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By Root 13968 0

seen the statue of the horse that killed Catherine the Great that they had erected in the little town in Russia where the royal stud farm had been. But none of them had ever seen them happen and Lady was beginning to whine and yelp and lunge until it was all the two sergeants could do to hold her. The novelty was wearing thin. It was not so much fun any more. The crowd began to wander away, a little vague-eyed and shamefaced, back to the jobs. But Sgt Henderson would not give up. The few who stayed on began to get half ashamed looks on their faces mingling with the eagerness. Sgt Henderson still would not admit defeat.

Prew did not say anything for quite a while. It was none of his business and it was not his dog. Bloom should take care of his own damned dog. But it had all been building up in him, coming on to the saturation point where you were just looking for an excuse, a sorehead asking for an excuse, and he looked at them, the ones who had shamefacedly walked away just as much as the ones who had guiltfacedly eagerly stayed, just as much as the Champ Wilsons and Dogrobber Hendersons of this world who never went out in the field, and he hated all of them, as savagely and implacably as he hated Bloom and Bloom’s goddam sniveling little dog.

He walked over from the trailer and elbowed in through the half-eager half-reluctant faces and bumped Henderson hard on the shoulder with the heel of his open palm. Henderson was on his knees battling with Lady’s squirming hindquarters, and he went over backwards releasing his hold to catch himself as he fell back.

Lady, her traction free, dug in. Wilson could not hold her. She scuttled off across the quad with the police dog hot on her heels. She turned once and snarled and nipped him in the shoulder and after that he followed at a distance.

“Now what the hell’d you want to do that for?” Sgt Henderson demanded.

“Because I dont like to see a man be any more of a son of a bitch than he just naturally is,” Prew said. “Go on back to the stables with your goddam horses.”

Sgt Henderson grinned and leaned back on his elbow indolently and put his right hand in his pocket. “Whats a mattah, Prewitt? You got a weak stommick or something? Quite a nice girl all of a sudden, aint you?”

Prew was looking at the hand lovingly fingering something in the pocket. “Dont ever pull that knife on me, you son of a bitch,” he said, “or I’ll kill you with it.”

The grin went off of Sgt Henderson’s face, but Champ Wilson, the always cool, was already at his sidekick’s elbow helping him up. “Come on, Liddell,” he said soothingly. He held Henderson by his right arm and pulled him towards the barracks.

“You’ll go too far someday, Prewitt,” Henderson screamed suddenly, “and I’ll cut your fucking heart out.”

“When,” Prew said.

“Shut up, Liddell,” commanded Wilson grimly. “You better learn to use your head, Prewitt,” he said coolly. “Someday you’ll get yourself into a trouble you cant get out of. They aint many people around this outfit like you the way it is.”

“There aint many of them around this outfit I’d care much to have them like me, Wilson,” Prew said.

Wilson did not answer. He led the raging, but unresisting, Henderson inside to the dayroom, patting him tenderly on the shoulder. Prew went back to the trailer. The crowd broke up and went back to work, a little disappointed at having been denied what might have turned out to be a decent fight. Prew was not sure whether he was disappointed or not. Nobody at the trailer mentioned it to him. Apparently, he thought grimly, the word had already gone out some time before now, that Prewitt was just about at the edge.

Nobody else said anything about it either, the rest of the afternoon. It was already forgotten, another one of those thousand little incidents that almost start a fight. Nothing should have come of it. It would have ended there. Of course it would have to have been Pfc Isaac Bloom who brought it back to life again that night at chow.

They were having franks fried whole and Stark’s hashbrowns that were as good as any Toddlehouse hashbrowns,