Читать книгу Bugles in the Afternoon - Ernest Haycox - Страница 6

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"ABBOTT!"

"Yo!"

"Allen!"

"Yo!"

"Benzen!"

"Here!"

This was at five-thirty in the morning, the company assembled unarmed and dismounted behind its barrack to answer roll call. A mist lay hard upon the Missouri, hiding the water, but holding in suspension all the river's rich, dank and racy smells, and day's first light pressed down upon the mist from above. The troop stood glumly double-ranked in the chill air. The sergeant's nose was a reddening thermometer of both his temperature and his disposition. Upon completion of roll call, he made an about-face and rendered his slowly precise salute to the sharp-visaged young second lieutenant waiting by.

"Present or accounted for, sir."

The lieutenant acknowledged the salute and thus, having fulfilled regulations, walked away. Hines turned back upon the troop, morning-sour and professionally cranky. "I never saw a filthier yard, nor a dirtier barrack. After breakfast you'll all turn out for police on it. Mind me, you have been doin' too much soldierin' on your bunks. Corp'ril King and squad, wood detail. Costain, duty at the orderly room, Melish, Duker and Straub, kitchen. Sergeant McDermott, Corp'ril Roy, Privates Bean, Ryneerson, Hoch and Muldoon, guard duty tonight." He thought a moment and thereafter opened his roster book again. "By order of this date, Private Shafter appointed sergeant. Dismiss."

The heavy smell of coffee came reeking out of the mess-hall wing as they broke up and ran back to barrack. Air down the parade sounded the brisk mess call. Day broke through the mist, sparkling against the dew-beaded grass. Shafter got his mess outfit from his bunk, crossed to the hall, and joined the forming line. A private with a vein-netted face and a pair of flushed eyes overhung with a solid lacework of stiff black brows came up behind him, growling. "A sergeant," he said, "does nawt eat with us common ones. You belong at the head o' the line."

"I'll wait until I sew the stripes on," said Shafter and gave this new one a thoughtful appraisal. The man had muscular shoulders; he was full of bone and meat, but his belly was round and liquor had softened him. On his sleeve was a faded spot where, not long before, sergeant stripes had been.

"The rank came easy, did it not?" said the man, accenting his insolence.

"As easy as yours went away," said Shafter.

"I worked for mine," said the man. "Four years. I licked nobody's boots for 'em. I gave 'em up because it was me own wish."

"So that you could breathe freer into a whisky bottle," said Shafter.

"You've got a tongue, I do observe," said the man. He lifted his voice a little and half the line of men heard this. "To be a sergeant is not a matter of tongue in this outfit, bucky. It is a matter of knuckles. Do you know what I think? I think you'll not last long."

The line moved up, passing before the cook's table where a pair of troopers served out breakfast from kitchen kettles. Shafter got his oatmeal, his bacon and biscuits and held out his cup for coffee. The trooper handling the pot let his hand waver a little so that the coffee spilled over, scalding Shafter's hand; and then the trooper gave him a blank stare. Shafter looked back at him, a little light dawning gray-bright in his eyes, and passed on to a long table. That was the way it would be in this troop; he was untested, and suddenly a sergeant—made so by Captain Moylan out of memory of incidents long ago. Moylan must have known that he put his new sergeant in a hard position.

Hines passed by and dropped a brusque word. "Come to the orderly room."

In a little while Shafter followed him into the small room at the end of the barracks. Hines was at his desk. He said, "Shut the damned' door," and waited until it was done. "I'm too old a man to remark upon my company commander's choices. You've been in the army before?"

"Yes."

"Moylan knew you somewhere?"

"Let's let that slide," said Shafter.

Hines was displeased, and his stare was like the slap of his heavy hand. "It is his choice to make, but it is me that has to keep the company runnin' like a company should run. There is somethin' here which the company will not like, and I cannot put my hand upon any man to stop him from givin' you the roll of his eye. I will not have this outfit go sour because of the advancement of a rooky to sergeant. So, then, you must lick somebody to show what you've got. It will be the one that was sergeant and got broke for tryin' to lap up all the whisky in Bismarck. That's Donovan."

