I took up again the random tramping in the dark
unknown night; till it was two o'clock of a Sunday morning when at
last I dropped my report-card in the train-guard box and climbed
upstairs to the cot opposite "Davie," sleeping the silent,
untroubled sleep of a babe.
I was barely settled in Gatun when the train-guard handed me one
of those frequent typewritten orders calling for the arrest of
some straggler or deserter from the marine camp of the Tenth
Infantry. That very morning I had seen "the boss" of census days
off on his vacation to the States--from which he might not return
--and here I was coldly and peremptorily called upon to go forth
and arrest and deliver to Camp Elliott on its hill "Mac," the
pride of the census, with a promise of $25 reward for the trouble.
"Mac" desert? It was to laugh. But naturally after six weeks of
unceasing repetition of that pink set of questions "Mac's" throat
was a bit dry and he could scarcely be expected to return at once
to the humdrum life of camp without spending a bit of that $5 a
day in slaking a tropical thirst. Indeed I question whether any
but the prudish will loudly blame "Mac" even because he spent it a
bit too freely and brought up in Empire dispensary. Word of his
presence there soon drifted down to the wily plain-clothes man of
Empire district.
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