Because of what he knew they gave him two hundred men at a time and made him company commander, without insignia or official position.  In rank, he was only a “gob” like the rest of them.  In influence a captain.  Moran knew how to put the weight lunge behind the bayonet.  It was a matter of balance, of poise, more than of muscle.

Up in the front of his men, “G’wan,” he would yell.  “Whatddye think you’re doin’!  Tickling ’em with a straw!  That’s a bayonet you got there, not a tennis rackit.  You couldn’t scratch your initials on a Fritz that way.  Put a little guts into it.  Now then!”

He had been used to the old Krag, with a cam that jerked out, and threw back, and fed one shell at a time.  The new Springfield, that was a gloriously functioning thing in its simplicity, he regarded with a sort of reverence and ecstasy mingled.  As his fingers slid lightly, caressingly along the shining barrel they were like a man’s fingers lingering on the soft curves of a woman’s throat.  The sight of a rookie handling this metal sweetheart clumsily filled him with fury.

“Whatcha think you got there, you lubber, you!  A section o’ lead pipe!  You ought t’ be back carryin’ a shovel, where you belong.  Here.  Just a touch.  Like that.  See?  Easy now.”

He could box like a professional.  They put him up against Slovatsky, the giant Russian, one day.  Slovatsky put up his two huge hands, like hams, and his great arms, like iron beams and looked down on this lithe, agile bantam that was hopping about at his feet.  Suddenly the bantam crouched, sprang, and recoiled like a steel trap.  Something had crashed up against Slovatsky’s chin.  Red rage shook him.  He raised his sledge-hammer right for a slashing blow.  Moran was directly in the path of it.  It seemed that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape an onrushing locomotive, but it landed on empty air, with Moran around in back of the Russian, and peering impishly up under his arm.  It was like an elephant worried by a mosquito.  Then Moran’s lightning right shot out again, smartly, and seemed just to tap the great hulk on the side of the chin.  A ludicrous look of surprise on Slovatsky’s face before he crumpled and crashed.

This man it was who had Tyler Kamps’ admiration.  It was more than admiration.  It was nearer adoration.  But there was nothing unnatural or unwholesome about the boy’s worship of this man.  It was a legitimate thing, born of all his fatherless years; years in which there had been no big man around the house who could throw farther than Tyler, and eat more, and wear larger shoes and offer more expert opinion.  Moran accepted the boy’s homage with a sort of surly graciousness.