Trooper Tales — page 208: what you’re looking at

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

194 The Last Cell to the Right. me in the cell, where I disappeared for a moment. But when I returned the plate was empty. Tad held a potato in his two brown hands, and it struck me that he looked significantly across the plaza at two convict women. His mother’s mad eyes were riveted upon him. The man suffered inside. Then the fleshless form of the water-woman swung slowly in through the iron gate. She filled the big jar and was gone—silent and smileless as a spectre. My nerves were twitching—my head ached. It seemed as if I were becoming dumb and inhuman—like these natives. Night must come again. The thought haunted me with shuddering dread. I dared not tell any soldier what I suffered lest he should laugh, having neither seen nor felt what I had. The sameness of it all, the silent suffering of the woman, the moanings of the man from the dark- ness, the filth, the vermin—all tortured me. And every hour of the growing day was a ruthless warning. In the cavalry service men from the ranks have to bury the dead horses and mules. I performed a ceremony once in a hot country over the remains of a government mule, four days gone from the glanders. I did not volunteer for this duty. It was thrust upon me. I remembered that task the second morning in Manati prison, when I admin- istered unto my little fellow-convict a scrubbing down with government bouquet. This was necessary. Not so much for the furtherance of Tad’s comfort as for my own. He was hourly de- creasing the interval between us. He seemed to like the EComichbooks.com