red Private
Dietz.

"Oh, I'd like to see several of the fellows beat it," rejoined Overton.
"I certainly hope to see both wagons go back loaded to the top with
game. I don't want to have the only military command I ever enjoyed
being the head of go back stumped."

"We're not stumped, with five bear carcasses," hinted Private Johnson.

"Those carcasses might afford two meat meals to the garrison,"
speculated Sergeant Overton. "But what we want to do is to take back so
much game flesh that no man in Fort Clowdry will want to hear game meat
mentioned again before next spring."

"Huh! By that time the old Thirty-fourth will probably be in the
Philippines," retorted Dietz, forking eight ounces more of wood-broiled
bear steak to his tin plate.

"I wonder!" cried Hal, his eyes blazing with eagerness.

"Crazy to get out to the islands, Sarge?"

"Humph! I put in three years there with the Thirty-fourth," grunted
Dietz. "I'll never kick at a transfer to another regiment whenever the
regiment I'm in gets the islands route."

"What have you against the Philippines?" Hal wanted to know.

"Well, Sarge, don't you enjoy this cool, crisp, bracing air up here in
the hills?"

"Certainly. Who wouldn't? This air is bracing--life-giving."

"Nothing like it in the Philippines," answered Dietz. "It's hot
there--hot, you understand."

"Yet I've been told that a soldier always needs his blankets there at
night," objected Hal.

"Yes; if you have to sleep outdoors, then you need your full uniform on,
including shoes and leggings, and you wrap yourself up tight in your
blanket. But that isn't to keep warm; it's to keep the mosquitoes from
eating you alive. So, after you get done up in your blanket, you put a
collapsible mosquito net over your head to protect your face and neck.
Then there's a trick you have to learn of wrapping your hands in under
your blanket in such a way that the skeeters can't follow inside. After
you've been in the islands a few weeks you learn how to do yourself up
so that the skeeters can't get at your flesh."

"Then that ought to be all right," smiled Hal hopefully.

"Yes; but you never heard a Filipino skeeter holler when he's mad. When
they find they can't get at you then about four thousand settle on your
net and blanket and sing all night. You've got to be fagged out before
you can sleep over the racket those little pests make."

"I guess the whole trick can be learned," predicted Overton.

"The ni