scheme worked to perfection, because some of the men of G Company, (mine
was D) had seen me stick it up and had come post haste to read. I
started the ball rolling in my own company and in about a minute there
were fifty men around me all jabbering like magpies as to the result of
this awful massacre. Of course, the regiment would be hurried north
forthwith--no other regiment could do the work of annihilation so well
as the 18th. Oh! no. Of course not!

Said my erstwhile frie