Trooper Tales — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

124 Shadow and the Cherub. seen, and are liked for their jollity and devil-take-care-of- to-morrow dispositions. And these took notice of Shadow in spite of black looks and murmurings. There was a funny twinkle in his dark eyes and a won- dering pucker in his full red lips. Old Chicken, the far- rier, first took him under his wing. It was the night be- fore leaving the States, and the regiment had been paid earlier in the day. Now every officer knows that a common soldier works _ with greatest dispatch and efficiency when broke. It was a grand demonstration of mettle that the cavalrymen gave that day. Each man assisted in pushing frightened and fractious horses up a steep gangway, and in loading moun- © tains of heavy luggage on the transports for many hours —and all under the strain of a cavalryman’s thirst with a month’s pay in his pocket. Everything was ready when night came, except the blessed tide. It would be four hours at least, the sailors said, before the troop-ship dare cross the bar. Had it not been for this mysterious and accommodating element the Fiftn Cavalry would have lugged their whole month’s pay about cheerlessly throughout a long voyage. This would have been unprecedented. It would have been positively uncanny. “It’s dangerous to let them go,” one lieutenant said; “some will never come back.” “Let them go,” said an old captain, who had risen from the ranks, and who was no stranger to pity. Comicbooks (EC)