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 Imay 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.
