Chapter 5

CHAPTER V - GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES

She has been with us a good nice long time, now. You are troubled
about your sprite because this is such a wild frontier, hundreds of
miles from civilization, and peopled only by wandering tribes of
savages? You fear for her safety? Give yourself no uneasiness
about her. Dear me, she's in a nursery! and she's got more than
eighteen hundred nurses. It would distress the garrison to suspect
that you think they can't take care of her. They think they can.
They would tell you so themselves. You see, the Seventh Cavalry
has never had a child of its very own before, and neither has the
Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers, they think
there is no other child like theirs, no other child so wonderful,
none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked after
and protected. These bronzed veterans of mine are very good
mothers, I think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they let
her take lots of risks, and it is a good education for her; and the
more risks she takes and comes successfully out of, the prouder
they are of her. They adopted her, with grave and formal military
ceremonies of their own invention - solemnities is the truer word;
solemnities that were so profoundly solemn and earnest, that the
spectacle would have been comical if it hadn't been so touching.
It was a good show, and as stately and complex as guard-mount and
the trooping of the colors; and it had its own special music,
composed for the occasion by the bandmaster of the Seventh; and the
child was as serious as the most serious war-worn soldier of them
all; and finally when they throned her upon the shoulder of the
oldest veteran, and pronounced her "well and truly adopted," and
the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it
was better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on
the stage, because stage things are make-believe, but this was real
and the players' hearts were in it.

It happened several weeks ago, and was followed by some additional
solemnities. The men created a couple of new ranks, thitherto
unknown to the army regulations, and conferred them upon Cathy,
with ceremonies suitable to a duke. So now she is Corporal-General
of the Seventh Cavalry, and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons,
with the privilege (decreed by the men) of writing U.S.A. after her
name! Also, they presented her a pair of shoulder-straps - both
dark blue, the one with F. L. on it, the other with C. G. Also, a
sword. She wears them. Finally, they granted her the SALUTE. I
am witness that that ceremony is faithfully observed by both
parties - and most gravely and decorously, too. I have never seen
a soldier smile yet, while delivering it, nor Cathy