Trooper Tales — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

The Silent Trooper. tery Lander was sitting by the roadside a mile from camp. He was puffing a cheroot, and smiled, but did not speak to me. A round moon whitened the heavens about Old Baldy. I walked away from the village, then stole back concealed by the chaparral. While I waited, I wondered why I had not remembered to shake hands with Lander that night. It seemed a long time before the lieutenant’s horse was heard down the road. I hoped that Lander would pick off his man from ambush. I hated to think he would do it. “Dismount, lieutenant!’ sang out the man who had been kicked, and he did not salute his superior officer. What Crim said as he obeyed is rather important but not necessary to this narrative. But Crim knew then that he was only a common human man, like the being before him, whom he had kicked. He saw in the faded twilight a private in the regular army who, in the presence of other men, was his slave, but who, alone in the foot- hills of Arizona, was a cool, determined, smiling foe. He saw before him the handsome Charlie Howard, who was loved by a woman he loved. He saw the reckless light in Howard’s eyes which boded no good. And in spite of all these things, Lieut. Mat Crim was game. The moon was looking over Old Baldy’s icy crown now, and the great dome above and the sand below were filled with its whiteness. “You acted the coward once, little officer—try to be a man to-night,” I heard Lander say. “It was imprac- Comichooks (EO)