Trooper Tales — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

16 The Recruit in the Black Cavalry. serted hills there was a city, which sported the wrong flag. The name of that city was Santiago. The black cavalrymen knew that they must hunt the hills for the town and correct the little mistake about the flag—more than that was the business of the white commissioned officers. Back from the hills the night shadows crept. The sun sank blood-red and vicious across the water. The smell of rain was in the air. The picket lines were stretched upon the shore, and the baggage was piled above the high-tide mark. There had been an informal guard-mount, and the men had received orders not to leave the camp. They were refreshed by hot coffee and a plunge in the sea, but they were hungry still. A couple of vultures trailed across the sky, but nothing human could be seen by the troopers on land—nothing save the darkening hills and the watcher out on the bay. A rain cloud skirted the shore-line to the left, and its torrents pounded the water and the hill-margins a half mile away. The men could hear it coming closer. Those who watched from the gunboat could see faint red lights far back in the hills. The black troopers growled because they had to smoke on an empty stomach; they growled because the rain put out their pipes and the cook fires, and because they would have to shiver in the wet and cold for a dozen hours. Tropical showers do not last, but it is unpleasant to sleep where they have been. But big, black, toughened cav- alrymen can sleep anywhere. It was very late when the CONMIE NOVO KSx(eo)