"I don't mean to find fault and you mustn't worry about us. I'm as active as a cricket and Mary hasn't been ailin' any to speak of. It's been a good long spell of dry weather, and that's good for my rheumatism, but it wasn't very encouraging for the crops. The mortgage on the house and farm is due in six weeks, and I can't get a renewal, though it's only six hundred dollars, as you know. The bank people is that haughty about the thing that I don't exactly see how we can get around them.
"But where there's a will there's a way, and the Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and if we ain't got any cash, there's others worse off. Your uncle Joseph is breakin' up fast, and he's ten years younger than me. He's the last of the tribe that's left on either side, and his family won't have anything to spare when he's gone. Of course it's hard to think of losing our old place, but I'm still pretty spry, and my black silk is good as new. I can't just quite tell where Mary and me will be if we leave home so soon, but you write just the same and the postmaster will know. You remember him, that stumpy, light-haired Jameson that married one of the Martins.
"God bless you, my poor wandering boy.
Your loving
"Mother."
Jenkins was reading over "Shorty's" shoulder, and several hairy faces framed in gray blankets had edged silently nearer.
"Well, what do you think of that?" said a Sixth Cavalry corporal. "And here's Saunders been givin' up the ghost without havin' any real troubles. Now it's time for you to brace up, and beg, borrow, or steal the dough and shoot it along to the old homestead. That letter was written more'n a month ago."
But Saunders had turned his face away and was a useless member of the ways and means committee, which convened with "Shorty" Blake as chairman. A praise-worthy burst of philanthropic ardor subsided when it met the cold fact that the paymaster had not visited camp in two months, and was not expected in Peking before three weeks later. Investigation revealed also that nearly all the available cash in P Company had passed into the hands of three expert poker players, who were reported as being "hard as nails, and wouldn't give a dollar to save their own mothers from the poorhouse."
Saunders showed no symptoms of interest in these endeavors, largely because he foresaw their magnificent futility. He was in a condition of hopeless apathy, and beyond rereading the letter from home now and then, made no effort to rally. He kept a tally of the days remaining before the foreclosure of the mortgage, with a series of thumb-nail scratches on the frame of his cot.
There were twelve days to be marked off when "Shorty" Blake, who had been discharged as cured, clattered into the ward, and yelled as he leaned over Saunders: