CHAPTER XVI HOT WORDS

“What’ll we do with our old suits?” asked Ned, as, with his chums, he walked toward the clothing department, a store in itself.

“They go into the discard,” answered Bob, who, it seems, had been making inquiries. “I suppose we can send ’em home and have ’em kept for us until after the war.”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” declared Ned. “This is a good suit, though it looks a bit mussy now. I’m not going to throw it away.”

“You might as well,” put in Jerry.

“Why so? This war may not last as long as we think,” Ned made comment. “And suits, and everything else, will be a lot higher after it’s over. Might as well save what I can. Don’t see why it won’t do me any good.”

“Because it won’t fit you,” Jerry returned. “Don’t you know what our captain told us? He said the new uniforms we get will hang on some of us like bags for a while, but when we fill out our muscles by the exercise and drill, we’ll fill out the uniforms, too.

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“Now your tailor, Ned, and I will say he is a good one, made your civilian suit to fit you. In other words he favored you. He padded the hollow places and so on. But in a couple of months you’ll fill out so that the suit you’re wearing now will look like a set of hand-me-downs from the Bowery in New York.”

“Well, I’ll send it home, anyhow,” decided Ned.

“Yes, it may come in handy for your mother’s charity work,” agreed Jerry.

Before going to the tailor shop, Ned, Bob, and Jerry, with others of the recruits, were measured. These measurements were standardized, so that when each young man went in to get his uniform, the officer in charge merely called off a certain number to designate coat, trousers, hat and so on.

The first outfit issued to the boys consisted of one coat, a pair of trousers, a hat, with cord, three pairs of drawers, two pairs of laces, a pair of leggings, a set of ornaments, an overcoat, two flannel shirts, two pairs of shoes, six pairs of socks, a belt, a pair of gloves and three undershirts. The value of each article was set down and varied from a hat cord, marked as worth six and a half cents, to an overcoat, which cost the government $14.50, making a total of about $45 for each young soldier. For this, of course, Ned, Bob, and Jerry paid nothing. A private gets his uniform[127] and food for nothing, but an officer has to buy his.

“Return to barracks and get into your uniforms for inspection,” was the order the boys received, and they were glad to do it. There were some, like Ned, who sent their civilian clothes home to be used as parents saw fit, and there was a general opinion, coinciding with Jerry’s, that they would be of little use to the owners themselves after their army service, for the young men would, indeed, be of different physical appearance and size.

“Well, how do I look?” asked Ned, as he and his two chums finished dressing in the barracks.

“It fits you sort of quick,” answered Jerry.

The new uniform was, in truth, a trifle loose.

“Yours fits the same way,” laughed Ned. “I guess I’ll do a double stunt of exercise to fill out quicker.”

“Bob looks good in his,” commented the tall motor boy. “It’s because he’s so fat. When he loses some of his flesh he’ll look as though he was wearing a meal sack.”

“Watch your own step,” said Bob, with a laugh. “I’m satisfied.”

There were jokes and jests among the recruits about the appearance of one another, and when Pug Kennedy walked out on the way to drill, to[128] which the squad was summoned, Jerry called to him:

“You’ve got your hat cord on backwards, old man.”

It was not that Jerry felt any particular liking for Michael Kennedy, to give him his real name, but the tall lad did not want any member of his squad to look unmilitary, nor did he want a reprimand to be directed toward Pug, as it might reflect on his companions. But Pug Kennedy was still in an ungracious mood, it seemed, for he answered Jerry’s well-meant remark with:

“Mind your own business! It’s my hat cord.”

“True enough,” agreed Jerry, good-naturedly; “but it may not be long, if you wear it that way.”

“Um!” grunted Pug, as he went out. But Ned took notice that, as soon as he was out of sight around the corner of the barracks, the bully put the cord on differently. It was a light blue cord, and indicated to those who knew the regulations, that the man under the hat belonged to the infantry, or foot-soldier, branch of the army.

The cavalry wear yellow cords on their hats; and the artillery, red. The engineers have a red and white mixed cord; the signal corps, orange and white; the medical corps, maroon; and the quartermaster corps, buff.

In addition there are certain ornaments on the collars of the coats to distinguish the different[129] branches of the service. The infantry wear crossed rifles, the cavalry crossed sabers, the field artillery crossed cannon, the engineers a castle, like the castle in a set of chessmen, the signal corps crossed flags with a torch between, the quartermaster corps wheel with a pen and sword crossed and an eagle surmounting, while the members of the medical corps wear something that looks like an upright bar with wings at the top and two snakes twining around it. This is a caduceus, and is a form of the staff usually associated with the god Mercury. The word comes from the Doric and means to proclaim, literally a herald.

“He took your advice, Jerry,” announced Ned, when he saw what Pug Kennedy had done.

“Glad he did. He might have been a little more polite about it, though. I wish he was in some other squad, but I suppose there’s no use trying to graft him somewhere else. We’ll just have to make the best of him.”

“Or the worst,” added Bob.

In their new uniforms the recruits went through the drill, and it could not be denied that now there was a little more snap to it. It was more inspiring to see men all dressed alike doing something in unison than to watch the same company going through motions, one in a brown suit, another in a green and a third in a blue.

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The drill was hard, and it never seemed to end. When one stopped, there was only a brief rest period, and then came another. But it was necessary, and the boys were beginning to feel that.

“I wonder what the folks at home would think if they could see us now?” asked Ned, as their respite came.

“Well, I guess they wouldn’t be ashamed of us,” replied Jerry.

“I should say not!” declared Bob, smoothing out some imaginary wrinkles. “I think we look all to the mustard!”

“Or cheese!” chuckled Ned. “Come on—there goes mess call,” he added, for it was noon, and time for dinner.

As it was Friday there was chowder as the main dish. There were fried fish, candied sweet potatoes, green peas, fruit pudding, mustard pickles, bread and coffee. It was a plentiful meal, and several made a trip to the kitchen for a second helping.

Bob was one of these, and it was when he was walking back to his place at the long table that something happened which nearly caused considerable trouble.

Bob was carrying his filled plate in one hand, and his cup of coffee in the other, when, as he passed the bench where Pug Kennedy was sitting, some one bumped into the stout lad, jostling his[131] arm, and the coffee—or part of it—went down Pug’s back.

Up the bully sprang with a howl, though the coffee was not hot enough to burn him.

“Who did that?” he demanded, wrathfully.

There was no need to answer. The attitude of Bob, standing directly back of Pug, with the half-emptied cup in his hand and the queer look on his face, told more plainly than words that he was the guilty one.

“Oh, so it’s you again, is it, you sneak!” and Pug fairly snarled the words.

“What do you mean?” demanded Bob, justly angry.

“I mean that you’re trying to make trouble for me again—like the time when you accused me of stealing your crullers. You’re trying to spoil my uniform so I’ll get a call-down. I’ll fix you for this!”

“It was an accident,” insisted Bob. “Some one ran against me, and——”

“Accident my eye!” sneered Pug. “I’ll accident you! I’ll punch you good and proper, that’s what I’ll do!” he yelled, and he leaped back over the bench-seat and advanced toward Bob who stepped back.

A fight was imminent.