Sitting in the lee of the picket fence which bounded Maitland Camp on the west, Paddy the cook communed with himself, and Weldon and Carew communed with him.
"Oh, it's long and long yet before a good many of these ones will be soldiers," he, observed, with a disrespectful wave of his thumb towards the awkward squad still manoeuvering its way about over the barren stretch of the parade ground. "They ride like tailors squatting on their press-boards, and they salute like a parrot scratching his head with his hind paw. A soldier is like a poet, born, not made."
In leisurely fashion, Weldon stretched himself at full length and drew out a slender pipe.
"Paddy, if you keep on, I'll fire a kopje at you," he threatened.
Paddy disdained the threat.
"Glory be, the kopjes be riveted down on the bottom end of them! But it's the truth I'm telling. Half of these men is afraid of their lives, when they're on a horse."
"The horses of South Africa are divided into two classes," Carew observed sententiously; "the American ones that merely buck, and the cross-eyed Argentine ones that grin at you like a Cheshire cat, after they have done it. Both are bad for the nerves. Still, I'd rather be respectfully bucked, than bucked and then laughed at, after the catastrophe occurs. Paddy, my knife has been splitting open its handle. What's to be done about it?"
"Let's see."
Bending forward, Carew drew the black-handled knife and fork from the coils of his putties. In the orderly surroundings of Maitland Camp, there was no especial need of his adopting the storage methods of the trek; nevertheless, he had taken to the new idea with prompt enthusiasm. Up to that time, it had never occurred to him to bandage his legs with khaki, and then convert the bandages into a species of portable sideboard.
"Paddy," Weldon remonstrated; "don't stop to play with his knife. No matter if it is cracked. So is he, for the matter of that. Go and tell your menial troop to remember to put a little beef in the soup, this noon. I am tired of sipping warm water and onion juice."
"What time is it, then?"
"My watch says eleven; but my stomach declares it is half-past two. Trot along, there's a good Paddy. And don't forget to tie a pink string to my piece of meat, when you give it to the orderly. Else I may not know it's the best one." With a reluctant yawn and a glance upward towards the sun, Paddy scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off with the outspread palms of his stubby hands. Then he turned to the men behind him.
"Stick your fork back in your putties, Mr. Carew, and I'll send you a knife to go with it. As long as Paddy manages the cooking tent, the cracked knives shall go to the dunderheads. The best isn't any too good for them as rides like you and Mr. Weldon, and drinks no rum at all."
Weldon eyed him mockingly.
"And gives their ration of rum to Paddy," he added. "Go along, man, and set your kettles to boiling, while you return thanks that you know a good thing when you see it."
"Paddy is a great boy," Carew observed, as the little Irishman saluted them in farewell, then turned and strolled away in the direction of his quarters.
"And, what's more, a most outrageously good cook," Weldon assented. "If Paddy's ambition to shoot a gun should ever be fulfilled, England might gain a soldier; but it would lose a chef of the cordon bleu."
"If I were to choose, I'd sacrifice his sense of taste for the sake of keeping his sense of humor," Carew returned. "Not even war can subdue Paddy."
With a disdainful gesture, Weldon pointed out across the sun-baked parade ground with the stem of his pipe.
"War! This?" he protested. "It is nothing in this world but a Sunday school picnic."
And Carew, as his eyes followed the pointing pipe-stem, was forced to give his assent.
It was now five days since, with scores of their mates, Weldon and Carew had been passed from their medical examination to the double test of their riding and their shooting. Elated by their threefold recommendation, they had lost no time in donning their khaki and taking up their quarters under the fraction of canvas allotted to them. The days that followed were busy and slid past with a certain monotony, notwithstanding their varied routine. From morning stables at seven until evening stables at six, each hour held its duty, for in that regular, clock-marked life, recreation was counted a duty just as surely as were the daily drills.
