Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The Ordeal of COLONEL JOHNS
By George H. Smith
Illustrated by Rudolph Palais
lark Decker winced and scrounged still lower in his seat as Mrs.Appleby-Simpkin rested her enormous bosom on the front of the podiumand smiled down on the Patriot Daughters of America in conventionassembled as she announced: "And now, my dears, I will read you onemore short quotation from Major Wicks' fascinating book 'The MinorTactics of The American Revolution.' When I am finished, I know thatyou will all agree that Rebecca Johns-Hayes will be a more thanfitting successor to myself as your President."
Decker looked wildly about for a way of escape from the conventionauditorium. If he had only remained in the anteroom with ProfessorMacCulloch and the Historical Reintegrator! After suffering throughfour days of speeches by ladies in various stages of mammaliantop-heaviness, he hadn't believed it possible that anyone could topMrs. Appleby-Simpkin for either sheer ability to bore or for thenobility of her bust. Mrs. Rebecca Johns-Hayes had come as somethingof a shock as she squirmed her way onto the speaker's platform. Butthere she was as big as life, or rather bigger, smiling at Mrs.Appleby-Simpkin, the Past President, beaming at Mrs. Lynd-Torris, adefeated candidate for the presidency and whose ancestor had been onlya captain, and completely ignoring Mrs. Tolman, the other defeatedcandidate whose ancestor had been so inconsiderate as to have been aContinental sergeant. Only the thought that now that the voting wasover and the new president chosen, the ladies might be ready for thedemonstration of the Reintegrator had brought Decker onto theconvention floor, and now he was trapped and would have to listen.
"And so," Mrs. Appleby-Simpkin was reading, "upon such small events dothe great moments of history depend. The brilliant scouting andskirmishing of the riflemen under Colonel Peter Johns prevented thebreakthrough of Captain Fosdick's column and the possible flanking ofthe American army before Saratoga. Thus, this little known action mayhave been the deciding factor in the whole campaign that preventedGeneral Burgoyne from carrying out the British plan to divide thecolonies and end the war. It is impossible for the historian torefrain from speculation as to what might have happened had ColonelJohns not been on hand to direct the riflemen and militia in thissection; as indeed he might not have been, since his own regiment ofshort-term enlistees had returned to Pennsylvania a few dayspreviously. Only the Colonel's patriotism and devotion to duty kepthim