Shafter remembered the meaty one with the round belly. "He's opened the door already."

"See that you walk right through that door," said Hines. "You must give him a hell of a beating, or you'll never draw any water in this outfit as a noncom. If he should give you the beatin'—and it is my bet that he'll do just that—there is but one thing for you to do. You will turn in your stripes."

Shafter stood easy in front of the first sergeant, smiling a little. "You have got a fine collection of savages for a company, Sergeant. I shall tame one of them for you."

"So," said Hines and was not impressed. Four hash-marks on his sleeve testified his service; in the rounds of his eyes lay an iron, taciturn wisdom. The army had made and shaped him until he was all that the army stood for, a solid, short-tempered and thoroughly valuable man. "You talk like a damned gentleman. Get your stripes sewed on. At stable call you will be assigned a horse. Afternoon you will hitch up the light wagon and go to Bismarck to do errands for the captain and his lady. You will stay until the train comes in, pick up the first lieutenant of this company, who arrives from St. Paul—the Lieutenant Smith."

"Who is the officer that took roll call this morning?"

"That one is Varnum. He has some knowledge of Indians, which God knows we'll need when they break out again next spring."

Stable call came sharp upon the parade ground, pulling Shafter from the orderly room. The fog had lifted and bright sunshine slanted out of the east; he was assigned his horse, and his stall, and spent time grooming the horse. Sick call came, and first call for drill; at nine o'clock the sharp-faced Lieutenant Varnum took the company out upon the parade. Heat lay like a thinned film in the windless air, only suggesting what it had been a few short months before, but the fine dust rose beneath the hoots of the turning horses as the five companies, each on a section of the parade, went through their close-order maneuvers, wheeling in column, fours left, fours right, left into line, walk, trot, gallop; the horses, old in the business, automatically responding, crowding upon each other, grunting, precisely coming about. At eleven-thirty recall sounded; and mess call came at noon. Afterwards, Shafter hitched up the light wagon to a pair of horses and, with a shopping list from Mrs. Moylan in his pocket, drove through Lincoln's guard gate—past the post gardens and hospital and band quarters, past the barracks of the regimental noncommissioned staff, past bakery and officers' club and civilian quarters and post trader's store—and so came to the ferry.

Over the river, he drove through the Point which lay exhausted after its night's excesses, and followed the straggling road into Bismarck. As soon as he arrived there he did the shopping for Mrs. Moylan; after that he hunted up a tailor and sat in his underclothes for an hour, reading an old copy of the New York Tribune while the tailor cut his uniform to better size, sewed on the sergeant's chevrons and the yellow noncom strip down each trouser leg.

He still had an hour to spend before train time; and walked the length of Bismarck's street, the sun's warmth going through his heavy blue blouse and bringing out its woolly smell; he turned and strolled back and, in front of the town's big grocery store, he came upon Josephine Russell. She halted at once, showing surprise; she tipped her head as she studied him.

"So that is why you came west?"

"Yes."

She said: "I think you've worn the uniform before. I thought that when I saw you standing in front of the depot at Corapolis."

She carried a basket of groceries, and she had a roll of checked red-and-white oilcloth under her arm. Shafter relieved her of these bundles. "Where can I carry these for you?"

"You're on duty, aren't you?"

"Waiting for the train to come in."

They moved down the street, side by side. She wore a light dress, and she had no hat, and she seemed fairer to him than before; her gray eyes were calm and pleased in the way they looked at him. Her lips held their steady hint of a smile.

"It's good to see you," he said.

She gave him a quick side glance, slightly speculative, her eyes gently narrowing. Her lips made a softly pursed line and afterwards she walked on in silence, looking before her. This day the town was crowded. Half a dozen punchers came up the walk, shoulder to shoulder, thrown slightly forward by the high heels of their riding boots—all sharp-eyed, roughly dressed men, and all keenly alive. They broke aside to let Josephine pass, and eyed her with surreptitious admiration. Indians sat against a stable wall, dourly indifferent. Up from a warehouse at the lower end of town moved a caravan of ox-drawn wagons crowded to the canvas tops with freight, headed outward from the railroad into that southward distance which ran three hundred miles to Yankton without the break of a town or settlement, except for the dreary little army posts or steamboat landings along the Missouri.

