"I lost track of my dates while I was in this gold-plated asylum, and my discharge is due to-day, and I was figurin' my enlistment wasn't up for another week. There's a squad of discharged men goin' down to Tientsin in a wagon-train to-morrow, and I've drawn my travel pay, got my papers, and I'm off for little old New York. Here's where I drop off on the way an' do what I can for your old folks in Kansas. Got anything you want to send them?"
Saunders became almost animated as he rolled over and tried to speak in a fluttering whisper:
"I ain't got any money for 'em; but tell 'em I was doin' well when you left me, and to keep their nerve, an' I'll get back as fast as I can. But speakin' between us, Shorty, there's nothin' doin' for me, and I'll be planted before you get to 'Frisco. Maybe I've got some little trick to send along. Wait a minute. Fish around under the cot and find me a roll of rubber blankets."
The uproarious "Shorty" opened the bundle and disclosed a jade teapot, in a wrapping of wadded silk. It was a flawless bit of carving, fashioned from a solid block of imperial green jade, no more than a pretty toy to the soldiers, who examined it indifferently and wondered why Saunders wished to send it to his mother.
"It's the last thing I've got," he explained, "and the last present they'll ever get from me. I think they'd like to know I wasn't so blamed forgetful at the finish. Just lug it along, Shorty, an' if it don't get broke on the way, you can mail it when you cross the country."
The wish and the token were a sick man's whim to Blake, but he wrapped the jade teapot and tucked it in a soft corner of his haversack when he packed his kit late that night. He was vaguely aware that his purpose of finding the distressed family of Saunders would not survive the journey home, yet he had meant it when he made the promise. He believed Saunders as good as dead, because he had seen men die of homesickness in the field hospitals of the Philippines.
"I'll send his silly teapot to his folks," he told another discharged private of P Company, as they climbed into a four-mule wagon next morning; "and I'm sorry I can't help him out, same as you are. If the doctor would pack the poor fool in a wagon and ship him to the sea, he couldn't any more than die on the way, and there 'd be a fightin' chance he'd brace up."
With this farewell tribute of sympathy, the fortunes of Private Saunders slipped into the background among the varied interests which occupied the attention of the late Private Blake along his route to Taku Bar.