Trooper Tales — page 224: what you’re looking at

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

208 The Fever’s Fifth Man. His tongue was dry like it was on the Cuban hills that day. A beam of the low, white moon looked in through the flap of the tent and rested on Fogarty’s hands. It made them seem pallid, but his face was very hot and red. An ugly fever is typhoid. It chars one’s brain and body with slow flame. It stretches the eyelids wide apart. In the middle of the day it glows to a white heat. It turns one into a helpless animal, that feels only an incurable thirst and a craving stomach—an animal that moans for ice water when the nurse is busy wrapping up a dead man in the next cot—a staring-eyed animal that knows there are such things as home and friends and death, but cares not. Listlessly he watches a companion fall into that chilled sleep. Typhoid plays with four men and gets earnest with the fifth—fatally earnest. The moon was high when I left Fogarty that night. A couple of weeks later he looked at me hard one morn- ing. It was going badly with him. “Why in the devil don’t you go home?” he asked ten- lerly. It wasn’t like the old Fogarty’s voice. “Haven’t got a furlough yet,” I said, lying. The papers were eight days old already. “Haven't got a hat, either,” I continued. I had been wearing Fogarty’s. Mine was lost. “Take care of this ‘dough’ for me, will you, Kid? I didn’t have time to blow a dam red. It gets my nerve with this thirst.” CONNICEOOKS.COlM