So read the orderly corporal, standing at the south end of number two barrack room in Fort French while I lay on my trestle and purred.
Presently the corporal, announcing details, told off Surly McNabb, troop teamster, to fetch a load of coal with me for off man. My purr changed to a groan.
The bugle was sounding "Last post" with a cold in its head as the orderly corporal clanked away to call the roll next door. Then Windy O'Rooke sat up and shouted he had a dollar to say that "Surly bucks stiff-legged at taking a blanked rookie on coal fatigue. It's me he wants."
"Mr. Affable McNabb," said I, "has been using influence to get me. You cuckoos who steal one another's ideas think Affable's a morose beast with a thirst. But gentlemen, he has a faithful heart. My dog to your dollar, Windy, I'll make him deliver a speech of fifteen minutes."
"Done!"
McNabb intervened with a horse brush, which I fielded, and returned to its own address. Reprisals followed, while I dived under beds capsizing their peaceful inhabitants. So there was roughhouse for the space of thirteen minutes while I was partly killed, before the bugle saved me. For at "Lights out," the room corporal ordered silence. The lamplight changed to moonlight and a red glow from the stove, the stampeding of elephants became a creeping of mice, and Windy sat up in bed for a long luxurious scratch.
Next morning Surly drove his four-horse team to an outcrop of coal about sixteen miles up the valley of Old Man's River, and not one word would he vouchsafe to me. While he watched me load the wagon he ate his lunch, and smoked for hours but still said never a word. Once when we started back toward barracks I thought he was going to speak, for I asked him politely if he were not too tired, but he only shouldered me off the wagon seat so that I lit on my tail in a blue pool of profanity. I had to climb on the tail-board, dead tired, black as Satan and most frightfully cold.
Did you ever try to whistle Te Deum in rag-time? I tried it, with my teeth for castanets, while I sat in a wind like a scythe and whittled Surly's grub box into kindlings. Then I made me a lovely fire in the load of coal, and sang Lead Kindly Light to cheer old Surly.
When it got too hot, I dropped down and walked behind singing,
"Oh, Paradise! Oh, Paradise! I greatly long to see
Old Surly in his Future Home attempting repartee,
While small red devils rake the coals to keep him good and hot
And when they ask him to cheer up, he'll say he'd rather not."