Once an Eagle Read Online Free PDF

were two of ’em rushing at me like wolves, thirsting for my very blood. I busted one in the noggin with my stool and dodged around the other and kept going, with a banshee horde of them hot on my tracks.
    â€œNow your nipa hut is up on stilts because of the terrible rains they have, and you reach the door through a bamboo ladder. Well, there I was three steps up the ladder and climbing like a St. Jago’s monkey and whomp! one of the Googoos hit me with a club and then another one jumped on my back—and the ladder broke and down we all went. And I couldn’t move a muscle. Flat on my back, all the wind knocked out of me. Paralyzed within an inch of my life. And right above me was one of the infernal devils, a scrawny little joker with his face all jungle sores and damp rot, with a naked bolo in his two hands …”
    He broke off and took a drink of beer.
    â€œAnd what happened then, Uncle Bill?” Ty cried in a frenzy.
    â€œThen?” Billy Hanlon took another sip of beer and wiped his mouth, watching his youngest nephew out of one eye. “Ah, it was a bad moment, lad. I raised my arm, foolish as it was, and up that bolo went, up, up like the great, blue scimitar of Mohammed and all his prophets, and I could see it, the words clear as if you’d read them on a pallodium: Wild Bill Hanlon’s marked for death, his Sligo luck’s run out at last —and all at once that scru-ofulous-looking Googoo’s eyes opened wide as a newborn babe’s and over he went and gone. Vanished into thin air. And I looked straight up and there was Sergeant Markley, big as a bear and twice as hairy, standing in the squad-room door with his smoking rifle in his hands. ‘Get in out of that, Hanlon!’ he says, or words to that effect. And up I got, all over my paralysis, and shinnied up one of the posts and crawled inside and got my Krag, which was loaded in chamber and magazine …”
    Idly watching his uncle’s fiery face, half-listening to the many-times-told tale, Sam Damon frowned, thinking of the talk with Celia. He had surprised himself. The decision to apply for West Point had never been that clear to him: he was mildly astonished that he had said it right out, plain as day. That was Celia: she’d always been able to make him say things he’d never intended to voice to anyone. Now it’d be all over town. Winnott’s Spa, Clausen’s Forge, the livery stables behind town hall. Did you hear? Sam Damon thinks he’s going to West Point. No! That’s what I heard. Well of all the nerve. Everyone knows the Damons haven’t got a pot to piss in. Scowling, he scratched his chin, gazing at Ty’s rapt, eager face, his mother bent over her sewing. Well, they might be wrong, all of them. They just might be wrong. All a good man needed was one opening, one solid chance to show what he could do: if he was any good he’d make it the rest of the way on his own … But the amusement, the incredulity in Celia’s face troubled him. Yes, and she just might be wrong too, he thought crossly, fretting. What did she know about the world?
    He thought of the bank, her father’s square white face, the steel-rimmed spectacles, the dark suit and high starched collar. He’d been enraged when Wilson beat Hughes, Sam had heard him on the steps of the town hall. “This country is in a bad way when we’re obliged to trust our future to a college president.” It had been a dazzling fall day, northwest, the sky an aching deep blue and the elm leaves on Main Street a million shimmering flakes of gold; and Mr. Harrodsen had looked like a stand of pine in the dead of winter. He always seemed to move in shadow …
    It was a lot pleasanter dwelling on Celia. That kiss. That kiss! She’d never done anything like that before. The time at the Hart’s Island picnic when he’d sneaked up behind her and grabbed her she’d let out a yelp and