Trooper Tales — page 223: what you’re looking at

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

The Fever’s Fifth Man. 207 only half of me and a disreputable appetite—when Fo- garty came. I had no clothes to go on furlough with— nothing but a tattered shirt and a debilitated pair of cav- alry trousers ; and the worst of it was I could not get any. It is not hard for me to recall the events of that night when Fogarty came. I was watching the Red Cross men unload a hospital train. A procession of stretchers was passing from the cars to the fever-tents. Some of the sick men had been forced to walk. Had I not seen others staggering through the twilight, I would have said that Fogarty was drunk again. He dragged a huge blanket roll. | “Kid, where’s the rest of you?” he questioned weakly. I really embraced him that night—Fogarty, the pro- fane, the red-faced. And when he told me that he had brought along a bundle of my clothes from camp, I could not speak, for my voice-cords were numb. I only whim- pered. Fever leaves one childish-weak, you know. Fogarty had lugged along my things with his own— and he a sick man. He had remembered me after six weeks—remembered me, who was only a recruit. I tell you, gentlemen, there are men in Uncle Sam’s cavalry. That night Fogarty stretched his great body out on a mattress—a real one—for the first time in two months. His feet protruded through the iron rods at the lower end of the bedstead. : “Are those women going to be here?” He pointed to a couple of nurses. I nodded. “Why, it’s a cinch to have the fevers here, ain’t it, Kid?” CONnicE NOOKSsEO