by Damon Runyon
“They stopped right in the middle of a yell for about a minute, but it was long enough. It brings ’em to a stop just below us, and I screeches:
“‘Ready! Aim! Fire!’
“My carbine gang tears off a volley, and the rest of the gang behind the breastworks launches about a barrel of snowballs on top of the bench in the road.
“‘Fire at will!’ I commands, and they does; the fellers with the carbines shooting at the nearest fixed stars, and the others whaling away with the snowballs.
“Say! I’ve seen crowds suddenly jimmed up in my time; like the old Thirteenth on the Warren the time of the fight, or the gang at Zapote bridge the night the head of Carabao charged us, but that delegation in the road skinned ’em all a Salt Lake City block.
“They was just naturally stood on their heads. They yelled in dead earnest, but they didn’t do no shooting; they didn’t have time. I hadn’t thought about there being any danger until I see that bunch milling around in the road; the horses rearing and snorting and kicking, and everyone trying to go in the same direction at once. I was leary someone was going to get killed. If any one of ’em had gone down in the muddle, it would have been all day with ’em. The language them men used wasn’t scarcely fit to eat.
“All the time my crowd was slamming big snowballs down on the heads of the enemy and firing carbines, and some of the yells that rose out of the cloud of snow in the road sounded real painful. The firing squad was working them carbines overtime between laughs.
“The women and kids in the camps came running up to the breastworks to see what was going on, and they gets next to the game right away and commences to fire snowballs too, screaming and laughing.
“At what I judges is the psychological moment, I hollers:
“‘Charge!’
“Then all of us sets up an awful yell and loads and fires snowballs faster than ever.
“Them in the roadway that had their horses turned right didn’t hesitate. They went down that road with a disregard for their necks that made me nervous. Them that couldn’t get their horses turned right slipped off and went on foot. Pretty soon all you could hear was echoes dying away in the distance and the screaming and laughing in the camp.
“We didn’t wait for them strikers’ thanks. We got our horses and got out of there almost as fast as the enemy. I separated the patrols and sent one out one way and took the other direction with my squad. We rode off a couple of miles and then went racing back. We got back to the foot of the hill considerably blown, right after old Major Kelley, Captain Pard, all the headquarters’ officers, and some of H Troop came tearing along. Back of them Carson and the other patrol was whooping it up along the road, and away back a company of infantry and a Gatling squad was kicking up the snow as fast as they could.
“They had heard the shooting at headquarters, and an H trooper had buzzed into camp with an exciting tale about the strikers’ massacring harmless soldiers and deputies.
“Now, of course, they knew something about this frame-up to attack the strikers’ camp at headquarters but they hadn’t figured on it turning out but one way. Only that lone H trooper had returned, and the major seemed to sort o’ expect to find many gory bodies scattered around.
“I reported having heard some firing, but no signs of excitement. The whole works climbed to the strikers’ camp, many hunching up as close to the major as possible. I saw Captain Pard occasionally glancing at me with a funny look, as he took in that mussed-up roadway; but the major didn’t seem to notice anything. The camp was as dark as bats, but in answer to our yells some of the strikers came out looking mighty cross and sleepy. No, they hadn’t heard anything. No fighting; hadn’t heard any disturbance, and it was getting colder all the time, and the major was sleepy himself, it ended in him telling Captain Pard to instruct his patrols to make a thorough investigation. Then they all went back to headquarters.
“On the roads, before daylight, our patrols picked up fifteen H troopers, most of them bunged up about the head or face where them rock-loaded snowballs had landed, and we turned everyone over to the guardhouse for overstaying pass limits. Sore! Oh, no! That’s a mistake! I think they had commenced to tumble, because our fellers kidded ’em a good deal.
“When I was turning in that morning, an orderly comes to me and said the major wanted to see me at the officer’s mess. I was scared stiff for a minute, thinking the old man was wise, but I went over.
“All the officers of the camp were there eating breakfast. Captain Pard was sitting with an H Troop officer on either side of him, and he looks at me like he wanted to laugh.
