The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1914-10-09
CHAPTER v.
A Sunday MORNING Call.

A Sunday Morning Call.
AS a boy, Arthur Lanstron had per-
sisted in being an exception to the in
fluences of both heredity and environ
ment. Though his father and both
grandfathers we're officers who be-
lieved theirs to be the true gentle
mans profession, he had preferred
any kind of mechanical toy to arrang-
ing the most gayly painted tin SOL
diers in formation on the nursery
floor; and he would rather read about
the wonders of natural history and
electricity than the campaigns of Ma
poleon and Frederick the Great and
my Lord Nelson. Left to his own
choice, he would miss the parade Of
the garrison for inspection by an ex-
cellency in order to ask questions Of
man wiping the oil of his hands with
cotton-waste, who was far more enter
tanning to him than the most spick-and-
span ramrod of a sergeant.
Upon being told one day that he was
to go to the military school the follow
ing autumn, he broke out in open re-
bellion.
II don't want to go to the army!" he
said.
"Why?" asked his father, thinking
that when the boy had to give his rea-
sons he would soon be argued out of
the heresy.
tits drilling few hours a day, then
nothing to do" Arthur replied. "All
your work waits on war and you don't
know that there will ever be any war.
1t waits on something nobody wants
to happen. Now, If you manufacture
something, why. you see wool come
out cloth, steel come out an automo-
bile. II you build bridge you see it
rising little by little. You're getting
your results every day; you see your
mistakes and your successes. You're
making something, creating some
thing; there's something going ON all
the while that isn't guesswork.
think that's what l want to say. You
won't order me to be a soldier, will
your"
The father, loath to do this, called In
the assistance of an able pleader then,
Eugene Partow, lately become chief of
star of the Browns. who was an old
friend of the Lanstron family. Partow
turned the balance ON the side of flial
affection. He kept watch of the boy,
but without favoring him with influ-
ence. Young Lanstron. who wanted to
see results, had to earn them. He real
lied in practice the truth of Partow's
saying that there was nothing he had
ever learned but what could be OF seIv-
ice to him as an officer.
Finding enough work to dor" Par
tow would ask with a chuekle when
they met in these days; for he had
made Lanstron both chief of intelli-
gence and chief aerostatic officer.
Young Colonel Lanstron's was the duty
of gaining the secrets of the Gray
stan and keeping those of the Brown
and organizing up-to-the-moment eff
cheney in the new forces of the air.
He had remarked truly enough that
the injury to his left hand served as
Ia better reminder against the folly Of
|wool-gathering than string, even a
large red string, tied around his fin
ger. Thanks to skillful surgery, the
fingers, incapable of spreading much,
were yet serviceable and had firm
grip of the wheel as he rose from the
aeroplane station on the Sunday morn
ing after Marta's return home for a
hight to La Tir.
He knew the pattern weaving under
his feet as one knows that of his own
garden from an overlooking window.
Every detail of the staff map, ravines,
roads. buildings. battery positions, was
together in the flowing reality
Of actual vision. No white posts were
necessary to tell him where the |
boundary between the two nations lay.
The line was drawn in his brain.
Now that Lanstron was the organ |
lzer Of the aviation corps his own
lights were rare. Mostly they were
made to La Tir. His visits to Marta
we're his holidays. All the time that
he was absent on her journey around
he world they had eorresponded. Her
etters, so revealing of herself and her
ocular angles of observation, formed
bundle sacredly preserved. Her