His Rusty Trifle Paul Sand Y THE sardonic fortunes of war Lance Corporal Leonard and Sergeant Gyp Ross were assigned to the same target on that last day of record firing. For six weeks the First Battalion had been grovelling in biting and red-hot dust, pursuing the course laid down by Rifle Marksmanship. That the sun rising over the Texas hills should find the Kilkenny Cats standing together on the firing point before Target Number One was passing wonderful and amusing. For Gyp Ross hated Leonard with all the dislike capable of a seven-striper for a cocky lance corporal; Leonard in return held the older man in the contempt characteristic of irreverent youth. But it was more complicated than that. One complication was the possibility that Leonard might, if he enjoyed the luck that had attended his first season's shooting, depose the veteran from the supremacy in B Company's marksmanship. "Old timer," said the lance corporal, as he blackened his sights, "don't go 'way talkin' to yerself because you can't hit nothin' standin' up. Take my 'dvice an' jerk yer trigger as the target goes by. Maybe they'll give you some o' the bull's-eyes I make." "Pipe down, recruit!" "An', Sergeant, don't be scared o' yer rifle. Hold it tight and it won't hurt you. Besides, remember the Captain said where a man had missed too many transports it would be all right to throw rocks or close in wit' the bayonet.' "Squee down! Squee down!" snapped the other. "You couldn't hit the water if you fell out of a boat." Nevertheless, Leonard left the 200yard firing point with 42 points against his senior's 40. Gyp kept sullen silence. Back of the line were dozens of men keenly alive to the results on Target Number One. Over and above the rivalry between these two members of B Company was the honor of the company-not to mention the cash prizes donated by the officers: $50 for the highest individual score in the battalion; $30 for the second; $20 for the third; beside several smaller prizes in each company. O'Connor, Heinie Smith, and Spud Englehart, all of C Company, had already set a stiff pace by making respectively 313, 305, and 303; and their claim to the three big prizes was endangered now only by Sergeant Ross and Lance Corporal Leonard. Though both were expected to clear the 293 points required for "Expert Rifleman,' "Expert Rifleman," with the extra pay, coveted badge, and seven-day furlough appertaining thereto, it was the subject of much dispute and financial investment whether either would displace Company C's brilliant trio, especially O'Connor. It must be confessed that as Lance Corporal Leonard aligned his sights, breathed deeply, took in the slack, etc., in strict accord with Rifle Marksmanship, in his heart there were thoughts other than the honor of the company, even other than his desire to defeat the rival at his elbow. Leonard's thoughts were mercenary-he wanted that $50. His motives, however, were sentimental and honorable. And this brings us to the major complication in his antipathy for Gyp Ross. Ross had a sister. Her name, believe it or not, was Betsy. She was young enough to be his daughter, and pretty enough to be entirely unrelated to him. She cooked and attended to the other needs of the dingy little flat. on Overland Street that Gyp called his "apartments." Even the patched gingham and severe turban of housework could not entirely hide her bloom and grace. Gyp, a fairly devoted. brother, took her to the Company's Christmas Dinner, and Recruit Leonard-for such he then was-forthwith became enamored, much to Gyp's sincere and unconcealed disgust. The sergeant fondly supposed that his evinced displeasure constituted a defilade against the impudent social aspirations of the ambitious Leonard; but matters had gone much further than he dreamed. Up until the time O'Connor surprised the battalion by showing that 313 was not impossible, Leonard, with the amazing confidence of youth, considered that $50 as good as his. He told Betsy so, and suggested that this windfall, coming, as it would, synchronously with a week's furlough, would afford one chance in a million to give brother Gyp the surprise of his varied career, by eloping. Leonard had a fluent tongue and a happy, boyish manner, which alone have won more critical damsels than Elizabeth Ross. She had accepted his proposal, or as he would have phrased it, "faded him." O'Connor's score had altered matters, and Ross (0, irony of fate!) might upset them entirely. Second place would not do; $30 was not enough; and third place was out of the question. If he failed, he knew not where to beg or borrow the required difference, especially at this time of the month. All plans had been made to leave that night. He could not admit failure to Betsy. He could not disappoint her. Besides, he wanted to get married, himself. Despite the care and precision with which he fired, Leonard could not maintain his lead over Ross. When they had completed the slow fire, the two were tie. "Here's where I leave you, Sarge," commented the lance corporal as the assemblage picked its way through rocks, cactus and greasewood to the 200-yard line for rapid fire. "Here's where me rusty trifle steps out and spread-eagles the field.' "Yeah," was the sergeant's rejoinder, "ain't you the goofy what made the crack that rapid fire is the same as slow, except you don't aim? Oh, yeah! You'll be leavin' me, but you'll be standin' still at the same time." Ross fired first. He pumped nine bullets into the silhouette, but all too slowly, for he failed to get the tenth in before the target disappeared. At that range 45 is a disappointing score, and the air was tinged with the profanities of French, Spanish, Tagálog, and the Mother Tongue. Oil had splashed back into his eye, the sergeant finally con veyed, and he couldn't aim readily. Leonard smiled derisively. "Alibi Ike!" he jibed, and (curse his impudence!) made every shot good. Ross finally subsided, but at three hundred yards Leonard increased his lead to seven points by making 48 to the other's 46. The crowd behind scrawled computations on the ammunition boxes: Leonard, 276; Ross, 269. And 50 possible points to go. Gyp needed 45 to beat O'Connor, and prayed for a miracle. He made 46. Leonard grit his teeth hard. He needed only 38 to beat O'Connor, only 40 to beat Ross. The way he had been shooting today it looked easy. It looked too easy. In fact, it looked so easy that the unseasoned Leonard felt in his bones that something was