Trooper Tales — page 221: what you’re looking at

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

The Fever’s Fifth Man. 205 the next morning. Naturally, my horse had it in for me, because I was only a tilty, trembly recruit, and the bridle did not fit. Several officers had already directed stereo- typed call-downs at me. The troop halted for a moment while horsemen formed on our right. We stood at at- - tention—very properly—all except Fogarty. To my be- wilderment he slipped down from his mount, deftly and quickly tightened my bridle on both sides of the curb, and stepped over his horse again, whispering: “Give me a chew tobacco, Kid.” He had risked reprimand to do me a good turn, and the ice packing which I pictured about his heart oozed out of my mind forever. We were on the skirmish line together, crawling up the drenched hill in front of Santiag’, Fogarty and I. We. heard the droning death-whistle which is thrown from Mauser barrels, and saw the punctures which the whis- tling things made in roots and sand and in soldiers. We turned our faces up when it rained, and gaped like lizards do. We tried to cough out sand which caked in our throats. We propped up our heads with empty can- teens when neck muscles collapsed. We burned our hands on the barrels of our own carbines. Cartridge-belts burned our waists. We did not mind any of these things. | We knew nothing—felt nothing but the heat. It was the sunshine that we cursed at huskily—the terrible sun - of Cuba. It put a throbbing weight in our heads. It made us laugh. It bound our limbs. It mixed the stifling _smoke of powder with the steaming, choking stench of the Comichooks:com