The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1901-08-29

IdLGs
Suddenly the wounded man gave a
whining groan and started to babble
foolishly. First it was a silly flow of
disjointed words and sentences, par
TALLY unintelligible, punctuated by the
whining means. Then he talked of
friends and a home he once had back
East" Now he recalled old incidents
and laughed a painful cackle over a
boyhood trick. Then he talked of
trouble, pleaded with a woman and
quarreled with a man. His life had
been a bad one, though some of us
never believed all told of him, but now
we heard it all from his own lips and
pitied him, for in his wandering talk
he told of things sacred even to a
scoundrel. 1t was a simple tale of a
mans wasted life, the fruits of which
had driven him to the army, but there
memory followed and made a bad SOL
der out of great strong material.
Once he started to gamble-just as
l had often seen him gamble, on the
quiet at barracks; hand after hand he
dealt and won and lost. Now he was
telling a ~fayorite story over the liquor.
But he always came back to the bad
life and cursed in a horrible strain
himself and those who had helped him
to it; it made my blood run cold to
listen. Then he prayed, a long,
rambling, pleading prayer-a prayer
for water.
And just one hundred yards away
was a stream; we could hear the
water ripple among the reeds, and by
looking cautiously could see the sun
lights CLINT upon the surface-yet-
in the same glance-we could see the
other ridge and the wheeling vulture.
my Gawd! ha' mercy on me-per-
haps-said a man.
He raised his head above the ridge
top-there was a puff of white and a
furrow in the dry ground by his hand.
He was but a man of flesh and blood,
SO he crawled back again, and though
he never went, he was a hero, that
fellow.
And as the shadows grew longer and
the sun another tint of red, the wound
ed man started to sing. All out of
tune it was, in a strange, unnatural
shrilly voice, the words jumbled and
twisted:
Oh! eighteen hundred and ~six-ty-one,
hurrah-hurrah!
We all set out to follow-the drum
hurrah-'rah!
An we'll all be gay whe-en-
He stopped, and, gazing straight be-
fore him, an ugly grin on his face, his
voice sounding much the same as
when on a spree, said:
Why can't they come and fight
their own battles. They make
speeches fast enough and stir it all
up like a boiling pot-round an round
an talk of the fag-an' of patriot
ism-whiIe we come and gets drilled
in the chest. They're all crooked
the whole set.
AN what's it all fer-ye go through
a hot campaign with the brownies,
fghtin' fer the flag while it starves
yer-an' if they don't shoot we dead
the flag brings We home in a leaky tub
an there We goes a-marchin' up the
avenue, with the great white roof all
yeller in the sun. A hot campaign and
ahole in the CHESTER a yell from the
crowd, thirteen per and a wave from
a lady's white handkerchief. An the
corporal says Dress ranks!' and We
march like ~peacocks, while ahead the
band plays:
"An' we'll all be gay when Johnnie
comes marching home,
oh! in eighteen hundred and sixty
one. Hurrah! 'Rah!
"Mot about us fellars wot don't
march home; wot about the woman
in the crowd, who, after the last rank
files by, finds the band has lied?"
His head went back, a yell from
the woods told us the boys were COM
ing up. Suddenly, sitting up straight,
he baWled out:
Cd EN-; they'll never march me
up the ave-n-'
It was summer and the avenue lay
all yellow in the warm sunshine, while
far ahead the majestic dome of the
capitol doomed against the blue.
DRESS ranks" said the corporal.
AN we marched like p~eacocks,' and
the crowd on either side cheered and
cheered, and the ladies waved their
white handkerchiefs to the bronzed
and wrinkled lines of men. Then a
band played, and as I heard the faint
tune, I thought of a man We had left
on the rocky ridge, and I looked for
a watching woman in the crowd, for it
seemed as if I could see again the
wheeling vulture and the man
snraWled ont in the yellow Eust and