Brookings weekly register. (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1898-1903, 1900-11-22
AN ABJECT COWARD.


touching over his head and casting the dark,
treacherous shadows where may lurk with
fatal advantage the 1.-the, muscular forms of the
half savage brown men he is hunting Behind
him he knows the man in the path is watching
him with curiosity amounting almost to fas-
cination and expecting every second to hear
scuffe and to hasten to the spSt to be perhaps
too late. A turn in the path takes him from
the soldiers view; he breathes easier; q feeling
almost of exultation comes over him; he has set
for the private soldier the hard example ex-
pected of the officer and demonstrated, as have
many others, to a sneering and ignorant set of
army haters, that life of ease and safety be-
longs not to the line officer, by himself doing
that which he is not allowed to ask or expect of
the common soldier. He continues on up the
path. Five rods more are covered-ten-
twenty Nothing in view, he has almost de-
cided to return. With every nerve and fibre at
the highest tention, alert for any emergency, he
raises his foot for another forward STEP sud-
den movement in the bushes on his left and like
a fash he turns, his six-shooter levelled to his
eye in the act, ready to send its contents into
the first object that meets the line of sight Of
marble he stands for second and then slowly
and with . quiet laugh he lowers his weapon,
and there in little open space the cause of the
movement shakes it's head and gives voice to
low looing sound and he is confronted by Car
iboo cow, one of the giant native cattle captured
in the interior of the island and only partly re-
claimed from their wild state by the Tagalos
These great animals are never fully tanned and
are always ugly when excited. That the COW
before the officer was excited was most patent
The polished tips of her black, spreading horns
fully six feet apart, cleaned like ebony in the
moonlight as she shook her head and looed
angrily again. A plaintive bleating behind her
revealed to the intruder the reason for her ex-
element; calf was moving about unsteadily
on it's legs in the shadow and the COW, aroused
FIRST by the Filipinos running through the
bushes and then by this second intrusion into
her chosen bower, had risen in the defense of
her offspring The officer turned to go. The
movement was ill-timed; it precipitated affairs.
The Oariboo, with her head down and angry
looings, charged him. The chances of battle,
the ambuscade, even the centipedes and taran-
tulas had failed TO inspire him with fear, but
this charge of the glistening horns be could not
Withstand He wavered for moment, then
broke and fed without firing volley. The
sprint down that path, if recorded, would have
insured him place on his college track team.
The cow gave up the chase after few rods and
he was able to walk in BETTING and digni6ed
manner past the sentry, with warming for
closer watchfulness A few minutes after his
return TO the reserve, laughing whispsrings be-
tween the officers and favorite sergeant re-
vealed that in his life, as in every mans life if
one can but Hnd it, there is something which
makes, at some time or other, coward of him.