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You see, when we're sewin' up the boys and fixin' 'em up like, and when we're fixin' up the graves and puttin' on the crosses, you get kind of thinkin' about things, and kind of lonesome, and so the boys keep telling the news to cheer themselves up, and that's how I heard about McCuaig.
He wasn't down the next day when bang! goes Jim's rifle, and again up he jumps to see what he'd got, when ping! goes a Boche bullet right through his head. You know McCuaig was real mad, and he stood quiet at that hole for three hours. Then he got Corporal Thom to shove up a hat on a rifle, when ping! comes the bullet and bang! goes Jim's rifle.
"No," said Barry, "but though they look quiet, I suppose if we could really see, there is a most terrific whirling of millions of stars up there, going at the rate of thousands of miles a minute." "Millions of 'em, and all whirlin' about," said McCuaig in an awe-stricken voice. "It's a wonder they don't hit."
As they sat down to supper, he noticed that McCuaig took off his old grey felt and crossed himself before beginning toast. As a matter of courtesy, Barry had always been asked to say grace before meals while with the Howland party. This custom, however, had been discontinued upon this trip. They had no time for meals. They had "just grabbed their grub and run," as Harry Hobbs said.
"Way up Lover's Walk," said young Pickles, who was in high spirits, "under a pile of brush and trees. I though it was a wildcat, or something moving and snarling the light was kind of dim and when I went up there was McCuaig. He was alone. Two or three men were lying near him, dead, I guess, and he was swearing, and talking to himself something fierce. I was scart stiff when he called me to him.
It's when a man gets out of his own orbut and into another fellow's that the scrap begins. I guess that's where Germany's got wrong." "Something like that," replied Barry. "And sometimes," continued McCuaig, his eyes upon the stars, "when a little one comes up against a big one, he gets busted, eh?" Barry nodded. "And a big one, when he comes up against a bigger one gets pretty badly jarred, eh?"
Under the patient shepherding of Barry's father, he had endured much without protest or complaint, but, with the advent of Sergeant Major McFetteridge, with his rigid military discipline and his strict insistence upon etiquette, McCuaig passed into a new atmosphere.
Barry flung his pack down and started away. "Come back here, Barry," cried Knight. "You're not fit. You're all in." "That's right, too," said McCuaig. "I guess I'll go." And off he set with the long, shuffling, tireless trot with which, for a hundred years, the "runners of the woods" have packed their loads and tracked their game in the wilds of northwestern Canada.
The first authentic account came with young Pickles, now a runner, who made his way hobbling to Headquarters with a message from A Company, and who reported that he had fallen in with McCuaig by the way, and by him had been commandeered to carry ammunition, under threat of instant death. "Where did you see McCuaig first, Pickles?" Barry inquired, anxious to learn the truth about his friend.
Barry started. Only in the very first weeks of their acquaintance had McCuaig called him by his first name, and never during the past months had he used anything but his rank title. Now all rank distinctions were obliterated. They were as man to man. "Yes, Mac, it's me. Do you know what I was thinking about? I was thinking of the first time I saw you coming down that rapid in your canoe."
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