“That’s the hero-talk,” approved his grandfather. “We’ll be General Jimmie and Colonel Dad. And each evening we’ll have a military conference, and report to each other the day’s victories and reverses. Let’s see if we can’t make it a line of victories as unbroken as Uncle Zach’s, down in Mexico. The crowd won’t be cheering us; but something clear down inside of us will. Shall we try?” The boy drew himself up at attention. “I approve your plan, colonel!” he rasped out, military fashion. “It is worthy of the man who helped Uncle Zach lick the greasers. We’re going to win out on this campaign. Take your post, sir, and report to me this evening.” CHAPTER VII LEFT BEHIND Main Street was alive with bunting and with multicolored dresses. Across the thoroughfare hung banners. Flags were draped from window to window. The sidewalks were jammed with people whose attire was gay and whose faces were sad. From the square at last came the fife-and-drum notes of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” The Ideala Cornet Band took up the strains--half a beat behind. The waiting sidewalk crowds massed to the curb; and Ideala’s twelve policemen were sore put to it to maintain the lines. Down Main Street, from the square, toward the river wharf where they were to embark for Columbus, marched Ideala’s two recruit companies. The uniforms were new--glaringly new--and as ill fitting as cheap government contract’s ingenuity could make them. One hundred and ninety-four men, their muskets shouldered, their backs galled by the unwonted chafing of new haversacks, their feet already flinching from the harsh caress of loose army shoes, strode eastward between the double lines of spectators. The men were still painfully conscious of themselves and their aspect. The art of keeping step was still new to them. Wherefore they walked--not marched--with stiff bodies and compass legs. Such of them as might survive would march home with a mile-eating swing of leg and body, and with a gait that involved the maximum of speed to the minimum of effort. But only months of campaigning could teach them that motion. As the foremost rank turned into Main Street a thousand waving handkerchiefs caught the sunlight. A great, ragged cheer went up. A cheer to which wet-eyed, flushed women lent a shrill treble sub-tone. The procession had scarce covered two hundred yards when it came to a shuffling and unsteady halt. Something blocked its path. Something that seemed to have the right of way. Debouching from a side street, and crossing Main Street to the opposite egress, crept a hearse, dourly resplendent in its sable panoply of plume and polished glass. Behind moved a line of musty black coaches filled with folk in mourning. The single touch of color was a little half-masted American flag carried by a crape-hatted foot mourner at the extreme rear of the cortège.