Sergeant Whitley went to the shutterless window, and looked out at the
forest and the long array of tents.
"The rain is about over," he said. "It was just a passin' shower.
But it looks as if it had already added a fresh shade of green to the
leaves and grass. Cur'us how quick a rain can do it in spring, when
everything is just waitin' a chance to grow, and bust into bloom.
I've rid on the plains when everything was brown an' looked dead.
'Long come a big rain an' the next day everything was green as far as
the eye could reach an' you'd see little flowers bloomin' down under
the shelter of the grass."
"I didn't know you had a poetical streak in you, sergeant," said Dick,
who marked his abrupt change from the discussion of the war to a far
different topic.
"I think some of it is in every man," replied Sergeant Whitley gravely.
"I remember once that when we had finished a long chase after some
Northern Cheyennes through mighty rough and dry country we came to a
little valley, a kind of a pocket in the hills, fed by a fine creek,
runnin' out of the mountains on one side, into the mountains on the
other. The pocket was mebbe two miles long an' mebbe a mile across,
an' it was chock full of green trees an' green grass, an' wild flowers.
We enjoyed its comforts, but do you think that was all? Every man
among us, an' there was at least a dozen who couldn't read, admired its
beauties, an' begun to talk softer an' more gentle than they did when
they was out on the dry plains.
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