It was black smoke and lead When the skirmish lines spread With the Springfield that conquered the West--West, West! With the hard-fighting arm of the West! [Illustration: 036] A GARRISON CHRISTMAS |NOW, all you homesick rookies who are blue on Christmas Day, Though bunked in pleasant barracks, come listen to my lay! When you're stationed snug at Flagler, Leavenworth, or Hampton Roads, Where the postman three times daily brings your Christmas cheer in loads, What ground have you for kicking? You would glorify your fate If you'd been in old Fort Buford on Christmas, '68! Just a bunch of squatty cabins built of cottonwoods and clay With roofs of sod and sedge-grass and windows stuffed with hay, And when the winter blizzards came howling overhead And we couldn't reach the timber, we burned our bunks, instead, While, camped around the gullies, lay five hundred Sioux in wait; That's how we stood at Buford on Christmas, '68! We were out beyond the border a thousand miles or more, A wilderness of drifting snows behind us and before; Just a bunch of U. S. doughboys, hollow-eyed from march and fight, For you bet we all kept busy with Sitting Bull in sight, And our old buzz-saw he'd captured never let us sleep too late When he used it as a war-drum around Christmas, '68! I remember well that morning, it was twenty-four below, With a bright sun striking crystals from the endless fields of snow. We had finished with our breakfast of beans and bacon-fat, When someone cried, "Look yonder, along the bluffs! What's that?" We looked, then cheered like demons. The mail-guard, sure as fate! A welcome sight, I tell you, on Christmas, '68! They ploughed in through the snow-drifts across the barrack-yard, Their fur caps rimmed with hoar-frost, their horses breathing hard. They bore orders from headquarters, but we soldiers bade them hail Because they'd brought us, also, our sacks of Christmas mail. We had never hoped till springtime to have that precious freight; Was it strange it raised our spirits on Christmas, '68? We crowded in a corner around old Sergeant "Jack"-- A Santa Claus in chevrons with a mail-bag for his pack-- And with horse-play, yells, and laughter we greeted every flight As he called the names and fired them their bundles left and right. For some there came no tokens, but they kept their faces straight And smiled at others' fortune on Christmas, '68. "Tom Flint!" A woollen muffler from his sister back in Maine. "James Bruce!" His father'd sent him a silver watch and chain. "Hans Goetz!" A flute and song-book from the far-off Baltic's shore. "George Kent!" A velvet album from his folks in Baltimore. And how we cheered the pictures from the girls in every State To their sweethearts in the army, on Christmas, '68! "Fred Gray!" A sudden silence fell on that noisy place. Poor Fred lay in the foot-hills with the snow above his face.