“‘Private Hanks, did you learn anything about the occurrences of last night?’ asks the major, looking stern.
“I saw right away that none of them was on, excepting maybe Captain Pard, and they evidently had been turning it over among ’em and trying to get at the right of it.
“‘Sir!’ says I, saluting, ‘as near as I can make out, a gang of H troopers got gay around the strikers’ camp, and the women snowballed them away!’”
TWO MEN NAMED COLLINS
I know some things all right if I could only think of them. These guys say I’m crazy—crazy in the head like a sheep; but I’m as happy as if I had good sense.
I hear ’em talking in the barracks when they think I’m not around, and I know what they say. I’ll make some of ’em hard to catch, one of these days. They’re afraid of me because I killed a man once. Well, I evened that up, but they don’t know it.
When I get out of the army I’m going back to driving hack in Denver like it was before I enlisted. It ain’t my fault I’m here. It’s the old booze. I gets drunk one day and went out to Petersburg. I met a guy there who belonged to the army, and before I knew what I was about I had on one of these uniforms. I only got six months more, and you bet they won’t get me again.
Before I go I’ll get good and even with some of these guys. Ever I catch any of them fresh officers down around Arapahoe Street after dark I’ll fix ’em.
I’ve heard ’em say I’m the orneriest white man in the army. I don’t know why. I’m big and strong, but that ain’t nothing. I can take this Krag and bend it double like it was made of tin; I did it once when I got mad at a sentry because he wouldn’t let me be.
I can lift any man in this company waist high with one hand. I can tear open a can of tomatoes with my teeth. But them things don’t make a guy ornery, do they?
I used to get drunk whenever I could, and it made me mean. They threw it into me, too. Guardhouse all the time, and hard work. Then one day I heard a non-com tell another they was laying for me with a general guard to give me a bobtail and a dash at Alcatraz next time I come up; so I quit. I haven’t touched a drop in over a year.
They’s something funny about me, though, and I don’t know what it is. Whenever I walk post in front of the officers’ quarters them fresh guys and women get out on the porch and watch me. They talk just like I couldn’t hear, too. I heard a woman say one day when I was stepping off the post—it’s an even hundred of my steps from one end to the other—that I reminded her of a caged lion.
“More like a big bull behind a pasture gate,” says an officer.
“Or a battery horse with the weaves,” another sticks in.
Stuff like that, you know. Can you blame me for being sore?
About that man I killed. I didn’t mean to do it. His name was just the same as mine, Charles Collins, only they called him Pretty Collins. He was pretty, too. He had a load of education, and he got into the army accidental, same as me.
I’ve seen lots of his kind. They’re mostly to be found around Torts or at Brown in evening clothes after a show, and they’ve paid me good money for hauling ’em around in my little old hack. I used to feel like jumping up and saying, “Cab, sir,” every time he came past me on the parade ground. He was a private like anyone else, but I’ve seen sentries half bringing their guns down to salute when they went by. It was the way he wore his clothes maybe.
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I’ve heard some of these guys say he spent a barrel of money going en route, and broke his old lady’s heart. His old man give him the run, or something, so he breaks into the army. The officers pitied him a lot, and he used to be something of a pet with them. They didn’t holler and growl at him same as they do at me and the rest. I heard the top say once that they offered to get him discharged, but he wouldn’t stand for it. Anyway, they used to treat him mighty white.
I had it in for him strong.
I didn’t like him from the start because they used to kid us both, changing our names around and calling him Crummy and me Pretty. I know I ain’t pretty, and I knew how they meant it.
The top, when he called the roll, used to put it Collins No. 1, which was him, and Collins No. 2, which was me. They ain’t anything unusual about that, I’ve seen companies where they’d have four or five Johnsons, or Browns, or Smiths.
I got so I hated the sight of Collins. I hated his pink and white face, and I hated him because he wasn’t supposed to be no better than me, but was, somehow.
