Trooper Tales — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

THE SILENT TROOPER. | Lander, trooper in private ranks, never told just why he was kicked by his lieutenant, Mat Crim. Lander never told anything. That accounts for his being left to him- self more than is common or judicious for one of Uncle Sam’s horsemen in field or post. A troop is a family of big boys. Some of them are big bad boys, and an odd thing about it is that these are not always the unpopular ones. Troopers do not fall on the neck of a new man. They treat him with pinnacled dig- nity, like old cavalry horses treat additions to the picket line. If the new man, in a reasonable period, develops no objectionable traits, he will find himself a member of the family, which is other words for a good fellow. Because a man happens to be a gambler or a drunkard; or because he has a deep-rooted aversion for the various prongs of the law—a. kind of shuddering aversion such. as many soldiers and gentlemen have for work—none of these things form a primary necessity for his ostracism from the family group. But he can’t be a silent man nor a sneak; neither can he manipulate a voluminous correspondence. These things are fatal. Lander was a silent man. He was also my “bunkie,” which means that I could Comichdooks (CC)