Page:Traffics and Discoveries.djvu/261

Rh camped somewhere near Caithness, and the Armity (that's the combined Navy and Army Board that runs our show) sent us about eight hundred raw remounts to break in to keep us warm.'

'Why horses for a foot regiment?'

'I.G.'s don't foot it unless they're obliged to. No have gee-gee how can move? I'll show you later. Well, as I was saying, we broke those beasts in on compressed forage and small box-spurs, and then we started across Scotland to Applecross to hand 'em over to a horse-depot there. It was snowing cruel, and we didn't know the country overmuch. You remember the 30th—the old East Lancashire—at Mian Mir? Their Guard Battalion had been "heefing" round those parts for six months. We thought they'd be snowed up all quiet and comfy, but Burden, their C.O., got wind of our coming, and sent spies in to Eschol.'

'Confound him!' said Luttrell, who was fat and well-liking. 'I entertained one of 'em—in a red worsted comforter—under Bean Derig. He said he was a crofter. 'Gave him a drink too.'

'I don't mind admitting,' said the Boy, 'that, what with the cold and the remounts, we were moving rather base-over-apex. Burden bottled us under Sghurr Mhor in a snowstorm. He stampeded half the horses, cut off a lot of us in a snow-bank, and generally rubbed our noses in the dirt.'

'Was he allowed to do that?' I said.

'There is no peace in a Military Area. If we'd beaten him off or got away without losing anyone, we'd have been entitled to a day's pay