Trooper Tales — page 122: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IIo A Soldier of Misfortune. trait in the trooper’s eyes was that he did not spend his gains, And the natural sequence of all these things was that not one of his eighty-odd fellows shed tears when Duffie left the troop with his final statements in his pocket, and a record of thirteen years in the service—thirteen honest, faithful, clean years. It was not until Duffie and his bundle were lost in the coffee shrubs which bordered the trail down into Corizel that the troop clerk told one of the sergeants that Duffie’s final statements called for a cool thousand, Americano Dinero. When the men heard this they told each other that they were well rid of Duff, his “system,” his silence, and his “ugly phiz.” As a matter of fact, Duffie’s gambling methods were as honest as his clear, gray eyes. And if his other two five- year enlistments had been looked up his old fellows would have said that he quit their outfits with only a month’s pay in his clothes; and that he was as hopeless a drunkard and as reckless a spender as any good trooper is supposed to be. They would say, too, that he left few friends and no debts behind. Duffie, walking down the trail, communed with him- self and was not unhappy. On his discharge paper, after the printed word “CHARACTER” his captain had written “excellent,” and the troop physician had scrawled the same word after “PHYSICAL CONDITION WHEN DISCHARGED.” By the paper we might learn also that his hair was red, his eyes gray and his age thirty-five. And everybody Comuicsooks (S@)