A man sat on the steps of a barbershop with a carbine and calmly shot between the traffic at a target over near the railroad tracks; and drew up his gun to let Josephine and Shafter pass by. At the foot of the street Josephine turned the corner of a feed store and moved back upon the prairie to a house standing somewhat removed from the town. A picket fence surrounded it, but otherwise it was without ornament, shade or grass.

Josephine opened the gate and led Shafter to the porch, there relieving him of the packages. She dropped them inside the house door and turned back. "If you must wait somewhere, it might be just as comfortable waiting here. Sit down."

There were a chair and a rocker on the porch, both made of merchandise packing boxes. Josephine took the chair and Shafter settled himself in the rocker and let his long legs sprawl before him. The gesture brought an instant smile and comment from the girl. "You have a wonderful gift of just going loose all over whenever you can."

"I got that from the army. A man learns, when he's on long marches, to make the short stops count."

"The uniform changes you entirely. My first judgment of you was a great deal different." Her glance turned thoughtful. "In civilian clothes you seemed a somewhat skeptical man, perhaps accustomed to the good things of life."

He showed some embarrassment at the remark. He said: "I guess that's true."

She realized she had struck something in him which was vulnerable; he had a sensitive spot, and she was sorry she had touched it and changed the subject. "You were lucky to get a uniform that fitted you."

"I had the tailor work on it," he said. "Well, whatever I was, I still am. You can't change a man by clothes. But I have wanted to get back into the uniform for ten years. I remembered that when I was a soldier last time I had about as much complete peace of mind, as much personal contentment, as I ever had. That's why I came back. I do not require much comfort and I do not need many possessions. What I need, I guess, is to be with plain and honest men."

"Men can be plain and honest outside the army."

"Then," he said, "it must be something else the uniform has that I have needed. At any rate, I feel at home, which is something I have not felt for a long time."

"Adventure?" she murmured. "The sound of bugles?"

He shook his head. "I went through four years of the Civil War. I heard a lot of bugles blowing for the charge. I saw a lot of men fall, a lot of good friends die. That's the other side of adventure. I am no longer a young man dreaming of gallantry in action."

She bent a little in the chair, smiling and curious. "You make yourself a greater puzzle to me, Sergeant." Then she rose and went into the house. He reached into his blouse for a cigar, and lighted it and relaxed wholly in the rocker. The afternoon was warm, all of summer's scorch gone out of it. The deep haze of summer, this far west, had lightened, so that the prairie was a tawny-floor, running immeasurably away into the distance. The railroad line marched eastward, marked by the single row of telegraph poles; and in that direction was the smudge of the afternoon train coming on. Josephine Russell came back with a tall glass of milk and handed it to him.

"How long have you lived out here?" he asked.

"Two years. We have always been moving up on the edge of the frontier. I suppose in two or three years more we'll be out there in Montana somewhere. My father has that store—where you saw me. But he is restless, and more so since my mother died."

"You like it here?"

"I like whatever place I am." A more sober expression came to her face. "It was nice to visit the East, though. I don't know when I shall see it again."

The train flung its long warning whistle forward from the distance, reminding Shafter of his duty. He rose with reluctance and stood easy-balanced on his feet, looking down at her with his expression of personal interest, and he repeated what he had said earlier: "It is good to see you again."

"The post can be a very lonely place. Are you sure it won't bore you?"

"I don't need much in the way of distraction."

She said: "This house is open, if you feel like visiting."

He nodded, he said: "I shall do that," and walked back toward town. She watched him go, his shoulders cut against the sunlight, his long frame swinging. She had known, as soon as she saw him in uniform, that the sergeant's stripes did not represent what he once had been. Somewhere in the past he had been a man with a career, had met disaster, and had stepped away from the wreckage with a shrug of his shoulder. She had guessed that much about him two days before, and was more certain of it now. There was, she thought, a woman somewhere involved. Reluctantly she lifted her guard against him. "I should not," she murmured, "be very much interested in him," and continued to watch him until he swung around the corner of a building and disappeared.

