Lee was a mile away, standing on a wooded hill, the bearded Longstreet by his side, watching the battle in his immediate front, where accumulating masses under Pope’s own eye were gathering. On the other flank where Jackson stood and the conflict was heaviest he trusted all to his great lieutenant and not in vain.
Jackson had formed his plan. There came for a few moments a lull in the battle which had now lasted nine hours, and then gathering a powerful reserve he sent them charging through the wood with the bayonet. Dick saw the massive line of glittering steel coming on at the double quick and he felt his regiment giving back. The men could not help it. Physically exhausted and with ammunition running low they slowly yielded the wood. Many of the youths wept with rage, but although they had lost thousands in five desperate charges they were compelled to see all five fail.
Dick, aghast, gazed at Warner through the smoke.
“It’s true!” gasped Warner, “we didn’t break the trap, Dick. But maybe they’ll succeed off there to the left! Our own commander is there, and they say that Lee himself has come to the help of Jackson!”
They had been driven back at all points and their own battle was dying, but off to the left it thundered a while longer, and then as night suddenly rushed over the field it, too, sank, leaving the hostile forces on that wing also still face to face, but with the North pushed back.
The coming of night was as sudden to Dick as if it had been the abrupt dropping of a great dark blanket. In the fury of conflict he had not noticed the gathering shadows in the west. The dimness around him, if he had taken time to think about it, he would have ascribed to the vast columns of dust that eddied and surged about.
Again it was the dust that he felt and remembered. The surging back and forth of seven score thousand men, the tread of horses and the wheels of hundreds of cannon raised it in such quantities that it covered the forest and the armies with a vast whitish curtain. Even in the darkness it showed dim and ghastly like a funeral veil.
Out of that fatal forest came a dreadful moaning. Dick did not know whether it was the wind among the leaves or the dying. Once more the ghosts of the year before walked the fatal field, but the ghosts of this year would be a far greater company. They had not broken the trap and Dick knew that the battle was far from over.
It would be renewed in the morning with greater fierceness than ever, but he was grateful for the present darkness and rest. He and his comrades had thrown themselves upon the ground, and they felt as if they could never move again. Their bones did not ache. They merely felt dead within them.
Dick was roused after a long time. The camp cooks were bringing food and coffee. He saw a figure lying at his feet as still as death, and he shoved it with his foot.
“Get up, Frank,” he said. “You’re not dead.”
“No, I’m not, but I’m as good as dead. You just let me finish dying in peace.”
Dick shoved him again and Pennington sat up. When he saw the food and coffee he suddenly remembered to be hungry. Warner was already eating and drinking. Off to the left they still heard cannon and rifles, although the sound was sinking. Occasionally flashes from the mouths of the great guns illumined the darkness.
Dick did not know what time it was. He had no idea how long he had been lying upon the ground panting, the air surcharged with menace and suspense. The vast clouds of dust, impregnated with burned gunpowder still floated about, and it scorched his mouth and throat as he breathed it.
The boys, after eating and drinking lay down again. They still heard the firing of pickets, but it was no more than the buzzing of bees to them, and after a while they fell into the sleep of nervous and physical exhaustion. But while many of the soldiers slept all of the generals were awake.
It was a singular fact but in the night that divided the great battle of the Second Manassas into two days both sides were full of confidence. Jackson’s men, who had borne the brunt of the first day, rested upon their arms and awaited the dawn with implicit confidence in their leader. On the other flank Lee and Longstreet were massing their men for a fresh attack.
The losses within the Union lines were replaced by reinforcements. Pope rode among them, sanguine, full of hope, telegraphing to Washington that the enemy had lost two to his one, and that Lee was retreating toward the mountains.
Dick slept uneasily through the night, and rose to another hot August sun. Then the two armies looked at each other and it seemed that each was waiting for the other to begin, as the morning hours dragged on and only the skirmishers were busy. During this comparative peace, the heavy clouds of dust were not floating about, and Dick whose body had come to life again walked back and forth with his colonel, gazing through their glasses at the enemy. He scarcely noticed it, but Colonel Winchester’s manner toward him had become paternal. The boy merely ascribed it to the friendly feeling an officer would feel for a faithful aide, but he knew that he had in his colonel one to whom he could speak both as a friend and a protector. Walking together they talked freely of the enemy who stood before them in such an imposing array.
“Colonel,” said Dick, “do you think General Pope is correct in stating that one wing of the Southern army is already retreating through Thoroughfare Gap?”
