Then, disregarding the
implorings of Carew and Paddy, who were terrified at the steady,
unseeing look in his gray eyes and at the tense lines about his
lips, he went to his captain and demanded his old position of
regimental rough rider.
He obtained it. In fact, it was given, not only freely, but with
joy. In all the regiment, no one else had been able to subdue such
wild mounts as Weldon. In former days, he had stopped at little. Now
he stopped at nothing. Horse-sickness, the scourge of South Africa,
was in the land; and the underfed, overworked mounts yielded to it
with pitiful ease. And, meanwhile, the need for horses was greater
than ever. Drive after drive through the country about Kroonstad was
bringing in the hostile Boers; but it was also bringing down the
horses. The call for new mounts was limitless; limitless, too, the
hours and the strength and the skill which Trooper Weldon put forth
to the supplying that call. He was utterly untiring; but he was
utterly reckless as well. Checked by no risk, sobered by no danger,
he rushed into risk and danger as rushes the man whose one wish is
to escape from a future of which he is in mortal, agonizing dread.
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