Now, this made it a pretty hard game for the old lady to play, and you can reckon how much dodging she had to do to keep out of the captain’s sight.  It was hard about her sleeping, too, for she had to do that where she could, not to speak of the pay she might have drawn and didn’t, and which, sakes alive! she earned twenty times over.  By and by everybody got onto it except the captain, but there wasn’t such a skunk in the battery as to tell him, partly because of the joke, but, most of all, on account of the convalescents, who naturally thought a heap of her.  Then it got whispered around that she was our mascot, and carried the luck of the battery; and it was certainly re-markable how it began to change, getting fresh beef quite regular and maple syrup to burn, and nine kegs of Navy pickles by mistake.

You would have thought she was too old to stand it, for we was always on the move, and I have seen her sleeping on what was nothing else but mud, with the rain coming down tremenjous.  But she was a tough old customer, and always came to time, outlasting men that could have tossed her in the air, or run with her a block and never taken breath.  But, of course, it couldn’t be kept up for ever—­I mean about the captain—­and, sure enough, one day he caught her riding on a gun-carriage, while he was passing along the line on a Filipino pony.

“Good God!” he said, like that, reining in his horse and looking at her campaign hat and the old gingham dress she wore.  I wonder she didn’t correct him for his profanity, but I allow for once she was scared stiff, and hadn’t no answer ready.  My!  But she kind of shrunk in and looked a million years old.

“Madam,” said he, “do you belong to this column?”

“Unofficially, I do,” she said, perking up a little.

“Might I inquire where you came from?” said he, doing the ironical perlite.

“Oakland, California,” said she.

“And is this your usual mode of locomotion?” said he.  “Riding on a gun?” said he.  “Like the Goddess of War,” said he.  “Perching on the belcherous cannon’s back,” said he.

The old lady, now as bold as brass, allowed that it was.

“Scandalous!” roared the captain.  “Scandalous!”

The old lady always had a kind of nattified air, and even on a gun-carriage she sported that look of dropping in on the neighbours for a visit.  She ran up her little parasol, settled her feet, give a tilt to her specs, and looked the captain in the eye.

“Yes,” she said, “I do belong to this column, and I guess it would be a smaller column by a dozen, if it hadn’t been for me in your field-hospital.  Or twenty,” said she.  “Or maybe more,” said she.

This kind of staggered the captain.  It was plain he didn’t know just what to do.  We were hundreds of miles from anywheres, and there were Aguinaldoes all around us.  He was as good as married to that old lady, for any means he had of getting rid of her.  He began to look quite old himself, as he stared and stared at the mascot of Battery B, the cannon lumping along, and the old lady bouncing up and down, as the wheels sank to the axles in the rutty road.