“I don’t, Dick. I don’t think it is even remotely probable. I’m quite sure, too, that we have the whole Confederate army in front of us. We’ll have to beat both Lee and Jackson, if we can.”
“Where do you think the main attack will be?”
“On Jackson, who is still in front of us. But we have waited a long time. It must be full noon now.”
“It is past noon, sir, but I hear the trumpets, calling up our men.”
“They are calling to us, too.”
The regiment shifted a little to the right, where a great column was forming for a direct attack upon the Confederate lines. Twenty thousand men stood in a vast line and forty thousand were behind them to march in support.
Dick had thought that he would be insensible to emotions, but his heart began to throb again. The spectacle thrilled and awed him—the great army marching to the attack and the resolute army awaiting it. Soon he heard behind him the firing of the artillery which sent shot and shell over their heads at the enemy. A dozen cannon came into action, then twenty, fifty, a hundred and more, and the earth trembled with the mighty concussion.
Dick felt the surge of triumph. They had yet met no answering fire. Perhaps General Pope and not Colonel Winchester had been right after all, and the Confederates were crushed. Awaiting them was only a rear guard which would flee at the first flash of the bayonets in the wood.
The great line marched steadily onward, and the cannon thundered and roared over the heads of the men raking the wood with steel. Still no reply. Surely the sixty thousand Union men would now march over everything. They were driving in the swarms of skirmishers. Dick could see them retreating everywhere, in the wood over the hills and along an embankment.
Warner was on his right and Pennington on his left. Dick glanced at them and he saw the belief in speedy victory expressed on the faces of both. It seemed to him, too, that nothing could now stop the massive columns that Pope was sending forward against the thinned ranks of the Confederates.
They were much nearer and he saw gray lines along an embankment and in a wood. Then above the crash and thunder of their covering artillery he heard another sound. It was the Southern bugles calling with a piercing note to their own men just as the Northern trumpets had called.
Dick saw a great gray multitude suddenly pour forward. It looked to him in the blur and the smoke like an avalanche, and in truth it was a human avalanche, a far greater force of the South than they expected to meet there. Directly in front of the Union column stood the Stonewall Brigade, and all the chosen veterans of Stonewall Jackson’s army.
“It’s a fight, face to face,” Dick heard Colonel Winchester say.
Then he saw a Union officer, whose name he did not know suddenly gallop out in front of the division, wave his saber over his head and shout the charge. A tremendous rolling cry came from the blue ranks and Dick physically felt the whole division leap forward and rush at the enemy.
Dick saw the officer who had made himself the leader of the charge gallop straight at a breastwork that the Southerners had built, reach and stand, horse and rider, a moment at the top, then both fall in a limp heap. The next instant the officer, not dead but wounded, was dragged a prisoner behind the embankment by generous foes who had refused to shoot at him until compelled to do so.
The Union men, with a roar, followed their champion, and Dick felt a very storm burst upon them. The Southerners had thrown up earthworks at midnight and thousands of riflemen lying behind them sent in a fire at short range that caused the first Union line to go down like falling grain. Cannon from the wood and elsewhere raked them through and through.
It was a vortex of fire and death. The Confederates themselves were losing heavily, but taught by the stern Jackson and knowing that his eye was upon them they refused to yield. The Northern charge broke on their front, but the men did not retreat far. The shrill trumpet called them back to the charge, and once more the blue masses hurled themselves upon the barrier of fire and steel, to break again, and to come yet a third time at the trumpet’s call. Often the combatants were within ten yards of one another, but strive as they would the Union columns could not break through the Confederate defense.
Elsewhere the men of Hill and Longstreet showed a sternness and valor equal to that of Jackson’s. Their ranks held firm everywhere, and now, as the long afternoon drew on, the eye of Lee, watching every rising and falling wave of the battle, saw his chance. He drew his batteries together in great masses and as the last charge broke on Jackson’s lines the trumpets sounded the charge for the Southern troops who hitherto had stood on the defensive.
Dick heard a tremendous shout, the great rebel yell, that he had heard so often before, and that he was destined to hear so often again. Through the clouds of smoke and dust he saw the long lines of Southern bayonets advancing swiftly. His regiment, which had already lost more than half its numbers, was borne back by an appalling weight.
Then hope deserted the boy for the first time. The Union was not to be saved here on this field. It was instead another lost Manassas, but far greater than the first. The genius of Lee and Jackson which bore up the Confederacy was triumphing once again. Dick shut his teeth in grim despair. He heard the triumphant shouts of the advancing enemy, and he saw that not only his own regiment, but the whole Northern line, was being driven back, slowly it is true, but they were going.
