dampness seemed like a heavily draped ghost that wanted to kiss Hicks’s entire body, and when his eyes had completely tired from the strain of imagining that the stumps and posts in the field were moving, Hicks fell asleep. In his cramped position, sitting on a board over a shell hole, with his feet in the icy water, Hicks’s sleep was full of fantastic dreams. He might have slept until the noonday sun awakened him, had he not slipped from his seat and sprawled into the water. This awakened Bullis, who invariably went to sleep, remaining so until the watch was over.

“What the hell’s coming off?” Hicks awakened with a jerk. “Christ, it’s time to go in.”

They observed the sun, which was slowly climbing over the horizon and shedding the earth with a silvery light. The sky was almost smoked-pearl colored, and before it the trees and barbed wire made sharp sentinels.

[25]

[25]

Silently they picked up their rifles and slunk into the trench. Answering the guard’s challenging “Halt, who’s there?” with an “Oh, shut up,” they stepped on the slippery duck board.

“Say, Hicksy, you’d better look out. What the hell were you guys up to last night?” the guard asked.

“What do you mean? We weren’t up to anything.”

“Well, old Hepburn came back here after being out to your hole, a-cussin’ like hell. He said you guys couldn’t take advantage of your friendship with him like that and get away with it.”

“I don’t know what he meant. Let’s beat it, Bullis.”

They went to their dugout, where they slept with their shoes beneath their heads, to keep, as Hicks almost truthfully remarked, the rats from carrying them away.

The major’s orderly, his dignity wrestling with the slippery footing of the duck boards, marched down the trench from battalion headquarters. Stopping in front of the dugout which Hicks and Bullis had entered, he removed his helmet, patted his hair, and called:

[26]

[26]

“Is Private Hicks in there? Tell Private Hicks Major Adams wants to see him.”

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