Carew, trained on the football field, took to the foot drill as a duck takes to water. Weldon was in his glory on mounted parade. One summer spent on an Alberta ranch had taught him the tricks of the broncho-buster, and five o'clock invariably found him pirouetting across the parade ground on the back of the most vicious mount to be found within the limits of Maitland. More than once there had been a breathless pause while the entire squadron had waited to watch the killing of Trooper Weldon; more than once there had been an utterly profane pause while the officers had waited for Trooper Weldon to bring his bolting steed back into some semblance of alignment. The pause always ended with Weldon upright in his saddle, his face beaming with jovial smiles and his horse ranged up with mathematical precision. The delays were by no means helpful to discipline. Nevertheless, the officers yielded to the inevitable with the better grace, inasmuch as no one else would voluntarily trust life and limb to the vicious beasts in which Weldon's soul delighted.
Twice already, during the past five days, Weldon had handed over to the authorities a chastened and obedient pony, and had made petition to select a fresh and untrammelled spirit. The one of the afternoon before had been the most untrammelled he had as yet attempted. The contest had begun with the first touch of the saddle. It had continued with Weldon's being borne across the camp on the back of a little gray broncho who was making tentative motions towards a complete handspring. By the time the pony was convinced of the proper function of her own hind legs, Weldon found himself being driven from the door of the cooking tent by Paddy and a volley of potatoes. The broncho surveyed Paddy with scorn, rose to her hind legs and strolled towards the corner of the camp sacred to visitors. There she delivered herself of one final, mighty buck. When Weldon regained the perpendicular, he found himself directly facing the merry, admiring eyes of Ethel Dent. By Ethel's side, mounted on a huge khaki-colored horse, sat the man he had met, only the week before, in the driveway of the Dents' home.
Scarlet with his exertions, grimly aware that his sleeve was pulled from its armhole and his left puttie was strained out of its usual compact folds, nevertheless Weldon saluted her smilingly and, his mount well in hand, galloped off in search of his squadron. That night, however, his clear baritone voice was missing from the usual chorus about the camp fire; and, as he thoughtfully drained his tin billy of coffee, next morning, he was revolving in mind the relative merits of his banker and a dead mother-in-law, as excuses for demanding a pass to town, that afternoon.
However, afternoon found him moodily riding about the camp. His body was on a subdued gray broncho; his mind was solely upon Ethel and her companion. He liked the girl for herself, as well as for the fact that, in this remote corner of the world, she represented the sole bit of feminine companionship which is the rightful heritage of every son of Eve. True, there was Miss Arthur; but Miss Arthur was antediluvian. Under these conditions, it was galling to Weldon to see Ethel absorbed by a comrade who, he frankly admitted to himself, was far the more personable man of the two. And the girl's blue eyes had laughed up into the eyes of the stranger just exactly as, two short weeks before, they had laughed up into his own. Then the little gray broncho jumped cornerwise, and Weldon had difficulty in impressing upon her that handsprings were not an approved form of cavalry tactics. Nevertheless, he did it with a word of apology. For the moment, the broncho was not wholly responsible for her return to evil ways.
Over their breakfast, next morning, his five tentmates fell to catechising him as to his pensive mood, and their catechism was largely intermingled with chaff.
"Paddy's compliments, and roll up for your tucker," the mess orderly proclaimed, as he came into the tent, brandishing a coffee pot in one hand, the frying pan in the other.
Fork in hand, Carew nevertheless paused to take exception to the word.
"I confess I can't see why Tucker, when it is supposed to untuck the creases of us," he observed. "Hermit, shall I serve you in the corner; or will you deign to join us about the festive frying pan?"
"What's the matter with Weldon, anyhow?" another of the group queried, as dispassionately as if the subject of discussion had been absent in Rhodesia. "His face is a yard long, and his lips hang down in the slack of the corners."
"Brace up, man, and get over your grouch," a third adjured him. "You are worse than O'Brien was, the morning after he was shoved in kink. Were you in Cape Town, last night?"
