And suddenly the center of interest shifted from the Cuban Island near at hand to the Philippines on the other side of the world. The front door of America that for four centuries had opened on the Atlantic ocean opened once and forever on Pacific waters. A new frontier receding ever before the footprint of the Anglo-American flung itself about the far-off island of the Orient with its old alluring call: Something lost behind the Ranges! Over Yonder! Go you there! And the Twentieth Kansas, under Colonel Fred Funston, broke camp and hurried to San Francisco to be ready to answer that call. Thaine Aydelot had never been outside of Kansas before. Small wonder that the mountains, the desert, the vinelands, and orchard-lands, and rose-lands of California, the half-orientalism of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean with its world-old mystery of untamed immensity should fill each day with a newer interest; or that the conditions of soldier life at Camp Merritt beside the Golden Gate, to which the eager-hearted, untrained young student from the Kansas prairie brought all his youthful enthusiasm and patriotism and love of adventure, should wound his spirit and test his power of self-control. Small wonder, too, that the Twentieth Kansas Regiment, poorly equipped, undrilled, and non-uniformed still, should make only a sorry showing among the splendid regiments mobilized there; or that to the big, rich City of San Francisco the ragged fellows from the prairies, who were dubbed the "Kansas Scarecrows," should become the byword and laughing stock among things military. One neglect followed another for the Kansas Twentieth. The poorest camping spot was their portion. The chill of the nights, the heat of the days oppressed them. The filth of their unsanitary grounds bred discomfort and disease. But no military favors were shown them, and the same old stupid jests and jibes of the ignorant citizen of the other states were repeated on the Pacific seaboard. When the thirtieth of May called forth the military forces in one grand parade the Twentieth Kansas was not invited to take part. For Thaine Aydelot, to whom Decoration Day was a sacred Sabbath always, this greatest of all indignities cut deep where a man's soul feels keenest. And when transport after transport sailed out of the San Francisco harbor, loaded with regiments for the Philippines, and still the Twentieth Kansas was left in idle waiting on the dreary sand lots of Camp Merritt and the Presidio reservation, the silent campaign that really makes a soldier was waged daily in Thaine and his comrades. "Don't complain, boys," Captain Clarke admonished his company. "We'll be ready when we are called, and that's what really counts."