Soldiers Three | Page 3

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This Etext repared by Bill Stoddard - Email: [email protected]

SOLDIERS THREE
by Rudyard Kipling

CONTENTS
"LOVE-O'-WOMEN" - from "Many Inventions" THE BIG DRUNK
DRAF' THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS THE MAN WHO
WAS ONLY A SUBALTERN IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE
THE LOST LEGION - from "Many Inventions" THE DRUMS OF
THE FORE AND AFT JUDSON AND THE EMPIRE - from "Many
Inventions" A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS - from "Many
Inventions"

'LOVE-O'WOMEN'

A lamentable tale of things Done long ago, and ill done.
The horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from his
comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the
barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun
had dried it to a dusky gold-beater- skin film, cracked lozenge-wise by
the heat, and as the wind rose each lozenge, rising a little, curled up at
the edges as if it were a dumb tongue. Then a heavier gust blew all
away down wind in grains of dark-coloured dust. It was too hot to stand
in the sunshine before breakfast. The men were all in barracks talking
the matter over. A knot of soldiers' wives stood by one of the entrances
to the married quarters, while inside a woman shrieked and raved with
wicked filthy words.
A quiet and well-conducted sergeant had shot down in broad daylight
just after early parade one of his own corporals, had then returned to
barracks and sat on a cot till the guard came for him. He would,
therefore, in due time be handed over to the High Court for trial.
Further, but this he could hardly have considered in his scheme of
revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of the trial
would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like I knew
even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned, with
the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a
dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the
wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would
swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his
Commanding Officer would put in certificates of the prisoner's moral
character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the
witnesses would smell of dye and soaps;