"Not a bit of it," Carew put in hastily, while he buried his knife-blade in the nearest pot of jam. "My left ear can prove an alibi for him. From taps till midnight, Weldon discoursed of all the grewsome things in the human calendar."
The smallest of the group turned himself about and peered up into Weldon's face.
"Homesick, man?" he queried.
"Sure," Weldon replied imperturbably.
"Oh. Then get over it. Just dream of the days when the bronchos cease from bucking and the Stringies shoot no more. Meanwhile, if you could look pleasant, as the photographers say, it would help on things wonderfully."
But the mess orderly interrupted. He had tidings to impart, and they burned upon his tongue.
"Have you heard about Eaton-Hill?" he asked, in the first pause that offered itself.
Five faces turned to him with gratifying expectancy. Eaton-Hill had come out on the Dunottar Castle. He was known to them all as the acknowledged exquisite of the entire camp.
"What about him?"
"C. B. I met him coming out of the orderly room."
"Hm! Camp scavenger. Eaton-Hill will like that," Weldon commented dryly. "What's the row about?"
"Cupid apparently. He went calling in Cape Town, last night, without leave, stayed till past eleven and undertook to come in by sea. He shipped in a leaky boat with a crew composed of one Kaffir boy; the Kaffir funked the surf; they had an upset and Eaton-Hill waked up the picket by the fervor of his swearing at the half-drowned Kaffir."
"Poor Eaton-Hill! Both his morals and his clothes must have suffered," Carew suggested. "Weldon, take warning. Next time you go to call on Miss Arthur, start early and be sure you have your pass pinned to the lining of your coat."
"Who is Miss Arthur?" demanded the chorus.
Deliberately Carew helped himself to the last of the bacon. Then he made answer, with equal deliberation,—
"Miss Arthur is Weldon's lawful chaperon."
At four o'clock, that afternoon, Weldon arose reluctantly from his seat on the western end of the Dents' veranda.
"Parade at five, Miss Dent, and Maitland Camp is four miles away."
Without rising, she smiled up into his waiting eyes.
"You made more than four miles an hour, when Captain Frazer and I were watching you, the other day, Mr. Weldon."
"Yes, twenty at least. Still, as you may have noticed, my mount doesn't always choose the straightest course. If she elects to go to Maitland by way of Durban, it will take me all of the hour to make the journey."
She laughed at his words. Then of a sudden her face grew grave.
"They've no right to give you such a horse, Mr. Weldon."
"Right? Oh, I beg pardon. I chose it."
"Is your life so unhappy?" she questioned, in mocking rebuke.
"It is no suicidal mania, Miss Dent," he reassured her. "I like the rush and excitement of it all; but I had a summer on a ranch, and I learned the trick of sitting tight until the beast tires itself out. Broncho-busting is only a concrete form of philosophy, after all."
"And must you really go?" she asked him.
He lingered and hesitated. Then, with a glance at the horse fastened to a post in the drive below, he straightened his shoulders.
"I must."
She rose to her feet.
"Good afternoon, then."
"And good by," he added.
"What does that mean?"
"That we leave Maitland Camp in the morning."
"I am sorry," she said, and her voice showed her regret. "Where are you going?"
"To Maitland station. Then into a train. Beyond that, I do not know."
"I am sorry," she repeated; "but very glad. It is time you were doing something. I know you didn't take all this journey out here for the sake of being drilled in Maitland Camp until the end of time. We shall miss you; but you will come back to us, some day, and tell us all the story of your deeds. Success to you, Trooper Weldon!"
She gave him her hand; then stood looking after him, as he went down the steps. Once in the saddle, he turned back to wave a farewell to the tall girl framed in the arching greenery that sheltered the broad veranda. Then, urging on his horse, he went galloping away, his boyish face turned resolutely towards the front.
Careless of the oldtime superstition, the girl watched him out of sight. Then slowly she moved back to their deserted corner where she sat long, her elbows on the arms of her chair and her chin resting on her hands. Her eyes were held steadily on Table Bay; but her thoughts followed along the road to Maitland Camp—and beyond.
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