Now at the critical moment, Lee was hurling forward every man and gun. Although his army was inferior in numbers he was always superior at the point of contact, and his exultant veterans pressed harder and harder upon their weakening foes. Only the artillery behind them now protected Dick and his comrades. But the Confederates still came with a rush.
Jackson was leading on his own men who had stood so long on the defensive. The retreating Union line was broken, guns were lost, and there was a vast turmoil and confusion. Yet out of it some order finally emerged, and although the Union army was now driven back at every point it inflicted heavy losses upon its foe, and under the lead of brave commanders great masses gathered upon the famous Henry Hill, resolved, although they could not prevent defeat, to save the army from destruction.
Night was coming down for the second time upon the field of battle, lost to the North, although the North was ready to fight again.
Lee and Jackson looked upon the heavy Union masses gathered at the Henry Hill, and then looking at the coming darkness they stopped the attack. Night heavier than usual came down over the field, covering with its friendly veil those who had lost and those who had won, and the twenty-five thousand who had fallen.
CHAPTER VI. THE MOURNFUL FOREST
As the night settled down, heavy and dark, and the sounds of firing died away along the great line, Dick again sank to the ground exhausted. Although the battle itself had ceased, it seemed to him that the drums of his ears still reproduced its thunder and roar, or at least the echo of it was left upon the brain.
He lay upon the dry grass, and although the night was again hot and breathless, surcharged with smoke and dust and fire, he felt a chill that went to the bone, and he trembled all over. Then a cold perspiration broke out upon him. It was the collapse after two days of tremendous exertion, excitement and anxiety. He did not move for eight or ten minutes, blind to everything that was going on about him, and then through the darkness he saw Colonel Winchester standing by and looking down at him.
“Are you all right, Dick, my boy?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Dick, as his pride made him drag himself to his feet. “I’m not wounded at all. I was just clean played out.”
“You’re lucky to get off so well,” said the colonel, smiling sadly. “We’ve lost many thousands and we’ve lost the battle, too. The killed or wounded in my regiment number more than two-thirds.”
“Have you seen anything of Warner and Pennington, sir? I lost sight of them in that last terrible attack.”
“Pennington is here. He has had a bullet through the fleshy part of his left arm, but he’s so healthy it won’t take him long to get well. I’m sorry to say that Warner is missing.”
“Missing, sir? You don’t say that George has been killed?”
“I don’t say it. I’m hoping instead that he’s been captured.”
Dick knew what the colonel meant. In Colonel Winchester’s opinion only two things, death or capture, could keep Warner from being with them.
“Maybe he will come in yet,” he said. “We were mixed up a good deal when the darkness fell, and he may have trouble in finding our position.”
“That’s true. There are not so many of us left, and we do not cover any great area of ground. Lie still, Dick, and take a little rest. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the night. We may have to do more fighting yet, despite the darkness.”
The colonel’s figure disappeared in the shadow, and Dick, following his advice, lay quiet. All around him were other forms stretched upon the earth, motionless. But Dick knew they were not dead, merely sleeping. His own nervous system was being restored by youth and the habit of courage. Yet he felt a personal grief, and it grew stronger with returning physical strength. Warner, his comrade, knitted to him by ties of hardship and danger, was missing, dead no doubt in the battle. For the moment he forgot about the defeat. All his thoughts were for the brave youth who lay out there somewhere, stretched on the dusty field.
Dick strained his eyes into the darkness, as if by straining he might see where Warner lay. He saw, indeed, dim fires here and there along a long line, marking where the Confederates now stood, or rather lay. Then a bitter pang came. It was ground upon which the Union army had stood in the morning.
The rifle fire, which had died down, began again in a fitful way. Far off, skirmishers, not satisfied with the slaughter of the day, were seeing what harm they could do in the dark. Somewhere the plumed and unresting Stuart was charging with his horsemen, driving back some portion of the Union army that the Confederate forces might be on their flank in the morning.
But Dick, as he lay quietly and felt his strength, mental and physical, returning, was taking a resolution. Down there in front of them and in the darkness was the wood upon which they had made five great assaults, all to fail. In front of that mournful forest, and within its edge, more than ten thousand men had fallen. He had no doubt that Warner was among them.
His sense of direction was good, and, as his blurred faculties regained their normal keenness, he could mark the exact line by which they had advanced, and the exact line by which they had retreated. Warner unquestionably lay near the edge of the wood and he must seek him. Were it the other way, Warner would do the same.