He didn’t know how much I had it in for him, but he did know I didn’t like him, because one day he starts to joshing me with the rest, and I took him to the mat. I had my fingers on his throat and his white flesh came out between them like I had grabbed a lump of dough.
They broke me loose, but I told him then that if ever he tried to hand me anything again I’d bust his crust. He looked whiter than ever, but he bowed polite and says:
“All right, Collins; I beg your pardon. It won’t happen again.”
He offered me his hand, but I spit at it. He never spoke to me again. And I hated him more than ever for it.
They used to rawhide me something fierce in the company. I mean the non-coms did. I got all the extra duty there was doing. I knew I was getting the dirty end, but I couldn’t holler. It wouldn’t done me any good.
I’ve seen Pretty Collins come into quarters after taps just spifflicated, and nothing was ever done to him. Do you wonder I was sore on him?
Well, I just laid low and waited. I figured to get to him some day some way, so I laid low.
Finally we goes to Manila and gets sent out on the north line, where they was fighting about every day. That’s when I gets next to Pretty Collins.
He was about my height and heft, so was in the same set of fours as me. When we fanned out in open order, that brought him next to me, on my right. The first scrap we went into I watched Pretty, and I was hep in a minute.
His face turned whiter than the time I grabbed him, and his hands trembled so he could hardly hold his gun. I sensed him, all right, all right. He was a coward.
When the bullets commenced to whistle I thought he was going to drop in his tracks. I’m no coward, whatever I am, and you bet I took a lot of satisfaction watching that guy suffer; because they do suffer—all the tortures of hell, I’ve heard.
I don’t think anyone else noticed him, but Pretty knew what I knew—he looked at me once and saw me grinning.
I used to own a pit dog—Sunday Morning. He was beat by Mitchell’s Money on the Overland race track one Christmas day. He was nearly all out when I picked him up for his last scratch, and he looked at me out of his eyes like he was trying to tell me not to send him again. Pretty reminded me of Sunday Morning when he looked at me across that rice paddy.
It wasn’t much of a fight, but when it was over Pretty was as limp as a rag. The rest thought it was too much sun, but I knew—and Pretty knew I knew—and that was more satisfaction to me than if the whole brigade knew. He never said anything to me; just looked at me out of his eyes like Sunday Morning looked.
It wasn’t long after that he was lying in front of a line of trenches which were across a river from us. The general commanding the brigade and his staff was with our outfit. The gugus was slapping a kind of blanket of bullets over our heads, and we was hugging the ground pretty close. The general signs out to our captain:
“Send a man down to Colonel Kelley on the left of the line and tell him to advance at once.”
You know what that meant?
A man had to chase across that open field for a quarter of a mile with the gugus pecking at him. It was a two-ace bet that he would get his before he got half-way. Cap looks down the line and says:
“Collins!”
He was looking right at Pretty, over my head, and he meant Pretty. Man! That fellow’s face was already white, but it seemed to go dead all at once. I’ll bet anything he couldn’t have moved if he’d tried, his muscles being sort o’ paralyzed.
Cap kept looking at him—over my head. It wasn’t three seconds, but it seemed three hours. When I first heard Cap call I felt glad, because it meant all day with Pretty. Then when I looked at Pretty’s face I felt sorry, and there’s where I made a sucker of myself. I jumped up and started on a run down the line. Cap didn’t say anything. It looked like I had made a mistake and thought he meant me, but Cap knew better—and he knew I knew better—and Pretty knew better.
They shot at me considerable and winged me a little once, but I delivered the order and got back in time to go into the charge with my outfit.
I could’ve gone into the hospital if I’d wanted to, but I wasn’t hurt very bad. That night I was sleeping near Cap and the two lieutenants, and I heard Cap say:
“The old man is going to recommend Crummy Collins for a stiffycate of merit. He wanted to make him a lieutenant, but I showed him the”—something—“of such a course.
“I meant Pretty Collins all the time, because I knew it was a chance to take him out of the ranks. He could have won his shoulder straps right there, but—”
“Do you think he’s—” something I didn’t get again, one of the loots asked.
