Once an Eagle Read Online Free PDF Page A

“What happened then, Uncle Bill?”
    â€œAh, then …” Bill Hanlon raised a short, powerful arm on which was tattooed a soaring eagle holding in its beak a banner that proclaimed For Mother, God & Country in red and blue letters. Sam couldn’t read the inscription at this moment but he knew that was what it said because when he’d been Ty’s age he’d been allowed to inspect it in detail. “ Then the very heavens came crashing down around our heads. Old Barnard had just slapped a dipper full of hash in my kit and was saying something, I can’t recall just what, and I looked over his shoulder and there they were, thousands of ’em, the yellow devils.” Grinning, he glared down at Ty and his eyebrows went up at the ends, giving him the look of a malevolent Santa. “Pouring into the tent from all sides.”
    â€œThousands?” George Verney echoed drily.
    â€œGod’s truth!” Billy Hanlon spun around. “All trussed up in those gaily colored wraparounds of theirs, swinging their bolo knives as sharp as razors. Ripping and slashing and screaming like banshees. And the lot of us standing there half asleep and nothing but our mess kits in our hands. The most horrible sight you’d ever want to see on a steaming Sunday morning at the far end of the world.”
    â€œCaught napping, sounds to me.”
    â€œNapping! And so would you be. On an errand of pacification we were! Who was to know the bloody Googoos were plotting death and destruction—and from the heart of Holy Mother Church at that …”
    â€œPacification.” The old man had pounced on the word. His eyes slitted with secret amusement; in the lamplight his beard was like a soft silver thicket over his collar. “I know all about your pacification. Tying the poor beggars down and putting a funnel in their mouths—”
    â€œYes, and I’d do it again if I had to. Treacherous little devils, each and every one of them.” Billy Hanlon waggled a finger back and forth earnestly. “Your native has no morals, you know. He’s half animal, half child, half devil from hell.”
    â€œI believe that’s three halves, Billy.”
    â€œYes, and that’s just about the cut of it. They’re something strange. I could tell you stories about island girls that would amaze you beyond all bounds—”
    â€œWell you won’t, Billy,” Kitty Damon said in her tart, clear voice.
    â€œOf course I wouldn’t. With innocent children present. That’s just as a mere figuration.”
    â€œBut what did you do, Uncle Billy?” Ty cried, and Sam, watching the boy’s eyes, smiled faintly. Wild Bill Hanlon hadn’t been home in four years and the story was new to him.
    â€œ Do? I acted with the speed of light. In a situation such as that, lad, one moment’s cerebination and you’re a corpus delict-eye. I threw my hash in the first devil’s face, kit and all, scalding him nicely, grabbed up a stool and swung it like a ball bat and laid out the hellion behind him. By now the tent was full of Googoos, screaming and howling. My God, what a din! Somebody, I think it was Sergeant Markley, kept yelling, ‘Get to the racks, boys! Get to the racks!’ It was awful. There was Hutch, my old buddy from Peking, holding onto a bolo blade in his bare hand, and his throat squirting blood like a full head on Pumper Number Five—”
    â€œBilly,” Kitty Damon said warningly.
    â€œGod’s truth. Holding a bolo blade in his bare hand while he jabbed his mess fork— unh! anh! —into his man like a kid punching his jackknife into a barn door. And then the far end of the tent came down with a crash, the devils had cut the ropes. Poor lads, they were butchered like pigs in a sack. Well, I says to myself, another few bars of this waltz and they’ll have our end down too, and I lit out for the squad hut. And there