Dick stood up. He was no longer dizzy, and every muscle felt steady and strong. He did not know what had become of Colonel Winchester, and his comrades still lay upon the ground in a deep stupor.
It could not be a night of order and precision, with every man numbered and in his place, as if they were going to begin a battle instead of just having finished one, and Dick, leaving his comrades, walked calmly toward the wood. He passed one sentinel, but a few words satisfied him, and he continued to advance. Far to right and left he still heard the sound of firing and saw the flash of guns, but these facts did not disturb him. In front of him lay darkness and silence, with the horizon bounded by that saddest of all woods where the heaped dead lay.
Dick looked back toward the Henry Hill, on the slopes of which were the fragments of his own regiment. Lights were moving there, but they were so dim they showed nothing. Then he turned his face toward the enemy’s position and did not look back again.
The character of the night was changing. It had come on dark and heavy. Hot and breathless like the one before, he had taken no notice of the change save for the increased darkness. Now he felt a sudden damp touch on his face, as if a wet finger had been laid there. The faintest of winds had blown for a moment or two, and when Dick looked up, he saw that the sky was covered with black clouds. The saddest of woods had moved far away, but by some sort of optical illusion he could yet see it.
Save for the distant flash of random firing, the darkness was intense. Every star was gone, and Dick moved without any guide. But he needed none. His course was fixed. He could not miss the mournful wood hanging there like a pall on the horizon.
His feet struck against something. It was a man, but he was past all feeling, and Dick went on, striking by and by against many more. It was impossible at the moment to see Warner’s face, but he began to feel of the figures with his hands. There was none so long and slender as Warner’s, and he continued his search, moving steadily toward the wood.
He saw presently a lantern moving over the field, and he walked toward it. Three men were with the lantern, and the one who carried it held it up as he approached. The beams fell directly upon Dick, revealing his pale face and torn and dusty uniform.
“What do you want, Yank?” called the man.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine who must have fallen somewhere near here.”
The man laughed, but it was not a laugh of joy or irony. It was a laugh of pity and sadness.
“You’ve shorely got a big look comin’,” he said. “They’re scattered all around here, coverin’ acres an’ acres, just like dead leaves shook by a storm from the trees. But j’in us, Yank. You can’t do nothin’ in the darkness all by yourself. We’re Johnny Rebs, good and true, and I may be shootin’ straight at you to-morrow mornin’, but I reckon I’ve got nothin’ ag’in you now. We’re lookin’ for a brother o’ mine.”
Dick joined them, and the four, the three in gray and the one in blue, moved on. A friendly current had passed between him and them, and there would be no thought of hostility until the morning, when it would come again. It was often so in this war, when men of the same blood met in the night between battles.
“What sort of a fellow is it that you’re lookin’ for?” asked the man with the lantern.
“About my age. Very tall and thin. You could mark him by his height.”
“It takes different kinds of people to make the world. My brother ain’t like him a-tall. Sam’s short, an’ thick as a buffalo. Weighs two twenty with no fat on him. What crowd do you belong to, youngster?”
“The division on our right. We attacked the wood there.”
“Well, you’re a bully boy. Give me your hand, if you are a Yank. You shorely came right up there and looked us in the eyes. How often did you charge us?”
“Five times, I think. But I may be mistaken. You know it wasn’t a day when a fellow could be very particular about his count.”
“Guess you’re right there. I made it five. What do you say, Jim?”
“Five she was.”
“That settles it. Jim kin always count up to five an’ never make a mistake. What you fellers goin’ to do in the mornin’?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pope ain’t asked you yet what to do. Well, Bobby Lee and Old Stonewall ain’t been lookin’ for me either to get my advice, but, Yank, you fellers do just what I tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Pack up your clothes before daylight, say good-bye, and go back to Washington. You needn’t think you kin ever lick Marse Bobby an’ Stonewall Jackson.”
“But what if we do think it? We’ve got a big army back there yet, and more are always coming to us. We’ll beat you yet.”
“There seems to be a pow’ful wide difference in our opinions, an’ I can’t persuade you an’ you can’t persuade me. We’ll just let the question rip. I’m glad, after all, Yank, it’s so dark. I don’t want to see ten thousand dead men stretched out in rows.”
“We’re going to get a wettin’,” said the man to Jim. “The air’s already damp on my face. Thar, do you hear that thunder growlin’ in the southwest? Tremenjously like cannon far away, but it’s thunder all the same.”
