Trooper Tales — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

The Good Which Was in Him. 169 The great, silent hills back of old Morro seemed only a deeper azure than the clouds now, but the eyes of “Allen, 5) Number Two,” who was no longer a soldier, were too filmy to take in their beauty. The transport steamed on, on toward the Northland. ; Every evening for almost a month the fancy bay geld- ing, Rio Grande, listened to a big cavalryman’s confidings and was petted. And no trooper knew the secrets which Rio Grande was told. The troop-clerk attended to his duties as a good cavalryman should. The great, white cliffs were beaten with tropical showers, and the troopers dreamed more and more of the Northland. And down the trail from the stables the big river boomed and tum- bled over the rocks. Allen was very busy when this letter came: “So you thought I was ashamed to write to you? Ah, Jack, you should have known me better than that. What you did was hard for me, but it was harder for you. I told everybody you were coming home. The mother of the ‘other Allen’ thinks you are some sort of a soldier- angel, Jack. . . . But Ill write to you—even if you have to stay on that horrid, rainy island for three years.” Allen was very busy when the above epistle came. He was making out the final statements for all the war re- cruits in the troop, for the official order for their dis- charges had just been cabled to the island from Washing- ton. His own discharge was already made out, because the name Allen stands among the first on the troop muster roll, CONME DOOKS (EC)