The Weber Literary Journal was free and flowed freely. Yellow girls of unbelievable beauty literally threw themselves at him. His money was useless. Surely this was like heaven. Not such a bad old army after all! But the experienced M. P. knows where to search for missing black soldiers. Two days later the summary court martial presented Sherm with "30-30", that is to say, thirty days and thirty dollars. Sherm did not like the guard house; but he loved red liquor and yellow girls more than he feared imprisonment. The "brig" really was not so bad in those days. Most of the guard had been there themselves; hence, were kindly and sympathetic. They would slip a boy cigarettes, and let him smoke when the non-coms weren't around. They cared little how much he soldiered on fatigue. So Sherm became a confirmed inmate of the guardhouse. He became a stock joke. "Where's Sherm?" a corporal would ask at guard mount. "Oh, he's out on furlough. He'll be back in a day or so," old Sergeant Stanger would answer with a grin. And Sherm never disappointed them. He always turned up in a few days with another thirty or sixty to do, good-naturedly accepting his sentence as the inevitable consequence of a good time. Then came the war. The veterans of the guard grew with the army. They became top-sergeants, sergeant-majors, and even commissioned officers. The old provost-sergeant added two bars to his chevrons and moved to the headquarters building. The old guard gave place to the new raw recruits, some of whom were good fellows, some conscientious and self-conscious, some conscientious and tyrannical, and all ignorant of guard-house traditions and customs. They took their instructions literally. And life became a burden for Sherm Powell. Even the occasional interval of liberty between sentences became dull and prosaic. They took away his beautiful blue uniform and gave him the regulation olive-drab with black brass buttons. They gave him an ugly, olive-drab campaign hat instead of his proud, shiny-visored blue cap. All his old resorts in the city he found filled with arrogant yellow niggers who seemed to have money to burn. Nobody noticed him now. Sorrowfully, alone, he would drink himself into a stupid, weeping state of drunkenness. And then on this last occasion the depths of degradation he was escorted back to camp by a deputy sheriff. 12 The Weber Literary Journal Pinched by a civilian! He had not only overstayed a normal leave, but, as a matter of fact, he had had no leave at all. There was no justice tempered with tolerance and understanding in the court now. The court made a platitudinous speech about patriotism, honor of the flag, safety of the nation, and so forth. He sentenced Sherm to ninety days at hard labor and regretted that he could not make it Leavenworth or a firing squad. Sherm's dislike for the army revived with new intensity. Everything seemed to go wrong. His resentment smouldered a constant, formless, objectless rebellion against nothing in particular, but against everything in general. There was no joking with the guard these days, no friendly banter, no surreptitious cigarette smoking while out on detail nothing but abuse. These damned rookies treated him as if he were a jail-bird! him, a veteran of two years' service, and they, contemptible raw-mouthed John-recruits. Upon these guards his hatred became fixed as upon the nearest, most tangible source of his discontent. Sherm was quiet enough, and obedient. He never showed open revolt. His surliness was taken for stolidity. True, he had sixty days more time to serve, and he had served many sentences. But his worst offense had been absence without leave. So the provost sergeant had no hesitancy in assigning him to the wood-cutting detail. It was a damp, foggy October morning when Sherm and his mate answered their guard's call, "Step out." They marched to the Q. M. stores for axes, thence to the woods half a mile from camp. There were nine men in the detail, three pairs of prisoners and three guards who were armed with empty rifles, bayonets fixed. Now the bayonet is a deadly weapon but so is an axe. The safety of the venture depended on the fact that the prisoners were quiet, reliable fellows doing short terms for minor offenses. Still this sort of detail would never have been sent out in the days before the war. The old-timers did not believe in exposing prisoners to temptation. The party scattered to the work of felling trees. Sherm and his mate had just brought down a large oak. Before starting the work of trimming, Sherm paused to rest. He leaned on his axe-handle and gazed through the woods out over the wide expanse of the Mississippi. Just across there, he idly thought, runs the Cotton Belt. Fellow might swim that river, grab a rattler, and almost be home in time for supper tomorrow night. 13