A BRAVE DESERTER.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 13, 12 February 1907, Page 6

A BRAVE DESERTER.

BY BDWARO 11. CLARK. “What’e that you say?” said Sergt. Toole, as he kicked the snow off his boots and sat jdown by the fire in the little wooden shack that did duty for barracks. “You say there never was any good in a deserter? Well, you’ve misocd it by just one, and have madi a four instead of a bull’s eye. Didn't you ever hear tell of Jim Benson, of ‘l’ troop, oi the Twelfth? Jim was a deserter, so Wash ington people said, but Jim loved the flag and his duty to it better than nine-tenths of the fellows who serve their full 30 years and then get let out with Uncle Sam’s thanks and a email bit of money every month for life. “What made him desert? Well, what should make an old soldier desert but a woman? Some poet or other once told about a fellow who had been tempted all kinds of ways. Money couldn’t get him; glory couldn't get him; nothin’ could get him, So all the wise ones thought, and slit got him, or, as the verse slinger put it, ‘woman tempted and he fell/ “Jim was in the service 25 years before he struck his flag to a petticoat. Like all those fellows, when he got hit he was hit so bad that none of your surgeons who are up in matters of sentiment could probe and gel out the bullet, or perhaps I’d better say arrow, for that’s the kind of ammunition the liltle chap who shot Jim uses. You see, Jim was nigh onto 50 when he got his sights fixed and held on to this pretty young creature with blonde hair, blue eyes and pink cheeks. It’s always the way with the old fellows, when they get stuck on something young. It goes hard with them. You see. the girl had heard how it was that Jim had always been steady, had never seen the inside of 'the mill' except as a member of the guard, and, moreover, how he had $4,000 drawing four per cent, with the paymaster. “Jim always went into a fight to win, and he got on to the track of that girl and hung to it just as he did to the Kid’s trail down in the Apache country when T troop was chasing that red devil through the Arizona hell. The girl led Jim for a while coquettish like, just to make sure of him, I guess. I don't suppose she ever cared a rap for lum, but she was of a kind to whom Jhn's little pot of and his retired pay meant a heap. “Jim wasn’t any beauty. He looked like one of this artist fellow Remington’s picture# of u# fellows. All muscle and hone, but as thin as the company cook's soup when the beef doesn’t show up. Moreover, Jim had a scar on his face that was deep enough to drop a Springfield cartridge in. He got it along with a medal of honor when he was trying to save a kid trumpeter from being gobbled up by the Sioux out on the Rosebud. The medal of honor didn’t mean Anything to that girl. It might to some who wear skirts, but not to one of her kind. “Well, finally we all thought that Jim had cpraled her all right. It was given out that the Twelfth's chaplain was going to have a job tying the two up. None of the boys congratulated Jim too hearty, because most of them had sized the affair up right, and wouldn’t have it that the girl was good enough for Jim Benson. She might be all right for a rookie, but not for an old fellow who had seen more campaigns than the girl had years. I ought to have told you before that this particular petticoat was visiting at the post. She came from down lowa way somewhere.

One night she gave it out that she was going home, and that Jim must go down there for the splicing. cleared out, and in a few days after the old fellow gets a furlough and clears out, too, following the trail, as we heard after, way down to lowa. Now, you must just get hold of this fact.. Jim was kind of a pious chap, but he loved the flag better than any Bible that was ever printed, but for a short time that girl was above the flag. Jim was just crazy for her. The story is that she wouldn’t come back, and wouldn’t marry him unless he quit the army then and there. Jim tried to quit through the regular red tape channels, but they Wouldn't have it down in Washington. "Jim Benson, veteran, medal of honor man, fighter in a hundred fights, lover of hk flag aftd country, and as good a soldier as ever wore quartermaster's shoes, deserted, and deserted for a petticoat. 1 forgot to say that Jim got his wad of money from the paymaster before his leave was up. “There was another desertion inside offci month after Jim quit the colors. This time a woman did the deserting, though & fellow helped her to do it, and along with the woman and the fellow went Jim’s money. I don’t suppose during the honeymoon the full force of what he had done went home to the bull’s eye with Jim. It went home, however, when the girl quit. Jim wanted to be reinstated in the service. He was willing to take the heaviest penalty for absence without leave, but he knew now how it felt to be a deserter, and more than that, he remembered how all good soldiers despise a fellow who quits. "Jim’s heart was clean broke. He got in Bommunication with his old captain somehow, and he tried to work the thing through the department for Jim, but there’d been a heap of desertions about that time, and despite Jim’s medal and his 25 years with nary i 'blind' nor a day in ‘the mill' against him, the honorable, the secretary of war said if Jim was caught he must take his medicine. "It was rumored around old Fort Johnton that Jim had been seen on the edge of the woods looking at the old place and seeming kind of wildlike. One night one of the old quartermaster shades got on fire. It was just before target practice season,’and the building had a dozen big boxes of ammunition in it. There was a pretty stiff wind slowing, and it looked as if the barracks tnd a lot of other things would go. If that stuff had exploded the other buildings would hare gone sure. The fire was fairly eating around those boxes and the fellows fought shy of the flames a little, good soldier stuff though they were. "All at once while the crowd was bearing back somebody jumped clean through the line and plump into the (ire. He grabbed a box and threw it out clear of the blane, and then another and another, though the flames were burning his clothes and going up wreathlike about his head. "When he had done the business clean and good the man jumped out of the flames and ran to the woods. Well, I guess yo» know who it was. It was Jim Benson. Vft found him dead next day in a thicket, but the curious part of the matter was that Jim’s body was wrapped in an old garrison flag that had been pinned about him by the last effort of those poor burned hands. Jim 'thought, you see, that, deserter though be was, if he did this they might bury him with the flag. "Did they do It? Yes, and gave him the regulation three rounds over the grave and the best prayer that the old chaplain knew how to pray. "Boys, I’ve I've only got one year before I retire, but is sure as drill call sounds in decent weather I’m going to fight shy of petticoate till the next 12 months are up.”—-Chicago RecordHerald.