Raising the Regiment 29 



from Cripple Creek named Sherman Bell. Bell 

 had a hernia, but he was so excellent a man that we 

 decided to take him. I do not think I ever saw 

 greater resolution than Bell displayed throughout 

 the campaign. In Cuba the great exertions which 

 he was forced to make again and again opened the 

 hernia, and the surgeons insisted that he must re- 

 turn to the United States ; but he simply would not 

 go. 



Then there was little McGinty, the bronco-bus- 

 ter from Oklahoma, who never had walked a hun- 

 dred yards if by any possibility he could ride. When 

 McGinty was reproved for his absolute inability to 

 keep step on the drill-ground, he responded that he 

 was pretty sure he could keep step on horseback. 

 McGinty's short legs caused him much trouble on 

 the marches, but we had no braver or better man in 

 the fights. 



One old friend of mine had come from far north- 

 ern Idaho to join the regiment at San Antonio, 

 He was a hunter, named Fred Herrig, an Alsatian 

 by birth. A dozen years before he and I had hunted 

 mountain-sheep and deer when laying in the winter 

 stock of meat for my ranch on the Little Missouri, 

 sometimes in the bright fall weather, sometimes in 

 the Arctic bitterness of the early Northern winter. 

 He was the most loyal and simple-hearted of men, 

 and he had come to join his old "boss" and comrade 



