“Look!” he broke off, pointing to the nearer of the two drilling companies in strong disfavor. “See how those fellows are doing the ‘double!’ It’s a crime. That step will shake the backbones out of them and knock out their strength and ginger in half a mile. What fool of a drillmaster is that, anyhow, not to teach them to come down on the ball of the foot when they double? They’re as flat-footed as a batch of Digger Indians. Why, down in Mexico, we could keep at the double for three miles without getting winded.” “And didn’t the greasers who were chasing you get winded either?” asked Jimmie in ponderous innocence. Dad pulled one of the boy’s outstanding ears with finely simulated fury, grinning broadly in spite of himself at the pert question. “No, son,” he said. “It was the other way around. The best army will have to run sometimes. But down there, under Zach Taylor, it just happened that we did all our running forward. Even at Buena Vista, where they were five to our one. “Lad, I’ll never forget that day while there’s a wheeze of breath left in me. We woke up in the morning after a big rain. We were all sopping and chilled. And we found the greasers had made a forced march, and that they’d hemmed us in the big hacienda where we were camped. They had us right in the hollow of their hands. Five to one. And all the advantage of position, too, do you see? “Old Uncle Zach was sitting on a soap-box in front of his tent, trying to mow a week’s beard with a dull razor. He was barefoot, and in a pair of butternut pants and a red undershirt. Up rides a tailor’s dummy of a Mexican adjutant, under a flag of truce. Looked as if he’d been born in a bandbox. He salutes, haughty like, and asks: “‘Do I address El Comandante Zaccaria Taylor?’ “‘Uh-huh’ grunts Taylor, scraping away hopeless like at his stiff gray stubble. “‘The illustrious Generalissimo Santa Anna bids me say to you,’ goes on the tailor’s dummy, ‘that you are irretrievably in his power.’ “‘All right,’ says Uncle Zach, tugging at his razor. ‘Let him come along, then, and get me, if that’s the case. I’m right here.’ “Half an hour later they charged us. It looked like a million-to-one shot, with no takers. Along toward afternoon, when we’d been fighting till we were half-dead, a staff officer said to me: “‘Taylor’s been beaten to a standstill no less than three times to-day!’ “‘Yes,’ said I, grinning back at him; ‘but he doesn’t know it.’ “And no more he did. By night the Mexican army was smashed like a basket of eggs that have fallen under a road roller. “That’s the whole secret, son--not to know when you’re licked. Maybe a man can put up as pretty a fight, in his own way, right here at home, as if he were riding a white horse and waving a thirty-dollar sword. I’m going to try to, anyhow.” “If it’s good enough for you, Dad,” sighed the boy, “I guess it’s good enough for me. We’ll make a try at it, anyhow.”