Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

THE BUGLER Whelen rubbed his eyes—every face was the same; the face of Bill McCarty. There were thousands — uncountable numbers of them; the world was jammed to overflowing. They swung down the road from Bouresches, but their heavy trench shoes made not a sound on the white road. The expressions of some were sad; those of others were gay; but in the main they were smiling. They swarmed into Belleau Ceme- tery, and each man took a position by a grave, grounded his rifle smartly, and stood at attention. Then the thought came to Sadface. Those figures before him were the million different emotions that went to make up the man Peregrine Street had known as Bill McCarty. There were the happy, the sad, the placid, the angry, the brave, the fright- ened. Why, that skulking figure to the rear might even be the cowardly Bill McCarty, who had let little Whippy O’Brien die be- cause he was too afraid to save him. - And he—Sadface Whelen—had con- demned the million because of the one. He had done wrong. You shouldn’t mark a man’s whole life black because of one bad quarter hour. Now the million were dead —unable to rest until he blew taps over them. Whippy, who had been a kindly soul, would have felt uneasy about that. He lifted the bugle to his lips and blew— blew as he never had before—but not a sound disturbed the stillness. The men be- side the crosses looked at him with unwink- ing eyes. He had condemned them. It was up to him to give them rest, and—God in heaven! —he couldn’t do it. He threw his bugle on the ground and screamed. IV. A rouGH hand touched his face. Mc- Carty’s voice said: ‘‘ There, there, old timer! What’s the fuss all about?” Sadface Whelen opened his eyes. He lay in the great feather bed that was the prin- cipal article of furniture in'the room. Mc- Carty sat beside it, smoking a cigarette and nursing a knife slash across his knuckles. There was a quizzical look in his blue eyes. ‘““Where’s Papa?” asked Sadface. OF BELLEAU. 93 “Thinking things over in the hoose- gow.” Whelen looked at him reproachfully. “You showed yourself game, and the one time you wasn’t was only a little bit of you. Even Whippy O’Brien wouldn’t hold it against you, I guess.” “Say,” said McCarty, “who is this Whippy O’Brien. You mentioned him the day I came here. Spill it.” ““Who’s Whippy O’Brien? You saw him die—and you don’t remember?” The other man shook his head. ‘“ I saw thousands of men die, I guess, before the big scrap was over; but not anybody I knew by that name.” | “‘ Oh, this was years ago, before the war, when we was both back in Peregrine Street. Whippy was my buddy. He drowned—an’ they said you stood lookin’, an’ didn’t have nerve enough to go in after him.” McCarty got to his feet, very red in the face. “‘I remember Whippy now—a skin- ny, freckled kid he was—but I didn’t see him die; on-my word, I didn’t. When did it happen?” “On August 15, 1899,” said Sadface. He never would forget the date. -“T told you! I left town on the rath. My enlistment papers ’Il show that I signed up in New York on the day you say Whippy was drownded. Somebody that didn’t like me—some one that wanted to get me in a stew of trouble—must have said I was there. That’s all.” For a,moment Sadface Whelen lay there looking up at Bill McCarty. The sag of his lips lifted, the doleful light left his pale eyes, and for the first time in many a long day he smiled. “T’m damned glad, McCarty,” he said; “but even if you hadn’t told me that, I couldn’t have gone on hatin’ you. Most of us forget, I guess, that every man’s made up of a million parts, and they’re like to hate the whole million for one little one. An’ in tellin’ you this, I don’t figure that I’m breakin’ faith with little Whippy. Let’s be friends.” That night all Bouresches stared as the buglers of Belleau walked to the cemetery, and, standing together in the gathering dusk, blew taps. EOMiIGdoo Ss (S@)