Shafter drove the small wagon to the station and arrived just as the train did. He watched the passengers come out, saw only one army officer, and walked toward him. Lieutenant Algernon Smith was a dark, chunky-shouldered man with a bushy black cavalry mustache, heavy black brows, a solid chin and sharp eyes. He took Shafter's salute.

"Sergeant Shafter, sir. I am to drive you to the post."

The lieutenant said. "You're new?"

"I enlisted yesterday, sir."

"Rapid promotion," said the lieutenant enigmatically and nothing more. He had a small portmanteau which he flung into the wagon when he reached it, and stepped up to the seat, folding his arms across his chest like an artilleryman riding a caisson. Shafter ran the team out of town and down the rutty road. Past the Point he saw the ferry ready to cast off, whereupon he whipped the team into a dead run down the incline and put it aboard with a sudden shock of brakes. Lieutenant Smith grabbed the edge of the seat to prevent falling out, and gave Shafter the benefit of his dry voice: "I guess you have dash enough for cavalry service."

Once inside the guard gate, Shafter drove over the parade to Officers' Row, let off the lieutenant and went on to Captain Moylan's quarters. He carried the packages to the back door, delivered them to the captain's striker, and returned the wagon and team to stables. It was past five o'clock then, afternoon stable call having occurred while he was gone; therefore he curried his horse and walked into the barrack. As soon as he reached his bunk he saw that it had been ripped apart. His box of cigars, which he had placed beneath the tick, now lay in sight, its lid open and the cigars gone.

The men of the troop sat around the barrack, waiting mess call, cleaning up equipment for retreat, or lying back on their bunks. Donovan, he noticed, was at one of the tables, playing a game of solitaire. Donovan was smoking a cigar and, to make the point clearer, Donovan had a row of cigars lying on the table before him. A scar-mouthed trooper stood by, thinly grinning and watching Shafter from the evil corners of his eyes. It was a published thing in the barrack room; everybody knew what was happening, and waited for the rest of it to happen.

Shafter turned to the table and stood beside it, looking down on the red surface of Donovan's neck. The ex-sergeant kept on with his solitaire, aware of Shafter's presence but ignoring it. He had his feet planted squarely on the floor, beneath the table; he had his forearms lightly braced on the table's top so that one warning would bring him roaring up to his feet.

"Donovan," said Shafter, easy and plain, "where do we have this fight?"

"Behind the stables," said Donovan with equal calmness. "Tinney, have a cigar. They're good ones, picked by a gentleman lately come among us to dodge a warrant. I guess we have smoked the gentleman out." He slapped a hand down on the table so hard that the cards jumped and he leaned back and shouted out a heavy laughter at his own joke.

The scar-mouthed trooper grinned and reached for a cigar. He was not entirely sure of his act, however, and cast a sly glance at Shafter. He held his hand on the cigar, dividing his attention between the two men, and for a moment he seemed to debate on which side of this coming fight the power lay—and safety for him. Presently he decided the question in Donovan's favor, picked up the cigar and turned away. In the background Shafter saw the other troopers watching, interested and speculative. It was a break in the dull day, a flash of violence feeding their hungry appetites.

"I'll be behind the stables after tattoo," said Shafter. "Better smoke those things up now, Donovan. You'll be sick of cigars later."

Donovan continued imperturbably with his playing. He said to the room at large, "Listen to the gentleman's words carefully, boys. The gentleman is a sergeant. He is an educated sergeant, sent among us heathens to bring us knowledge."

SUPPER was over and retreat gone by; twilight came, layer on layer, with its sharpening chill. Along the quadrangle, lights splashed their yellow lanes out of doorways, poured their fan-shaped patterns through dusty windows. A patrol, half a company in strength, came in from the western distance and moved with jaded temper across the parade, equipment clinking in the dark. Shafter strolled along the barracks walk with his cigar, hearing the talk of men come out in drawling eddies, in sudden bursts of laughter, in sharpness, in murmuring. A guard detail tramped briskly by, an officer crossed the parade at full-out gallop; and somewhere a deep voice yelled: "Flynn—hey, Flynn!"