“I fear he is,” says Cap, and I went to sleep.
Well, we put in nearly two years on the islands, but Pretty got transferred to special duty, and I didn’t see no more of him until we sailed for home. He looked kind of bad in the face, like he’d been going too strong, but he was just as popular as ever in the company. No one knew what Cap and me knew, and I didn’t tell, but Pretty kept away from me.
By this time the gang had commenced to treat me a little better, because I’d showed ’em I was a good game guy, but I didn’t have no bunkies.
I’d almost forgotten Pretty while he was away, but when he comes back again he made me just as sore as ever at him—just by being around, you know.
He didn’t get so much petting from the officers as he used to, but he was still the whole thing with the bucks.
We went to Fort D.A. Russell, just out of Cheyenne, from ’Frisco, and I gets my stiffycate of merit there. It’s a big sheet of paper, something like an officer’s commission, all engraved, with my name and outfit and telling what I’d done when I carried that order across the firing line. Best of all, it gives me a couple of bucks extra pay every month. I stuck it away in my chest and didn’t show it to any of the guys, although they knew I got it. You’re supposed to send them things to home to the people, so they can frame ’em and hang ’em up in the parlor, but I didn’t have no people or parlor either.
We hadn’t been in Russell more’n a month when Pretty shows up one morning missing. They calls his name for ten mornings at roll-call, and then they posts him as a deserter. It like to broke these guys that’d been so friendly to him all up, and you bet I was glad.
They caught him in a couple of weeks up in Rock Springs on a drunk, and they brings him back to Russell and slaps him in the general prison. He’s good for about eighteen months at the lowest, because the officers that had been so friendly to him shook him right away.
I was doing guard duty one day over a bunch of prisoners cleaning up quarters, and Pretty was one of ’em. I wasn’t paying much attention to any but him, watching him moving around in that brown suit with the big white P on his back, when all of a sudden he makes a break.
He must a-gone nutty. He didn’t have a chance in the world to get away. They told me he sai
d before he cashed in that he got wild having my eyes follow him around, but that’s rot. All I did, so help me, was just watch him, and I leave it to anyone if that should make him go bugs.
I hollered at him to halt three times. Then I aimed at him, meaning to hit him in the leg. His head kept bobbing in front of my sights, and he was getting further away all the time, so I had to let go. He dropped and laid there kicking around.
The whole barracks come running up, and I don’t remember much else, except that they relieved me and sent me to quarters.
None of the fellows would talk to me or tell me what was doing, but I heard someone say he was dead. I stayed in quarters all the next day, and no one came near me. If I’d walk up to some of the fellows they’d get up and move off, like they was afraid of me. The Cap come in towards evening and talked kind to me. He said I’d only done my duty, but that it would be best for me to be transferred, and they was going to send me to Plattsburg to join another regiment. That was all right with me. He told me to get my junk together and get ready to go right away.
It didn’t take me no time to pack. While I was throwing my stuff into my chest I came across that stiffycate of merit and shoved it in the inside pocket of my blouse.
I heard some of the fellows talking that night, and they spoke about “him,” so I knew they meant Pretty.
“His father and mother are coming in a special train from the East,” one of them said. “The top and four non-coms are going to take him to Denver and turn him over to them.”
No one even looked at me all this time.
Cap give me my transfer papers and transportation that night, and next morning I went to Cheyenne and got a train for Denver. Only the Cap said good-bye to me.
At Denver I missed the first train I was to take east, and hung around the depot all day. Along towards evening a train of just a baggage car and a Pullman pulled in while I was looking through the fence outside the depot. The Pullman blinds were down, and it looked so mournful and still that I had a hunch right away that it was Pretty’s folks. I was right, too. A gray-haired man, who moves around brisk and talks rough to the porters, gets off and helps a little old lady, all dressed in black, to the platform. You couldn’t see much of her face on account of a heavy veil, but you could tell by her eyes that she had been crying a lot.