ght trick can be learned after a while," agreed Dietz. "But, in
the daytime, there's nothing that can be done to protect you. You simply
have to suffer. Then the hot days! Why, Sarge, I've marched north up the
tracks of the Manila & Dagupan railroad, carrying fifty pounds of
weight, on days when the sun sure beat down on us at the rate of a
hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit."

"Yet you're alive, now," observed Overton.

"Oh, yes; just as it happens."

"But surely there's some marching in the shade, too?"

"Oh, yes; sometimes you spend the whole day, everyday for a fortnight,
hiking through the dense jungles after a gang of bolomen or Moros or
ladrones. Shade enough there in the jungle, but it has a Turkish bath
beaten to a plum finish. You drip, drip, drip with perspiration, until
you'd give a week's pay to be out in the sun for ten minutes with a
chance to get dried off."

"I'm going to like it, just the same," retorted Hal. "I know I am. And,
if the natives put up any real trouble for us, then we'll see some
actual service. That's what a very young soldier always aches for, you
know, Dietz."

"Yes, and it's sure fun fighting those brown-skinned little Filipino
goo-goos," grunted the older soldier. "First they fire on you, and then
you and your comrades lie down and fire back. After you've had a few men
hit the order comes to charge. Then you all rise and rush forward,
cheering like the Fourth of July. You have to go through some tall grass
on the way, and, first thing you know, a parcel of hidden bolo men jump
up right in front of you. They use their bolos--heavy knives--to slit
you open at the belt line. Ugh! I'd sooner fight five men with guns than
step on one of those bolo men in the jungle!"

"Just the same," voiced the young sergeant, "the sooner the
Thirty-fourth is ordered to the island the better I'll like it. I'm wild
to see some of the high foreign spots."

"Wish I could give you all the chances that are coming to me in my
service in the Army," grunted Private Dietz, as he rose from the table.

The afternoon was one of harder work for the two camp duty men. Hal
tried to read again, but found his thoughts too frequently wandering to
the Philippines.

The afternoon waxed late, at last, though still there was no sign of the
hunters. Once in a while a gun had been heard at some distance, and that
was all.

All the time Sergeant Hal had trailed his rifle about camp with him.
Now, tiring of readin