Treat em Rough | Page 9

he O.K. if you keep your eyes open." So I said "What do you mean keep my eyes open."
So he says "Your a game bird but they's no use of you takeing reckless chances so you want to be on the look out every minute till you get back."
So then I asked him what and the hell he was talking about and he says "Didn't you know that Nick the Blade was going along with you?"
Well Al it seems like Sebastian got wise that I was going home on leave and he seen a chance to get even with me for laughing at him or that is he thought I was laughing at him but I really wasn't but any way as soon as he found out I was going he told them his brother in law had fell and struck his head on the brass rail and was dying and wanted him to come home and they eat it up and give him leave. So when Shorty tipped me off I said I would wait and go on a later train but Shorty says that wouldn't do me no good because Nick wouldn't be a sucker enough to try and pull anything on the train amidst all them soldiers but would wait till we was in Chi and then he would get his gang and lay for me and the way he generally worked was come right up to your flat and get you and if your wife or kid says I yes or no it would be taps for them to. And Nick could come back here to camp and they wouldn't never know he was mixed up in it.
Well Al I guess you know I am not scared of anything in the world as far as myself personly am concerned but Florrie isn't one of the kind that would set there in a rocker and pair her finger nails while their husband was getting massacreed and little Al is a game bird to and a chip of the old block and they would both holler like a Indian and call for the police and you know what would happen to the both of them and I wouldn't care for myself but if anything happened to them I would feel like I was the murder.
So while I just laughed at Sebastian and his gang on my own acct. I would be a fine stiff to in danger my wife and baby and besides as I said I eat something for breakfast that didn't set good on me and I don't know if it was the coffee or the milk or what it was but I eat something that was poisoned and that's a fine way to treat soldiers is to give them poison food and the easiest way to get the Germans killed off would be to invite them out here and board a while. And in the second place if a man asks for leave when he hasn't only been here 2 wks. it would hurt my chance to get a corporal or a sargent and any way I figured Florrie would rather see something new like the camp then set through a ball game and of course it would be different if I was pitching but I suppose it was Faber's turn today and I see where Cicotte trimmed them yesterday but at that the score would of been 1 and 1 if Felsch hadn't of hit that ball out of the park and Sallee must be his brother in law or something to give him a ball like that to hit. If I was pitching he would be lucky to hit one up in the press box.
So I told Sargent Leslie I wasn't feeling good and would he fix it for me to take my leave some other time and he says I was the only soldier he ever seen that was to sick to go on their leave so then I told him my wife and kid was comeing out here to see me today and he says all right.
[Illustration: Camp Grant must be infected with mormons (p. 51).]
So I didn't go Al and the funny part of it is that somebody must of tipped Sebastian off that I wasn't going and what does he do but get his leave called off to and he has been here all yesterday and today and that proves he is laying for me and just wanted to go because I was going and it looks like the only way I can ever get away from here is sneak out without letting nobody know I am going and even then he would probably send word to his gang in Chi to keep their eye on me till he