Apart from these the Sixteenth is a “married” regiment, and when orders dropped from a seemingly placid sky, sending the command to the Mexican border, fifteen hundred miles away, with two hours’ notice, no one took thought of how this might affect the officers of the bachelors’ mess, and least of all Swinnerton.
At the railroad spur, where three long troop-trains lay puffing amid a debris of ammunition- and ration-cases, forage-bales, saddles, and equipment; where a regiment of soldiers swarmed, tugging and heaving supplies upon the train, leading, cajoling, and forcing frightened troop-horses up the heavy ramps to the crowded stock-cars; where sergeants swore and fretted, and orderlies ran about with belated orders for the officers who were devoting the between-times of all this to saying good-by to more or less numerous families, no one had eyes for Swinnerton. And eyes that might have seen him would not have been believed. For, fancying himself hidden behind a pile of canvas-bales of medical supplies, he was holding the two hands of a gravely beautiful girl, gazing into her tear-dimmed eyes and telling her in a hoarse and earnest voice that there was no danger, anyway, that all this could not possibly mean war, and that if it did, he, as a non-combatant, would keep well to the rear and safely out of harm’s way; that partings made no difference, anyway, so long as he loved her and she loved him, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.
The shock to the Sixteenth’s credulity would not have been altogether that Swinnerton was trying to cut a serious figure; it would have sprung from the fact that the hands he was holding were those of Mary Smith--_the_ Mary Smith, the regiment called her, because every youngster in the three-regiment post of Fort Robertson had vainly dreamed the dream that absurd little Swinnerton was here actually living, and which to him was no dream at all.
That night when the lights were on in the officers’ Pullman, the Incorrigibles were sitting in the smoking-compartment over a last pipe, and Fredericks said:
“No use talking, war or no war, these sudden trapesings to the antipodes are bad for family life--blamed bad, and I’m glad I’m not in it. Go to it, Swinney; but for Heaven’s sake don’t be irreverent. It’s no time for it.”