Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

THE BUGLER punish Bill McCarty—and how better than in this way? He went overseas first cabin, marveling at the splendor of it. From Havre to Paris and from Paris to Bouresches occupied but a short time. It was in Bouresches that the ‘buglers of Belleau were to be stationed. McCarty, so Sadface had been informed, would reach there a day after him. That first night, at sunset, Sadface Whelen, his bugle swung by its cord over his shoulder, walked down the road to the cemetery. Several fascinated youngsters in black aprons and wooden sabots, followed him at a safe distance. Nature works fast to cover up the work of man when he has turned his hand to the making of war. The yellow-green meadow lands were smooth where once they had been gouged and hacked by shells and a mil- lion feet. Even the houses that had been shattered or reduced to powdery shards had been rebuilt to something near their old pro- portions. There were few visible signs that war had once laid so heavy a hand on this region; few signs save those white crosses row on row. | What was the line that had struck him so much in that “‘ Flanders”? poem? Sadface rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. Oh, yes! “Tf ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep—” | That was it. He had never broken faith with his com- rades who lay there in the meadow lands, and he’ wouldn’t break faith with little Whippy O’Brien—God rest his soul! He would see that McCarty paid the price for his cowardice. Then, with the sun on the rim of the world, Sergeant Bugler Whelen put the bugle to his lips, and blew ‘‘ Taps ”—taps for the men who had died along the line from Chiateau-Thierry to Berzy-le-Sec—and taps for the memory of little Whippy. II. McCarty arrived the next day. He came out from Chateau-Thierry in a_ battered, wheezy old taxicab that had once cruised Paris. -IntosPapa Merchaux’s café and McCarty shouted: turn out, ain’t it? OF BELLEAU. 91 up and down the Boulevard des Italiens in His chauffeur carried the luggage followed—square shouldered, smiling, a ruddy cheeked, powerful man. Whelen stood by the window, looking out into the sudden squall of rain pattering down into the street. There was an uncom- promising sternness in his erect and rigid attitude. McCarty slapped him on the back, and that you’re the same Whelen who used to lick me when we were kids together down in Peregrine Street. It’s funny how things Happy days!” Sadface turned very slowly and looked at the enemy he had not seen in twenty- five years. He did not hold out his hand, and the frown still ridged the skin between his brows. “Yes, I’m the same Whelen,” he said, “but Pve in mind more than just the lick- ing of younow, McCarty. We’re strangers, you an’ me. You needn’t waste your time tryin’ to make conversation, for I won’t talk with you, an’ that’s flat. The reason you can have in two words—Whippy O’Brien.” With that he swung around squarely on his heels and without looking at McCarty or the equally astounded Papa Merchaux, who had brought forth a bottle of wine in honor of the occasion, he stamped out into the rain. The days that followed presented a spec- tacle fit for the tears and laughter of the gods. Here were two men, who should have been bound together by every tie of service and of comradeship, the only _ Americans in a small French town, ignoring each other day by day. They passed each other in the street with rigid necks and averted eyes. By an unspoken arrange- ment they fixed the nights when each should blow taps in the cemetery down the road. Whelen was set in his determination. McCarty, angered by the reception he had met, refused to make overtures. The in- habitants of Bouresches wagged their heads and gossiped. Now that he had placed his enemy in oO GOMIGIOOKS=ACO “ Hello, old timer. They tell me -