The stars were up, turned brilliant by the cold air, and for a moment Shafter stopped to watch them. Other troopers moved by him, some with idleness and some hurrying to reach the ferry and the gaudy dens beyond the river at the Point. Across the parade. General Custer's house was filled with light and officers and their ladies strolled toward it, the quick and gay voices of these people coming over the long stretch of ground in softened cadence. He listened a moment to those tones of warmth and he stood still with his eyes half closed, and then swung on with the idle current of troopers, moving past the guard gate toward the post trader's store.

He turned about before he reached it, remembering that he had a date with Donovan after tattoo, and he paced back through the outthrown lights of the guardhouse, indifferently noticing an officer appear from the guardhouse, and swung toward Officer's Row at a quick and nervous pace. Twenty feet onward, he heard the officer's stride cease and he heard the officer call at him:—

"Hold up there."

He had not seen the officer's face, but a ruffling chill ran along his back and a strange tight spasm went through his belly as he swung. The officer stood waiting twenty feet away, his face obscured by the shadows; and then the officer murmured in a long, odd voice: "Come here, Sergeant."

Shafter moved up, watching the other man's face take on shape and form—and identity. When he was ten feet removed, he discovered whom he faced and a feeling greater than any feeling he had known for years broke through him and shook him from top to bottom. He came to a stand and remembered he was in uniform, and made his salute.

The lieutenant did not return the salute. He looked upon Shafter with a face exceedingly sharpened by astonishment, by the shock of past memories, by the rousing of old rages and evils. He had no motion in him at that moment, he had only one thought, and this escaped him with a slicing-sharp expelling of wind.

"How in God's name did you get here?"

Shafter could think of but one answer, and made it: "It's a small world, Mr. Garnett. A very small world to a man trying to escape his conscience."

"Your conscience?" said Lieutenant Edward Christian Garnett.

"Yours," said Shafter.

The lieutenant stood still and began to curse Shafter with a softly terrible voice. He pulled up his high shoulders, he straightened his long body and he used his words as he would have used a whip, to cut, to disfigure, to destroy. The guard patrol swung around the corner of the quadrangle and passed close at hand, stopping the lieutenant's voice for a little while, and in this silence Shafter saw the man's pale wedge of a face—so handsome and tempting a face to women—show its hard evil, its unforgiving and brutal blackness. This was Garnett, formed like an aristocrat out of a French novel, with dark round eyes well recessed in their sockets, with a head of dark hair that broke along his forehead in a dashing wave, and a gallant mustache trimmed above a full, thick-centered mouth. He had the whitest of teeth; he had a smile, Shafter remembered, which could charm a woman and capture her without effort. He was a man with the obsession of conquest—the conquest of a woman; he had the predatory instincts of a tiger and no morals, no scruples, no decencies. He had touched nothing that he had not destroyed, so that all along his career was the wreckage of his passing. He was, Shafter bitterly knew, an inner rottenness covered by a uniform, and cloaked by a kind of gallantry which passed for courage.

The patrol passed on. Garnett said, sharply: "See to it that you are not in this fort tomorrow."

"What are you afraid of, Mr. Garnett?"

"Damn you," said Garnett, "speak to me properly."

"Then let us start right. Return the salute I offered you. You were always a slovenly soldier."

Garnett stared at him. "I could prefer charges against you, Shafter."

"Do you want to open the record of the past, Mr. Garnett?" murmured Shafter.

"And how could you open it?" answered Garnett, thinly malicious. "Your word against mine? Who would take it?"

"Captain Moylan is also here," said Shafter. "As a gentleman, I suppose he has kept his knowledge of you to himself. How would you like the ladies of the post to know of the events of your past? It would interfere with your prowling. I think you will never prefer charges against me."

Garnett stepped nearer him. "Listen to me. I have got a hundred ways of getting at you. Believe me, I'll use them all. I'll break your damned back and I'll break your heart. Before I'm through with you, you'll crawl over the hill one dark night and never come back."

