8th July, early evening; Visitors

The smell of Not Right was almost overpowering near these Creaking Boxes, but he found it possible, somehow, to ignore it. He'd followed the Human with the Shoes' trail, albeit well after being chased away from where he'd last seen the two-legger. The trail had led him to the Creaking Boxes and in one of them, he reckoned, the Human with the Shoes was being kept.

Precisely which one was difficult to tell, however. The smell of Not Right hung heavily about all of them. It meant he had to investigate every one and not all the men in charge of the Creaking Boxes welcomed the dog's presence. All the same, he'd followed the straggling line of humans and Creaking Boxes, in the hope that he'd find the Human with the Shoes.

The end of the day's travelling gave him another opportunity for this and he set about sniffing carefully around each Box, alert for any of the Foul Humans who liked chasing him off.

It was hard living with one's arm in a sling. Especially a sling that seemed to have been made from the coarsest material available. But wearing the sling meant not having to wear his jacket, which helped a little against the Spanish heat.

Still, Corporal Foxcroft would have preferred to not have been hurt in the first place. Bloody idiots in his company couldn't hold their drink. A fledgling brawl between a couple of the lads had been speedily broken up by Foxcroft and a private, but at the cost of a badly wrenched shoulder for the corporal. An injured shoulder meant enduring the confinement of a sling.

On the other hand, being injured meant being excused from marching, which Foxcroft liked very much. Even though travelling with the surgeons' train was a mess of troubles all its own. The Irishman had ridden on the back of Mister Aimes' wagon for the past couple of days, as much to avoid walking as to keep a constant eye on the still-unconscious McIntyre.

Stupid oldster couldn't keep his nose out of other regiments' business, but he was still of the Thirty-third and that counted for a lot in Foxcroft's opinion. So he sat in the back of the wagon near his countryman and amused himself by plotting suitable revenges against whoever had handed out such a bad beating to the old soldier.

He was in the midst of one such scheme when he spotted the dog. That pale-furred mutt McIntyre was so fond of. Nobody had seen the beast for days, yet here it was. Who would have thought.

"Hoi. Mutt." Foxcroft waved at the dog to get its attention. "The hell you been, anyway?"