intensely. “Don't stay far from here either. An' Ah'll do it too, if he don't let off pickin' on me.”
“Who's that?”
“That big squirt Anderson they made a file closer at drill yesterday. He seems to think that just because Ah'm littler than him he can do anything he likes with me.”
Andrews turned sharply and looked in his companion's face; something in the gruffness of the boy's tone startled him. He was not accustomed to this. He had thought of himself as a passionate person, but never in his life had he wanted to kill a man.
“D'you really want to kill him?”
“Not now, but he gits the hell started in me, the way he teases me. Ah pulled ma knife on him yisterday. You wasn't there. Didn't ye notice Ah looked sort o' upsot at drill?”
“Yes... but how old are you, Chris!”
“Ah'm twenty. You're older than me, ain't yer?”
“I'm twenty-two.”
They were leaning against the wall of their barracks, looking up at the brilliant starry night.
“Say, is the stars the same over there, overseas, as they is here?”
“I guess so,” said Andrews, laughing. “Though I've never been to see.”
“Ah never had much schoolin',” went on Chris. “I lef school when I was twelve, 'cause it warn't much good, an' dad drank so the folks needed me to work on the farm.”
“What do you grow in your part of the country?”
“Mostly coan. A little wheat an' tobacca. Then we raised a lot o' stock.... But Ah was juss going to tell ye Ah nearly did kill a guy once.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Ah was drunk at the time. Us boys round Tallyville was a pretty tough bunch then. We used ter work juss long enough to git some money to tear things up with. An' then we used to play craps an' drink whiskey. This happened just at coan-shuckin' time. Hell, Ah don't even know
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