"You are a dog, Mr. Garnett," said Shafter.

Garnett lifted a hand and hit him one cracking blow across the face with his open palm. The effect of it roared through Shafter's head; he stepped away and then he stepped forward, to find Garnett backed four paces from him and holding a drawn revolver on him. "Go ahead," Garnett softly murmured. "You are in a hard regiment, Shafter, with damned little mercy shown on insubordination. The colonel would have you shot, as he has had others shot before you."

Over by the guardhouse, the bugler softly breathed into his instrument, readying his lips for tattoo. Shafter waited out the dismal silence, pulling his impulses back into safe place, and spoke to this man he both despised and hated more than any other person upon earth. "I did not know you were here," he said. "Probably I would not have come if I had known it. Still, I'm here. Here I shall stay. And now that you have used your hands on me, I'll tell you something: One way or another, I'll destroy you."

Lieutenant Garnett held the gun on him, watching him with strict attention. He said, "You may go now, Sergeant."

They were alone in the darkness, thus facing. Shafter thought of this, knowing that he had the advantage. By daylight he could not pass the strict line which divided him from Garnett; by daylight Garnett could make him dance. But there would always be times when he might catch this man on even terms; for Garnett would take no chances on his own blemished reputation being published at this post. So Shafter stood his ground and gave Garnett a taste of what would come.

"Put up the revolver and turn about and march away. I think Moylan would relish the opportunity of exposing you."

Garnett cursed him again, in his whispering wicked way. Tattoo broke over the parade, drowning out the sound of Garnett's voice; but he watched the lieutenant's lips form their blasphemies and then close thinly together. The lieutenant bolstered his gun, swung and went toward Custer's quarters at a long-reaching pace.

He left behind him a man who, once turned bitter against the world, had mastered his bitterness; and suddenly now was bitter again. He left behind him an enemy of dangerous shape, a man tempered and toughened by a war, knowing its trickeries, its subterfuges, its brutal modes of combat. All that knowledge Shafter had subdued and put aside during the ten following years, but it returned to him as he turned back toward A Company's barrack with tattoo's last notes falling away in softened, melancholy loveliness across the parade and across the dark younder earth. Nine-o'clock call began to run from post to post as he rounded the barrack and moved through the dark space between barrack and stable. He cut about the stable and found A Company's men waiting in the blackness, all ranked along the river bluff. He saw a shape lift from the earth and heard the shape say:—

"What kept you? Now where's that lantern?"

It was Donovan speaking. He stood heavy-shouldered in the dark, stripped to his shirt, with his paunch spilling over the belt of his trousers. A man moved up and pulled a blanket away from a lantern, so that its light danced in yellow crystals upon the night. Donovan clapped his meaty hands together and held them dropped before him, grinning at Shafter. He was a confident old hand, facing another routine battle; and the battle was life to him, so that he gave no thought to hurt or to injury or to scars. There was no real anger in the man, Shafter understood; Donovan had only used his sarcasm and his ridicule as a weapon to produce the fight he needed as much as he needed food. "Take off your blouse—take off your shirt. I'll have no advantage. I need none."

It was a full ten degrees colder than on the previous night, and a wind played out of the north as an idle warning. Stripping off blouse and shirt, Shafter studied Donovan's bullet-round head, the blunt bevel of his shoulders, the softening pads of fat which lay along his upper arm. The man's coolness, the man's complete calm warned him; this Donovan had been a professional somewhere and thought of his opponent as only another green, awkward one to be pounded down and added to his list. He saw Donovan winking at the dark shape of the crowd.

"If the gentleman is ready," said Donovan with his ridiculing tone, "let's be off to the fair."

He waited no longer. He took a striding, squatty plunge forward, his left fist feinting, his right thundering out. Shafter came in, caught that right-armed blow on his elbow and threw it aside. He hit Donovan hard in the belly; he felt his fist sink into the doughlike fat. He heard Donovan's blast of expelled wind; he shifted his hips as Donovan tried to ram a knee into his crotch; he trapped both of Donovan's arms under his elbows and he rode around a circle as Donovan used his strength to pull free. He let go, hooked a punch against Donovan's kidney and moved away.

