september - october - Fort Sill

GUNS ON THE MOUNTAIN
Some years before this time, three officers of the regiment determined
to scale the mountain. They offered up all their holidays to the project and,
with a detachment of soldiers, cut through the jungle to its foot. They spent
days clambering about through the tropical verdure; they dangled from
long ropes against the face of cliffs; they crept through treetops and along
the ragged edges of the crater and they achieved its summit. When they did
so, they unconsciously decreed that the guns should follow them in due
course.
After this, time passed. Guns, mules and men went about their daily
business. But there was an uneasy feeling that there existed an account
which required settlement.
When at length the project was put in hand, the prophets of evil came
forth en masse and commenced making medicine. They foretold landslides
which would overwhelm, falling trees which would mangle. They painted
lurid panoramas of mules slipping headlong into the gulf, guns irretrievably
lost over cliffs, flying boulders. Some diviners of the future went further
and produced supernatural perils. Among them, these soothsayers predicted
all calamities but rain and that was the only one which came to pass. Rain
in the middle of the dry season. The military maxim was proved. "One
must always expect the unexpected."
The guns set out, carried and attended by the mules and men. When
they left the post, they traversed a series of old craters. Then they plunged
into the jungle. Huge trunks of ancient trees soared upward to support a
leafy ceiling through which an intense sunlight shone but faintly. The dim
light and the hush made it resemble the interior of a cathedral. From the
limbs of the trees, far aloft, long creepers depended, hanging motionless.
Perched along the boughs of the trees and in their clefts were giant
airplants, great orchids and a myriad other parasites.
Where the jungle ended was a precipice down which the mules
zigzagged. They felt cautiously for a footing at each step, their ears pricked
forward, while the men steadied them, head and tail. When they had
descended four hundred feet they found at the bottom a river, into which
they walked. Some of the men tried to leap from rock to rock. One of them
slipped and fell headlong. This was a source of great satisfaction to his
comrades, who were waistdeep in the stream.
When they had gone along the river for some distance in the shadow
of beetling cliffs, they started to climb another precipice. This they
found extremely difficult. Round, waterworn stones rolled about
underfoot and there was no level place to rest. This the men named
"The Soldier's Road to Success." When they had reached
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