Adventure Magazine Cover — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

Paddy Miules, an object to draw suspicion. The sergeant- major probably would have been howling yet had it not been for “Assembly” sounding at that moment. Five minutes later the brigade was under way, Old Paddy harrying his two Chinese helpers, loaded to the last ounce with the cooking kits, into the column just back of Captain Pott’s light battery, and when “A” Company, which was acting as rear- guard, swung into the column just behind the battery, Old Paddy was perched on the rear of the ammunition wagon, wedged in between his sacks of culinary implements. The chinks, relieved of their burdens for the moment, trudged Happily along in the dust just out of range of Paddy’s heels. As the column turned into the river road, the men, already thirsty, cast longing eyes at the water dancing in the sunlight, but the order had gone forth from the medical staff at Manila that only water that was boiled could be used for drinking purposes, and the old disciplinarian that rode at the head of the column had warned his officers against letting the men fall out. Now, Old Paddy knew a trick or two about campaigning. He had fought under Crook, and Miles, on the plains and in the waterless deserts of Arizona. He knew what the sun could do. He knew what thirst was, and did not intend to suffer needlessly with water in sight. Just as the head of the column left the road to work up the draw that led toward the scene of proposed operations, he slipped from his perch, clutching wildly at his sacks, and fell, the camp kit cascading over him. The chinks began a wild scramble to sal- vage the mess, Old Paddy working like a demon to clear the road for “‘A’’, but he was too slow, and the company had to make a “right oblique” to go around the scat- tered pans, the rattled chinks, and grinning Paddy. “Get your worthless old carcass out of the way!” The words struck Old Paddy’s ears like the roar of the Bull of Bashan. He knew who it was that had reined in, and was looking down at him, and wily Old Paddy, with a last tremendous tug, rolled out of the way. He did not even look up, but busied himself with the tangled mess until the general clattered away toward the head of the column. It took but a minute to dash down to the Fighting Man 169 water’s edge, fill his and Pug’s canteens and dip two pails of water from the river. When the column halted a short dis- tance farther on Paddy came up, a bucket of water in each hand, the Chinaman stag- gering under the added weight of a bucket of water suspended at each end of their pingas or carrying-poles. The officers had gone up ahead for the final conference be- fore the brigade debouched on the plain above, and when they returned each of the fifty men in “A”? Company had a quart of water safely stowed in his canteen. He always thought of “der poys” first, himself last. It was always like this.with Paddy; and if one of them tried to thank him for an act of kindness all he got for his pains was a string of curses in broken English, with a few Hebrew and German expletives thrown in for good measure. Now, Old Paddy had two obsessions. The first and greatest was to have a real “‘bunkie,” a chum like Jack Flynn whom he had lost in his younger days, clipped through the throat in battle by an Apache bullet. Most of the men in ‘‘A” were younger, and the few old-timers, non-coms. all, felt a bit too proud to associate with the Old German Jew. For some time he had been slyly making up to Pug Carrol, a raw young Irishman who had joined the com- pany the year before. Pug looked and acted just like Jack Flynn, and sometimes Pug’s good-natured joshing would set Old Paddy’s heart- strings to twitching. The funny thing about it was that Pug liked Paddy, and was ashamed to show it, and being ashamed, bedeviled the old man to the limit. Paddy’s second obsession was exactly similar to Pug’s one and only ambition; he wanted to be a non-com.; and in all his twenty-five years of soldiering he had never even reached the grade of lance corporal. He was ugly, skinny, round shouldered, uneducated. He knew it, and he knew he had no chance, good soldier though he was, But he always hoped for the impossible, the one chance that would bring him the chevrons. Pug, tickled to death at the ae the old man had played, reached for Paddy’s pocket. “Gee, youre a —— of a fella. Why didn’t you throw all that tinware away, tie up the legs of those old canvas trousers of COnniclboooks (C@