Donovan shook his head. Donovan's mouth was open, sucking wind. Donovan's face was rouge red. He gave an impatient cry, his narrowed eyes showing a crimson, sly fury as they studied Shafter. He stood still. He stamped the ground with one foot, shuffled forward and feinted with his body, luring Shafter in. He dropped his arms, opening himself wide, and rushed forward again with his head down, growling strange things under his breath; he was suddenly hard to hit. Shafter tried for the man's belly, missed, and then, before he could swing clear, he was thrown back on his heel and knocked to the ground by a savage punch he had never seen. He rolled and saw Donovan's legs striding forward; he seized Donovan's foot and turned with it and brought the man down. The ex-sergeant struck hard, and the fall drew its grunt, and after that Donovan was a fat ball of fury, reaching and striking and kicking.

Shafter flung himself away, stood up and watched Donovan rise. He hit the Irishman, left and right hand, in the belly and brought Donovan's guard down. He saw his opening, stepped in and sledged Donovan at the side of the neck. He got two hard blows in before Donovan reached for him and tied him up. He went loose, letting Donovan pay out his strength in the struggle.

Donovan cried, "You damned leech, stand out and fight it!" He used all his muscles and heaved Shafter clear, and raised a hand to brush his sweaty face. Shafter slid in, driving for the man's belly, and saw the sick look that came to Donovan's mouth. Donovan reached for him but Shafter whirled aside, found his chance, and hit him in the kidney again. The man's softness was crawling up on him; he had his mouth sprung wide and his eyes were not clear. Helplessness seemed to come to him, for he shook his head and let his arms drop. Shafter started in, but feinted back as Donovan, playing possum, came to life and struck out in long-reaching left and right blows. He missed and now, off balance, stumbled forward. Shafter caught him with a short, up-cutting blow beneath the chin. Donovan sighed; the power went out of him and he fell slowly and cumbersomely to the dust, his face striking.

The light bobbed up and down in Tinney's hands. Tinney said, "For God's sakes Donovan, quit foolin'!" He ran forward and tickled Donovan with the toe of his boot; he bent nearer and straightened back, to say in a dull astonishment: "He's out."

"Water bucket," said Shafter.

Somebody went running back to the stable while Tinney helplessly circled Donovan with the lantern. "Donovan—hey, Donovan," he pleaded. Troopers formed a fascinated, silent circle. Shafter said, "Tinney, how did you like that cigar?" and watched Tinney's head spring up. Tinney opened his scar-shaped mouth to speak, found nothing to say and slowly backed off. The messenger ran in from the stable and flung a full bucket of water on Donovan's naked torso. The Irishman, half-wakened by it, made a wild swing and got to his hands and knees. He shook his head and looked up. He saw Shafter. He ran a hand over his face to slash the water away. "I got licked?" he said.

"You should quit smoking, Donovan," said Shafter. "Cigars are bad on the wind."

Donovan pulled himself to his feet. He said, "What fool dumped the bucket on me? Because a man is on his knees is nothin'." Then he said curiously, "Was I out?"

"Dead out," said Shafter.

"Then I got licked," said Donovan in a practical voice. He studied Shafter at some length, without resentment. He put out his hand. "That's the end of it," he said. "I never bear a grudge."

Shafter took Donovan's hand, whereupon Donovan thought of something and swung around, pointing a finger at the men of A Company. "When I'm licked, I'm licked. But don't none of you lads think you can do better than me. Don't none of you get fresh with me. I'm still man enough to lick the lot of you. Another thing—if you back-talk the professor here, I'll beat your ears down. You hear?"

He started for the barracks, his head dropped in weariness. Shafter came up to him and laid an arm on his shoulder, so that the two went on through the dark. Donovan murmured: "I'll buy the cigars, bucko. You're all right. If you can lick me, you can wear the stripes. I'd like to see the man that can take 'em off you."

