Captain George
Wallace, of the 7th Cavalry; Lieutenant Mann, of the same regiment, and
Lieutenant Ned Casey, of the 22nd Infantry, left places in the ranks of
the officers 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.
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