I tried to remember the thrill of freedom I felt on the long walk to the base on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. It was only a few months previous, but I couldn't get that thrill back. In Camp Greenhorn I drilled and marched and marched and drilled and, in fact, learned more than I wanted to know about killing. There was a scandal we had to keep quiet about when one feller from my company died. But I learned how to stab scarecrows and march Regular and clean my buttons. But now, looking raggedly-patched as a scarecrow, I learnt the true duty of an Angry-Saxon army - to wield shovel angrily. So we Regulars assaulted the dirt.

I was thinking about old Hernani. It had been a few weeks since I had last seen him. That was back at Anaxagoras Crater, or "Annex Agonies" as we called it. The night before we got set to march south, I dreamed of my old rope swing. There I was swinging away over the crick, free as a buccaneer, when the rope stopped swinging properly. It was kind of shaky. I felt a hand shaking me. The owner of the hand coughed. It was Six-Fingers.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

"Shh - " he told me, looking guilty.

I sat up, wide-awake. "You got a girl somewheres?"

"Did you hear what happened to Hernani?"

I let out my breath. "What?"

He motioned with his head for me to follow him.

We snuck through the camp. To dodge a sentry, we tip-toed between our officer's big tents to the dragoons' camp; if we got caught wandering we were as like as not to get hog-tied and gagged for a day. Beside his master's tent, Old Socrates lifted his head from his blanket; I gave him a wink. He winked back and dropped his head.

Over by the south edge of the dragoon camp, behind the horses, I saw somebody standing on a barrel. I guessed who it was...

"Heck Hernani," I laughed, when we got close, "what are you standing on a barrel for in the middle of the night?"

Hernani looked at me. As he turned, I saw the sign hanging around his neck:

"Oh," I said, with a friendly chuckle. "Shoot, where'd you find enough firewater to get drunk on? You should have shared it with me!" Hernani didn't answer, so I asked Six-Fingers, "How long does he have to stand like that?"

Six-Fingers said, "All night. If he falls off, he gets the `H. D.' brand with a hot iron right on his cheek."

"Branded! Like a common criminal!" I said angrily. "How's he going to sleep, standing on a barrel like the Colossus of Rhodes?"

"Looks like he's sort of sleeping standing up, like a horse."

He was pretty stiff up there. "Hm! Where's the guard?"

"No guard. Machine." Six-Fingers pointed to the side of the barrel, where it read:

"I heard about it," Six-Fingers explained, "It's got a bell inside, and a weight on one side, so if Hernani gets off, the barrel tips over and the bell clangs. He's trying to sell his machine to the Army."

"Why do you have to stand there?" I asked Hernani.

Hernani still didn't answer.

"Yesterday he got in an argument with Lieutenant Fitzroy about the P. of T.; Hernani said Texas ended at the Nueces River, and that the Moon was the Moon's; Fitzroy said that any soldier who didn't think we must fulfill the destiny given us by Providence was DRUNK!..."

"I see," I said. "Say, Hernani, you look mighty tired. Why don't you come down and rest a spell? We'll look out for you."

"Jack, you get up on the barrel in case the sentries look this way," said Six-Fingers.

I shrugged, and took Hernani's hand and pulled him off the barrel; Six-Fingers held it steady so that the bell wouldn't clang. Then I took up his sign and jumped up on the barrel.

"Get him some water," I whispered.

"Right!"

Six-Fingers scurried off for a gourd.

Hernani sat with his back against his barrel. He dropped quickly asleep.

I thought about what it'd be like to get branded "H. D." on my cheek. What would the ladies think? I'd tell them it stood for, "Handsome Devil". But they'd probably think it meant, "Hell's Danged."

After a while, Hernani said, "I am ashamed."

"Oh heck," I assured him, "there ain't nothing wrong with being drunk, even a habitual drunk, - if you're a soldier, I mean."

"Swear to me you will keep a secret."

"I swear."

"No - you must swear by the blood of Thomas Jefferson!"

"What? Well, all right, if you say so... I swear by poor Tom Jefferson's blood...What's going on, Hernani? You got a girl somewheres?"

"I cannot fight these Moon people."

"Why not? You sick? I won't tell."

"I am a Catholic."

"So?"

He looked up at me and said, "Jack, these Moon people are Catholics."

"So? I hear they're kind of Catholic savages."

"Protestants are savages. I am not Protestant. I am Catholic, you fool!"

"So?"

"Shh! So nothing. You are a good fellow. You think about it, eh?"

I took that to mean that he wanted me to keep my mouth shut about him being one of them Catholics. Six-Fingers came back with some water. As Hernani drank, Six-Fingers and I took the bell out of the barrel and buried it in the dirt. Hernani asked if I wouldn't mind standing on the barrel for a half-hour or so, in case the sentries looked this way; he was just going for a walk to loosen his bones and wanted to be alone. If he wasn't back in a half-hour, we agreed to go back to our bedrolls and he'd get back to the barrel by-and-by. He shook my hand and said he was most grateful to me. A half-hour came and went without him.

The next evening I was surprised to hear that Hernani deserted. I figured he wanted to be a real Hernani himself. I hoped he'd forget the horn part.

