Adventure Magazine Cover — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

The Fresh Yank it, and then any penalties for betrayal of secrets would fall upon them. If a rumor- monger was caught in that command, when morale was at such a low ebb, it was likely to go very hard with him. The Yank gathered his weapons and accouterments and went up to the town, his only thought now to find a place to cast himself down and sleep. Of all the fatigues of war, that which fol- lows a mounted march is the worst. An infantryman can hike twenty miles and be exhausted at the end. It takes two or three hundred miles to bring a lorry-driver to his last gasp. But neither foot-soldier nor lorry-driver goes to his bed with half the bone-racking agony that wrings a mounted man at the end of a forced march. Every muscle cries out, every nerve twangs, it is exquisite torment to move a limb. The chafe of the saddle, the pounding of the carbine, the grinding of a misplaced buckle, the rasping of the stirrup leather on the shin bone, the dust of the column in nose, eye and throat, the spine-racking trot for a hundred yards, the pulling up, and then the shambling walk until a loss of dis- tance compels another pounding trot; all these the cavalryman knows. And when he comes at last to camp, he can not cast off his pack and sleep where he falls as can his brother of the infantry. He must water, feed and groom his mount, and not only his own, but several extra mounts including those of the officers. Then he must clean his accouterments and after that he may sleep, unless it is already day- light. S'S MOVING with the patrol away from Bim the troop, the Yank had escaped _. much of the discomfort ofa march with the column, but patroling is a hard task in itself and they had done so much running down forest paths and halting at cross-roads and climbing trees, that the name-sake of the drink of violets and snow was weary enough. “Now,” thought he, ‘I’ve got to prowl around. and find my blankets. First, though, I’d better eat. Then sleep.” He hunted up the cook fire and ate some bread and potatoes, washed down with tea. Then, bewailing the fact that he had no tobacco, he went in search of his blankets. A weary hunt through the wagon park located these, and a few inquiries told him II that his squadron was billeted in the field to the south of the village, where he had left his horse. On his way thither he met Lar- com, stumbling along with a blanket over his arm. “Where you going?” called the Yank. “Ho, is that you?” asked the lean man. “T’m ’untin’ a place to sleep. I’m fed up with sleepin’ in the wet grass. I’ma goin’ to bivouac in a waggin, I am.”’ ‘“Where is there one?”’ “Ard by ’ere. Come on, there’s room for two hov us. I’m fair tired, I am, after trottin’ around them roads all day.”’ The Yank followed him to a wagon parked just this side of the houses. Alas, when they raised the curtain they found that the driver had invited a friend, so that there remained but room for one more to creep in. Natural- ly, since it was his find, the lean man crawled in. For once he was thankful for his lean- ness, for there was not a great deal of room there. The Yank went sadly away. “I’m not going to sleep in this wet grass,” he grumbled after a while. ‘There surely must be some shed I can get under.”’ He went back toward the houses again. His regiment was quartered in the west side of the town and the houses were given over to the officers and sergeants. What few barns there were would be full of offi- cers’ mounts, with their attendant batmen. The cooks and scavengers of the brigade and regimental messes would occupy every place that was not filled by some N. C.0O., but the Yank hoped he might get his head under cover just the same. It was a fruitless task. Snores came from nearly every window and barn door, and those that did not elicit snores, showed ‘officers bending over maps about a candle- lighted table. The Yank felt his weariness descend more heavily on him, dragging at his limbs like iron weights. What a fool he had been to enlist! To risk his life in an alien army, fighting for a cause that did not concern him in the slightest. His head sagged on his chest. As he turned down a path between the houses, a tiny gleam of white on the dusty ground caught his eye. He stopped and, in spite of the agony of stiff neck and lame back, bent down. “My blinking eye!” cried he. cigaret!”’ A real cigaret, dropped by some officer, perhaps. The Yank seized it and looked “Tt’s a CoOnmicloool. 1 @)