Trooper Tales — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

The Recruit in the Black Cavalry. 25 was seen smoking and dying on the slope of San Juan Hill that day. Sadie drew a deep inhalation into his lungs, then put the cigarette back between the lips of the Spanish soldier. “Ah guess Ah don’t want yoh las’ butts—yoh may wake up in de middle ob de night an’ need it. O-o-o-oh, dah’s dat Gawd-a-fearin’ cawpril!” The non-commissioned officer who had made trouble for the recruit a few nights before was having a very fast time. A Spanish infantryman was in the trench with him. Both were fighting for their lives.- The Spaniard had a bayonet attached to his Mauser; the corporal had nothing but a bare, hot carbine. Sadie settled the matter in favor of the Black Horse trooper. Many of the block- houses were silenced, but whistling death still blazed out of the big one on top of the hill. The barb wire traps became thicker, and more men on the skirmish line fell - back into the trenches and grunted out impotent curses. Many others lay silent. The black troops were not the only ones who kept the small of their backs to the trenches, no longer Spanish, that afternoon. “Dis cert’ny am de mos’ glorifussest moment ob mah life,” gasped the black recruit. He vaulted a barbed wire pitfall and was racing toward a trench, two rods ahead. Two Spaniards scrambled out and started to dash for the summit. They never reached it, because too many Ameri- can soldiers were counting on just such chances as that. The battle fever was wild in Sadie’s blood. At that mo- ment some one up in the block-house did not shoot too ~ CONE HOOKS. CO