"Donovan," said Shafter. "One night soon we'll take a few of the lads and drop over the river. A little drinking will do no harm."

"Ah," said Donovan, "you're my kind. But if I'd lay off the whisky you'd never of had me. Professor, this is a damned good outfit."

Shafter moved through the barrack room, putting on his shirt as he walked; he continued on to the porch which confronted the parade and he stood there and felt the ache of his bruises, the loosening aftereffect of the fight. But he knew he had ceased to be an outsider. He had joined the company; he could tell that by the way the men looked at him. This was why he had joined—to be one of a company of men. To be with them and a part of them; remembering away back, he knew that it was in this closeness he had been happiest. Maybe it was discipline or maybe it was service, or maybe it was the feeling of a man as he rode with other men, joined in the roughness, in the brawling and in the fighting, in the lust and evil and in the honesty and the faithfulness that bound them all together. He stood still, coming close to the reason, but never quite grasping the tangible form of it. As he searched himself, going down into the strange places where lived those prime hungers which made him a man, he remembered what things had been important to him in the past, and what things he had missed in civilian life. They were little things, but all of them strong—the sweat that started out of his pores and stung his eyes, the heavy dust rising up from a marching column, the wind against his face when he rode through some early March morning with the fog lifting out of the lowlands of the Wilderness; the rain beating hard upon him until the smell of his uniform was woolly and rank; the pure pleasure that had come to him when, dried and exhausted, he dropped to his belly beside a sluggish branch in Virginia and drank the brackish water until he could hold no more; the evening shadows with the campfires glittering through them and the sound of tired voices coming from afar; the stretch of his leg muscles as he lifted in the saddle for a run; and the wicked satisfaction that came of taking a blow and giving one; and the comfort of the earth as he lay against it—and the calm dark mystery of the heavens as he looked up to them. Each was a little thing, but each one fashioned and formed him and fed him and made life full.

A trooper came out of the barrack and stood silently by; he was a young lad, tall but still not wholly filled out with man's muscles. He had light hair and a fair face and he smiled in an engaging way when Shafter looked at him. He was not more than eighteen. He said wistfully: "I wish I knew how to fight. I mean, well enough to take care of myself."

"It will come," said Shafter.

"Funny thing," said the boy, "I never had a fight."

"It may be you can get through the next forty years without one," said Shafter. "I hope you do."

"A man's got to fight sometime," said the boy.

"Don't look for one—don't give it a thought," said Shafter. "Wait until it comes—and perhaps it will never come." He fell silent, noting the boy's puzzled face. What he had said seemed a contradiction to the lad; and so he quietly added: "Men are not dogs to be growling at each other."

"Well, I suppose so," said the youngster and, still puzzled, moved down the parade toward the south; in that direction, beyond the quartermaster quarters, lay Suds Row, which was a line of houses occupied by married sergeants whose wives were troop laundresses. He heard the boy whistle a little as he moved into the darkness.

Shafter returned to his bunk and pulled off his uniform. Donovan walked out of the washroom, stripped naked. He tapped his paunch, turned red by the punches Shafter had put there. He was grinning. "A good fight, bucko." The first sergeant came out of the orderly room and paused to look at these two.

"What happened to your belly, Donovan?"

"I fell on a picket pin," said Donovan, and grinned again.

Hines said "I'll have to send a detail out to pull up all these picket pins which the men of this troop keep stumblin' over." He showed Shafter a sardonic humor and passed on, grumbling at a group of poker players. "Break up that. Taps is comin'." He left the barrack and went at an old soldier's steady, established pace through the dark, along the side of the quartermaster department and the commissary building; he turned down Officers' Row and stopped and tapped on the door of Captain Moylan's house. When the captain came out, he rendered his slow, grooved salute and said: "He licked Donovan, sir."

"So," said Moylan, and was pleased. "It will be all right."

"It will be better than I thought," agreed Hines. "Now, can he soldier?"

"As good as you or I, Hines."

"Let us not be givin' him too much credit," said Hines. "If the man is half as good as either of us. Captain, he is an angel."

"You'll see," said Moylan.