going to happen; and as is frequently the case, something did happen. It must have been while he was loading his second clip-at least he didn't rotice it until he fired his sixth shothis sight leaf slide had slipped down. In a frenzy of haste he attempted to readjust it, his fingers twitching, his slide stubbornly refusing to obey him. Finally he succeeded in setting it, but only in time for a few wild shots. Bitterness consumed his heart as he watched his shot group appear. had scored 28. He derstand, these birds. They couldn't. He had to have money. He was flat. He must get $50, or at least $40-somewhere. Only for an instant did he entertain the ridiculous plan of borrowing it from his successful rivals. He wondered if he might entice them into a game of black jack, or red dog, or some other colorful and possibly profitable negotiation. But this required capital. He had not so much as a ruble, and his credit matched his cash to the penny. He spent the afternoon walking among the rocky hills. He jabbed his toes severely into the ground, fighting the realization that he was utterly at a loss to help himself. Of course, the distant and dispassionate reader would very sensibly postpone the affair to some more solvent occasion, but you can't do that with a girl's wedding. It's too ticklish, somehow. You may not get away with it no matter how much (or how little) she loves you. The lance corporal went back to mess, ate his food unconsciously, without a change in his financial rating. The orange sun sank behind a jumble of purple clouds; the scrubby yellow of the desert hills softened to a grayish green, then ripened to a deep purple under a diamond-studded sky. But to Leonard it was night, physical and knocked hesitantly. Betsy opened the door. She was dressed in a neat coatsuit of blue and a distinctly honeymoonish straw hat. She carried a small satchel. Leonard's heart shrank from his distasteful task. "Bets, we got to call it off. I hate to-but I'm broke. Things went wrong today, and I-I didn't win a cent. I thought maybe Gyp would 'a' told you." The girl's smile broadened goodnaturedly. "Poor li'l boy! Is that all you're worried about? You're the gay provider, ain't you? Well, I was interested in this elopement myself, an' I ain't so dumb as I look. I said to myself, you're young, an' somethin' might gc wrong when you shoot with these fellows like Gyp that's been in the Army ever since they used bows an' arrows. So I figured it out, an' I said to myself, if you don't win the fifty, maybe Gyp will. Or if you only win the thirty, maybe Gyp'll win the twenty, or vicy versy. So I put up a wail to Gyp about needin' a lot o' new clothes, an' lettin' on he was sure to win the fifty, which he admitted himself, an' finally I got him to promise me the fifty. That way I knew the weddin' was pretty dead certain, havin' two faithful gall'nts with their rusty trifles, as you say, both swearin' to bring in the fifty. Well, this evenin' Gyp rambles in and hands over the fifty, lightly mentionin' how he beat all the recruits. An' then what do you think the old wisenheimer pulls? He winks, an' 'Have a nice honeymoon,' he says!" Lance Corporal and Mrs. Leonard have taken over the "apartments" on Overland Street. They could never have done it if Sergeant Ross hadn't consented to pay an unusually stiff price for board. It's a hard struggle to get along, Mrs. Leonard says-hard enough on a lance corporal's pay; she doesn't know how in the world these girls that marry privates manage to exist at all! The Difference "For seventy years Obosh the sage Sat on the mountain side Swallowing sunshine; But he never became illuminated." -Japanese Poem. "Obosh's son, emigrating to America. Sat on a Kentucky mountain. Swallowing moonshine. And got lit up in no time." Capt. John P. Horan, 21st Infantry EVERAL officers with their families families and about a hundred and twenty enlisted men left Schofield Barracks by automobile at about 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning for Honolulu. Arriving there about noon, we went to cafes for lunch and reported at the dock at about half past two. We left Honolulu on the steamship Mauna Kea, an Inter-Island Steamship Company boat. It is a large, commodious boat, with staterooms for one hundred passengers and with steerage accommodations for one hundred and fifty passengers. As we steamed out of the harbor we were accompanied by dozens of sleek, brown Hawaiian boys, who swam alongside the boat diving for coins tossed to them by the "lei" covered passengers on the deck above. We passed out through the channel in the reef, past Fort Armstrong on the left and the Sand Island Quarantine Station on the right. After passing through the reef we turned toward the east, steamed along past Fort De Russey, the most beautiful Army post in the country, along Waikiki Beach, with its long lines of succeeding surf, its plumy groves of tall cocoanut trees, its beautiful banyan pergolas and its merry crowd of riders of surf boards and outrigger canoes; on past Diamond Head, Koko Head and the bold, barren, rocky headlands of Makapuu, the most eastern point of Oahu. After passing Makapuu, we turned to the south, where we could plainly see the leper island of Molokai looming up in the distance. We passed the rocky, barren, western coast of Molokai at about dusk, just as the faint outline of Maui became discernible in the distance. The entire evening was spent on deck listening to a group of eleven Mormon missionaries playing their ukeleles and steel guitars and singing the quaint old Hawaiian meles, chants and songs. At about 11 o'clock we stopped about a mile off shore from Lahaina, Maui, where we picked up some passengers who came out from shore in row boats. The surf was running too heavily for us to approach the dock. We all turned in for a good night's rest after leaving Lahaina. Upon arising at about half past five the next morning we found we were passing along the northeastern coast of Hawaii. The snow-covered peak of Mauna Kea was plainly visible, majestically rising to a height of 13,825 feet. We steamed along the high, rocky shore and could almost imagine that we were on the day boat going up the Hudson River. The cliffs or palisades rose to a sheer height of from four to six hundred feet, broken here and there by beautiful waterfalls cascading broad sheets of water to the sea below. At about 7 o'clock we came in sight of Hilo, the capital of the Island of |