r a talk in the dark,
when Cairns' brain dulled and refused to be driven to further work,
even under the whip of bitter-black coffee.... They were never to
forget these passionate nights--the mules, the mountains, nor the
changing moon. Cairns was tampering with a drug that is hard to give
up, in absorbing the odor and color of the oriental tropics. It filled
his blood, and though, at the time, its magic was lost somewhat in the
great loneliness for the States, and his mother and sisters--still, he
was destined to know the craving when back on consecrated ground once
more, and the carnal spirit of it all, died from his veins.

The most important lesson for Cairns to grasp was one that Andrew
Bedient seemed to know from the beginning. It was this: To make what
men call a good soldier means the breaking down for all time of that
which is thrillingly brave and tender in man.

Healy is a type--a gamester, a fiend, a catapult. With a yell of
"Hellsfire!" like a bursting shell, he would rowel his saddle-mule and
lead the Train through flood or flame. His was a curse and a blow. He
seemed a devil, condemned ever to pound miles behind him--bloody miles.
Sometimes, there was a sullen baleful gleam in the black eye, shaded by
a campaign hat, but more often it was wide-open and reckless like a man
half-drunk. Rousingly picturesque in action, a boy would exclaim, "Oh,
to be a man like that!" but a _man_ would look at him pityingly and
murmur, "God forbid!"... No other had the racy oaths of this
boss-packer. Here was his art. Out of all his memories of Healy and the
Train, one line stands out in the mind of Cairns, bringing the picture
of pictures:

Again, it was a swift twilight among the gorges between Silang and
Indang. It was after the suicide of the farrier, and there were sores
and galls under the packs. If one cannot quickly start the healing by
first intention, a sore back, in this climate, will ruin a mule. In a
day or two, one is all but felled by the stench and corruption of the
worm-filled wound--when the _aparejo_ is lifted.... Just before the
halt this night, an old gray mule, one of the tortured, had strayed
from the bell; sick, indeed, when that jangle failed to hold her to the
work. Something very strange and sorrowful about these mighty
creatures. If they can but muzzle the flanks of the bell-mare once in
twenty-four hours, often stopping a jolt from the heels of this
temperamental monster--the mules appear mora