In "Annex Agonies", a few weeks previous, I'd pitied the eight hundred farm boys skin-and-bone feverish, and left behind our glorious march. But now! - after that glorious march along the Timaeus Range, down to where Timmy's Promontory stretched far into the Mare Frigoris, or "Cold Sea" - now I envied them. I worked like a mule. I chopped dirt and sand while Old Glory snapped on top our earthworks. All them pretty little lunaritas, staring at us from the plaza of Plato, just across the Cold Sea, made me sweat worse of all. I longed to unbraid their long, dark hair, but my fingers were callused and dirty from my shovel, which helped heap up the walls of a fort, the cannon of which aimed straight at them. And had I not lifted up my hand and sworn an oath to my Constitution and my president? So here I was. (Besides, I had my eye on one of our camp girls, Sarah - same as five hundred other men.) "Say, Kelly," I asked, leaning on my shovel, "just why do the Army of Observation need a fort to do its observatin'? I figure we can do it easy from an observation balloon."

"We need to lend argument to the border as determined by Mr. Polk and the cartographers of the Democratic Party," speechified Kelly, taking the words from a penny-press editorial.

"To heck with Slow-Polk," said me. "Kelly, lend a hand with this here - this here - " (I was struggling - ) " - this boulder..." Kelly was a little too slow to help me, I thought. "Come on, there, Lieutenant! Why, you think you're a Beau Bremmer with that fifteen cents of gold braid!"

Kelly gave me a kick in the pants first, then helped me carry the rock to a wheelbarrow. Then he pulled out his Walter Scott, and studied the science of glory, his lips moving.

I was sunburnt, the sweat stinging my eyes, with scratches on my arms that might any minute swell up proud with gangrene. Yes, and I was half mad from drinking briny spring water under that relentless Baptist hell fire heat. The coldness of the Cold Sea left much to be desired. I licked my lips until they bled. Soon my tongue was parched like a hunk of leather left out in the sun. My toe-blisters grew blisters of their own that festered, so I couldn't out run that cloud of flies buzzing lovingly around my head. My back ached from shoveling, and I felt so tired I thought I would drop and add my corpse to the redoubt wall. It was hard to sleep with scorpions, snakes, banditos, lunaritas, and Sarahs crawling all over my dreams at night. However, I took solace in the fact that it was all for glory, which was, I guessed, about to begin at any moment. We heard a lot about Valley Forge from the officers.

Everything on the Moon - I mean, the Peninsula of Texas - bit, poisoned, and cut. Even the plants looked like rocks and scorpions - strange, bloated nettles. I longed for the soft pines and sweet- smelling dogwood of Maryland. Here on the P. of T., cactus barbs and mesquite thorns tore at my trousers below the knee. Let me tell you, cactus and mesquite are poor usurpers to the cool brethren of Pine. Show me a pine cone pillow, and a bed of sweet brown needles, and I will give you sweet dreams and a clear conscience.

We were already a ragged, sorry lot of Regulars, true summer heirs of the winter Valley Forge, having fallen into the forge-fire, I suppose. My blue sleeve split all along the seam - and that little rent was a sorry testament to the patriotism of the contractors. No, neighbor, I did not doubt the campaign, which I was certain would prove, before Christmas, a glorious one.

No, I blamed those perfidious New England manufacturers - every one of them a Hartford Conventioneer - who'd rather secede the Glorious Union than lose an ill-gotten profit with Martian mooners - I mean the John Bulls of Great Deimos.

So I durned the Yankees, danged the Tammany Hall barons, I cursed the Tory-lovers and kicked the next boulder right where it resembled Kelly's chin. I strangled the Wall Street swanks, squatting down and getting ahold of the big rock. I gritted my teeth at the Whigs and their tiresome nagging, as I lifted the boulder, and then dropped it down on top the Abolitionist wheelbarrow. "Let abolitionists work the plantations, then," I thought. "We soldiers are practically slaves, anyway."

Then I was hungry. It was Regular fare again:biscuit, beans, and grits. I nourished my labor with some bovine-flavored water, and for lunch fried a crawdad from the nation of mud. We were all tired from this work. "If I wanted to do this rail-road work," complained Six- Fingers, " - I'd wear my hair in a queue, or play bagpipes."

He was in a spleeny wicked humor much of the time, being the only Mormon around. His sleeve had a red "S" on it, showing that he was special, an aristocrat - a sharpshooter, the best shot among us Cotton Balers. But what a burden, being an aristocrat - He had to carry a long, skinny rifle that was even heavier than the rest of us myopics' noisemakers & bayonet-holders - I won't call `em muskets. They were Franklin sparklers, and that's about all. Old Zach put this trust in the bayonet electric charge, not the volley.

"Yeah?" I said. "Well I may be Loco, but glory's my motive."

"Back to work, Dough-Boys!" screamed Sergeant Mallory, who hated me because I hated him. It was he who made me a soldier, back at Camp Greenhorn.

Walking back to the shovels, I idly reached in my pocket and pulled out a note. It hadn't been there when I gave them to Sarah to fix and patch. I hoped the worst.

DEER JACK I JES WANTID TO SAY YU AR KEWTER THIN A SPOTID PUPEE DO YU LYK ME SARAH.

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