terday
morning relative to the supposed massacre of the 6th and 9th Cavalry?"

No, the major didn't think it a bit strange. Maybe he knew that
newspaper stories should be taken _cum grano salis_, and then maybe he
knew me.

There were no more "fake reports" from that office.

CHAPTER XXII

PRIVATE DENNIS HOGAN, HERO

It was while I was sitting around a barrack-room fire that I picked up
the following story. There were a number of old soldiers in my
company--men who had served twenty-five years in the army--and their
fund of anecdote and excitement was of the largest size.

On Thanksgiving Day, 187--, Private Dennis Hogan, Company B, 29th United
States Infantry, the telegraph operator at Fort Flint, Montana, sat in
his dingy little "two by four" office in the headquarter building,
communing with himself and cussing any force of circumstances that made
him a soldier. The instruments were quiet, a good Thanksgiving dinner
had been enjoyed and now the smoke from his old "T. D." pipe curled in
graceful rings around his red head.

Denny was a smashing good operator and some eighteen months before he
had landed in St. Louis dead broke. All the offices and railroads were
full and nary a place did he get. While walking up Pine street one
morning his eye fell foul of a sign:--

"Wanted, able-bodied, unmarried men, between the ages of twenty-one and
thirty-five, for service in the United States Army."

In his mind's eye he sized himself up and came to the conclusion that he
would fill all the requirements. Now, he hadn't any great hankering for
soldiering, but he didn't have a copper to his name and as empty
stomachs stand not on ceremony, in he went and after being catechized by
the recruiting sergeant, he was pounded for thirty minutes by the
examining surgeon, pronounced as sound as a dollar, and then sworn in
"to serve Uncle Sam honestly and faithfully for five years. So help me
God." The space of time necessary to transform a man from a civilian to
a soldier is of a very short duration, and almost before he knew it he
was dressed in the plain blue of the soldier of the Republic. He was
assigned to B company of the 28th United States Infantry stationed at
Fort Flint, Montana. The experience was new and novel to him, and the
three months recruit training well nigh wore him out, but he stuck to
it, and some two months after he had been returned to duty, he was
detailed as telegraph operator vice Adams of G Com