The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-12
BINGO.

BINGO.
 There was once an army officer-he is
 an army officer to-day, for that mat
 ter, though on the retired list-who was
 known familiarly to his West Point
 classmates and afterward to his inti-
 mates in the army as Bingo. There
 never was a bit of mischief afoot at the
 academy with Bingo out of the run
 ming. As far as regulations were con-
 cerned Bingo was what is known in the
 Points vernacular as reckless" It
 has never been charged that the acade-
 my boys made too much of the few ne-
 gro cadets who from time to time have been appointed to the government l school.
 Bingo didn't like the negroes, and he
 never was at much pains to conceal the fact. His early training had made him
 call them "niggers," and niggers they
 were to him and nothing else. It hap
 pened that Bingo was at the academy
 when Johnson Chestnut Whitaker the
 South Carolina colored cadet, got the
 whole country by the ears with his
 woolly story that his own ears had | betH tuL Dy lIlt WHllt tdueJS, MIlD HDt | only sliced these useful members, but hit the lad over the head with an h.
 dian club and also sheared off hic crisp, i curling locks close to the head.
 | It was afterward proved that MT. | Whittakers ears were not cut, that he l had not been hit by an Indian club and that the hair clipping was done by his own hands. It perhaps isn't necessary 1 to go into the matter too deeply, but two separate boards after investiga-
 tions which cost the government many thousands of dollars found out the truth of the affair and sentenced the negro cadet to be dismissed from the service. A kind hearted secretary of war, whose father had issued the emancipation procla tion saw to it that MT. Whit taker was "let out easy" techni- cality was the loophole, and so the col- ored cadet is borne on the records as having been dismissed for deficiency in studies and discipline.
 It was about this time that the ca- dets, Bingo among them, received all sorts of letters from all sorts of peo- pie declaring that the governments students were lot of brutes, villains | nigger- -haters, beasts and so on to the | end of the vocabulary The cadets | were sore" as the slanRsters have it. If memory serves well Bingo was the | sorest lad in the lot. He said one day that he believed that niggers were all | cut out of the same piece of black | cloth. He was looking forward to an army career, but he said on two or three occasions that he hoped it wouldn't be his i'll luck to be assigned | to nigger outfit. "I don't see" he said, how it's possible to make sol ders out of such stuff"
 We'll, it came about that Bingo was assigned to colored cavalry regiment the Flying Ninth as 1t was afterward called as a reminder of the day when the black troopers made ride of sev- enty miles to the rescue of some of their white brethren, and this with nothing under their belts but a cup of coffee and d chunk of bread.
 Bingo joined his command with a uni form and a whole bunch of prejudice He found his back troopers obedient and possessing many of the sterling qualities that go to make up a good soldier, but it takes time and work to root out prejudice. Bingo never re- ferred now to his men as niggers. That would have been bad form and unmili- tary to something more than a degree, but when he thought of them there Is little doubt that his mental impression was that of word having two g's in it.
 It was something less than year af- ter Bingo joined down at the isolated military post in far away New Mexico that the Apaches broke loose. It was { the summer of 1881 and there was the | heat of hell on the desert The Indian l trouble was as hot as the weather and 1t continued hot all through the sos. l Bingo was a second lieutenant He l had been two or three times through the ceremony of the baptism of fire. One ' lay his black troops struck the reds In l place called curiously enough. i Cuchillo Negro. l There was fight on in just the time I hat it took to cock sight and pull the I trigger of a Springfield carbine The C Apaches were behind the rocks and [ were covered completely by these, the s pest bulwarks that nature affords. F When the troop had reached the middle | ,f little open space in front of the d apaChes fastness they were met by a b tolley. It was death and nothing else f or the mounted men there in the open, F md movement was made for cover '' lntil plan of fight could be arranged. V Il the meantime the ping" of bullets t vas constant. II At the first fire of the red foe a !