CHAPTER XIV — 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 I am 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!”