Trooper Tales — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

32 The Silent Trooper. put out a hand almost any time in the night and touch him. Naturally, under such conditions, my very proper prejudice against him on account of his infernal reserve would either grow into an uncomfortable suspicion, if not worse, or else I would learn to look beyond this seri- ous mental derangement of his. As it was, I began to feel for him that strong, wholesome respect which one always has for physical capability, when it is not accom- panied by mental sluggishness. Then I liked Lander’s face. He was a handsome devil —handsome astride his horse, and at mess and at groom- ing—handsome when silent. Yet I have seen his eye- lids droop over a wicked pair of shining eyes, and seen an ugly, bloodless look about his lower lip. I saw this on the hot day when Lieut. Mat Crim kicked him in the back, because—I wish I knew myself. _I will tell you what I saw. A couple of troops of the regiment were out on target range. We were camped in a bunch of unaspiring foot- hills which, late in the afternoon, rested in the huge coni- cal shadow of Old Baldy. The tip of Old Baldy’s icy cone punctures the sky at one of the highest points in Arizona. We were in that sand-stricken land where way- farers have to climb for water and dig for fuel-wood. We were in that heat-ridden land where the lean, long coyote scents death and trots cautiously thither—where the vul- ture cranes his bare, crimson neck from behind a cloud, and peers earthward for dying things. The loose walls of the big Sibley tent were not flapping Gomichbooks (CO)