第21章 SOLDIER BOY -TO HIMSELF

It is five months.Or is it six?My troubles have clouded my memory.I have been all over this land,from end to end,and now Iam back again since day before yesterday,to that city which we passed through,that last day of our long journey,and which is near her country home.I am a tottering ruin and my eyes are dim,but I recognized it.If she could see me she would know me and sound my call.I wish I could hear it once more;it would revive me,it would bring back her face and the mountains and the free life,and I would come -if I were dying I would come!She would not know ME,looking as I do,but she would know me by my star.

But she will never see me,for they do not let me out of this shabby stable -a foul and miserable place,with most two wrecks like myself for company.

How many times have I changed hands?I think it is twelve times -I cannot remember;and each time it was down a step lower,and each time I got a harder master.They have been cruel,every one;they have worked me night and day in degraded employments,and beaten me;they have fed me ill,and some days not at all.And so I am but bones,now,with a rough and frowsy skin humped and cornered upon my shrunken body -that skin which was once so glossy,that skin which she loved to stroke with her hand.I was the pride of the mountains and the Great Plains;now I am a scarecrow and despised.These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have reached the bottom of the scale,the final humiliation;they say that when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish they feed to him,they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy,to make sport for the people and perish for their pleasure.

To die -that does not disturb me;we of the service never care for death.But if I could see her once more!if I could hear her bugle sing again and say,"It is I,Soldier -come!"