"Yet you're alive, now," observed Overton.

"Oh, yes; just as it happens."

"But surely there's some marching in the shade, too?"

"Oh, yes; sometimes you spend the whole day, everyday for a fortnight, hiking through the dense jungles after a gang of bolomen or Moros or ladrones. Shade enough there in the jungle, but it has a Turkish bath beaten to a plum finish. You drip, drip, drip with perspiration, until you'd give a week's pay to be out in the sun for ten minutes with a chance to get dried off."

"I'm going to like it, just the same," retorted Hal. "I know I am. And, if the natives put up any real trouble for us, then we'll see some actual service. That's what a very young soldier always aches for, you know, Dietz."

"Yes, and it's sure fun fighting those brown-skinned little Filipino goo-goos," grunted the older soldier. "First they fire on you, and then you and your comrades lie down and fire back. After you've had a few men hit the order comes to charge. Then you all rise and rush forward, cheering like the Fourth of July. You have to go through some tall gra.s.s on the way, and, first thing you know, a parcel of hidden bolo men jump up right in front of you. They use their bolos--heavy knives--to slit you open at the belt line. Ugh! I'd sooner fight five men with guns than step on one of those bolo men in the jungle!"

"Just the same," voiced the young sergeant, "the sooner the Thirty-fourth is ordered to the island the better I'll like it. I'm wild to see some of the high foreign spots."

"Wish I could give you all the chances that are coming to me in my service in the Army," grunted Private Dietz, as he rose from the table.

The afternoon was one of harder work for the two camp duty men. Hal tried to read again, but found his thoughts too frequently wandering to the Philippines.

The afternoon waxed late, at last, though still there was no sign of the hunters. Once in a while a gun had been heard at some distance, and that was all.

All the time Sergeant Hal had trailed his rifle about camp with him.

Now, tiring of reading, he went to his tent, standing his rifle against the front tent pole.

Hearing a swift step the young sergeant reached the tent flap in time to see a roughly-dressed, moccasined white man running away with Hal's Army rifle.

Then, in the same instant, he heard a voice call:

"Throw your hands up there, man!"

"Holding me up with my own gun, are you?" raged Private Dietz.

"Yes; and we've got the other chap's lead-piece, too. Up with your hands, both of you."

Hal dropped back behind the flap of his tent, peering out through a little crack in the canvas.

There were now seven men outside, all strangers, all rough-looking and all moccasined.

Between them they had the three rifles belonging in camp that day.

"Bring out that other fellow, the kid sergeant," commanded the same voice, after Dietz and Johnson, hopelessly surprised, had hoisted their hands skyward.

"Humph!" growled Sergeant Hal, his eyes snapping. "I don't like the idea of surrendering the camp that I command!"

CHAPTER XIX

WHEN THE LAST CARTRIDGE WAS GONE

WHATEVER was to be done would have to be done in a very few seconds.

For one of the rifle-armed strangers had started briskly for the tent that concealed the boyish sergeant.

"Whatever happens, he isn't going to get me alive, if I can help it!"

quivered young Overton. "I'd sooner be killed at once than disgrace my chevrons."

Two swift steps backward, and Sergeant Hal caught up his revolver.

With this in his right hand, and stepping panther-like, he returned to the fallen tent flap.

The approaching man with the rifle bent forward, sweeping the tent flap aside.

"Come out, Sarge!" he ordered.

"If I have to," retorted Hal, setting his teeth.

Grasping the revolver by the barrel end, he sprang through, before the other fellow could comprehend what was happening.

"Look out, there!" yelled one of the invaders, coming up behind the man with the rifle.

It was too late.

Crack! It was a fearful blow, the b.u.t.t of the heavy Army revolver landing on the fellow's jaw and fracturing it.

"O-o-o-h!"

It was a wail of fearful agony, but under the circ.u.mstances Sergeant Overton could not afford to regret it.

The stricken man staggered back.

Hal poised for a bound, intending to s.n.a.t.c.h the rifle from him.

As the fellow dropped back, however, his companion coming up behind him was in time to s.n.a.t.c.h the rifle, turning the muzzle on Overton.

There being not a second to lose, and the fight unequal, Hal darted, instead, back to his tent pole.

There hung a mirror that he had used in shaving.

It took but an instant to get this. Then Hal raced for a tree thirty feet away.

Dropping the small mirror into a pocket, Overton started to climb the tree.

"Come down out of that tree, or we'll bring you down!" roared an ugly voice.

"You'll have to drop me, then, if you want me," taunted Hal coolly.

He was a dozen feet up the trunk by the time that the man who now held that rifle gained the base of the tree.