"But Tommy was my bunky for three—"
"—Slavin—" reads the operator—"Kelly—Hunt—" and so he goes on, Terry checking off till we thought he never would stop. "Fourty-five, fourty-six, fourty-seven, fourty-eight," he says. Then the machine stopped talking. "That's all," says Terry. "Fourty-eight good men that they've killed—"
"Huh?" grunts the man again, and then the machine began to click very slow, and the operator's eyes bulged out of his head. "Murphy!" he says. "Christ," he says, "it can't be Murphy. Murphy's sendin'. Billy," he says, jabbing at his key and then listening. The machine clicked once or twice and then stopped. The operator turns round to us. "It's Billy," he says. "Billy's been sendin' this, an' he's dead." The big fellow just dropped down on his table and cried.
We looked at him and we looked at each other, and then we went down-stairs on tiptoe, like there was a dyin' man in the house. "Fourty-nine," says Terry, whispering like—"fourty-nine men of the regiment killed at breakfast, with no show to help themselves. God! And we might a got the same thing only—Scuts," he says, "where's that little woman o' yours?"
"Warn't she straight?" says Scuts, throwing his chest.
"You poor fool," Terry shouts, "go and get her up here before those devils suspect she told us. Take your rifle, damn you," he says, as the little man trotted off. "Fourty-nine o' them killed fightin' with their mess-kits. God!"
Just as we was getting into our kits, Scuts comes back. "I can't find her," he says. "I ast her mother, an' she just grinned at me," he says, staring out of the window as if he expects to see her there. "I can't find her," he says. "Terry, do you s'pose—"
"Scuts," Terry yells at him, "you get ready to go out on this patrol with us. Do you hear, or have I got to bat you?" he says, like he meant it.
We scouted down through the town, the people smiling at us just as friendly as ever, and never a sign of Marie could we get. So we swung out through the paddies and circled the town, coming back toward the quarters through the grove of cocoa-palms. The Lieutenant was on the point, and all at once he stopped short. We pushed up, and there, tied to a big palm-tree, was something I've tried hard to forget. 'Twouldn't have been so bad if she had just been dead, but all at once she—
"They cut her all to pieces an' it didn't kill her," says Scuts, surprised like.