“What do we care ‘bout a wettin’, Jim? Fur the last few days this young Yank here an’ his comrades have shot at me ‘bout a million cannon balls an’ shells, an’ more ‘n a hundred million rifle bullets. Leastways I felt as if they was all aimed at me, which is just as bad. After bein’ drenched fur two days with a storm of steel an’ lead an’ fire, what do you think I care for a summer shower of rain, just drops of rain?”
“But I don’t like to get wet after havin’ fit so hard. It’s unhealthy, likely to give me a cold.”
“Never min’ ‘bout ketchin’ cold. You’re goin’ to get wet, shore. Thunder, but I thought fur a second that was the flash of a hull battery aimed at me. Fellers, if you wasn’t with me I’d be plumb scared, prowlin’ ‘roun’ here in a big storm on the biggest graveyard in the world. Keep close, Yank, we don’t want to lose you in the dark.”
A tremendous flash of lightning had cut the sky down the middle, as if it intended to divide the world in two halves, but after its passage the darkness closed in thicker and heavier than ever. The sinister sound of thunder muttering on the horizon now went on without ceasing.
Dick was awed. Like many another his brain exposed to such tremendous pressure for two or three days, was not quite normal. It was quickly heated and excited by fancies, and time and place alone were enough to weigh down even the coolest and most seasoned. He pressed close to his Confederate friends, whose names he never knew, and who never knew his, and they, feeling the same influence, never for an instant left the man who held the lantern.
The muttering thunder now came closer and broke in terrible crashes. The lightning flashed again and again so vividly that Dick, with involuntary motion, threw up his hands to shelter his eyes. But he could see before him the mournful forest, where so many good men had fallen, and, turned red in the gleam of the lightning, it was more terrifying than it had been in the mere black of the night. The wind, too, was now blowing, and the forest gave forth what Dick’s ears turned into a long despairing wail.
“She’s about to bust,” said the lantern bearer, looking up at the menacing sky. “Jim, you’ll have to take your wettin’ as it comes.”
A moment later the storm burst in fact. The rain rushed down on them, soaking them through in an instant, but Dick, so far from caring, liked it. It cooled his heated body and brain, and he knew that it was more likely to help than hurt the wounded who yet lay on the ground.
The lightning ceased before the sweep of the rain, but the lantern was well protected by its glass cover, and they still searched. The lantern bearer suddenly uttered a low cry.
“Boys!” he said, “Here’s Sam!”
A thick and uncommonly powerful man lay doubled up against a bush. His face was white. Dick saw that blood had just been washed from it by the rain. But he could see no rising and falling of the chest, and he concluded that he was dead.
“Take the lantern, Jim,” said the leader. Then he knelt down and put his finger on his brother’s wrist.
“He ain’t dead,” he said at last. “His pulse is beatin’ an’ he’ll come to soon. The rain helped him. Whar was he hit? By gum, here it is! A bullet has ploughed all along the side of his head, runnin’ ‘roun’ his skull. Here, you Yank, did you think you could kill Sam by shootin’ him in the head with a bullet? We’ve stood him up in front of our lines, and let you fellows break fifty pound shells on his head. You never done him no harm, ‘cept once when two solid shot struck him at the same time an’ he had a headache nigh until sundown. Besides havin’ natural thickness of the skull Sam trained his head by buttin’ with the black boys when he was young.”
Dick saw that the man really felt deep emotion and was chattering, partly to hide it. He was glad that they had found his brother, and he helped them to lift him. Then they rubbed Sam’s wrists and poured a stimulant down his throat. In a few minutes he stood alone on his feet, yawned mightily, and by the light of the dim lantern gazed at them in a sort of stupid wonder.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“What’s happened?” replied his brother. “You was always late with the news, Sam. Of course you’ve been takin’ a nap, but a lot has happened. We met the Yankees an’ we’ve been fightin’ ‘em for two days. Tremenjous big battle, an’ we’ve whipped ‘em. ‘Scuse me, Yank, I forgot you was with us. Well, nigh onto a million have been killed, which ought to be enough for anybody. I love my country, but I don’t care to love another at such a price. But resumin’ ‘bout you pussonally, Sam, you stopped so many shells an’ solid shot with that thick head of yourn that the concussion at last put you to sleep, an’ we’ve found you so we kin take you in out of the wet an’ let you sleep in a dry place. Kin you walk?”
Sam made an effort, but staggered badly.
“Jim, you an’ Dave take him by each shoulder an’ walk him back to camp,” said the lantern bearer. “You jest keep straight ahead an’ you’ll butt into Marse Bob or old Stonewall, one or the other.”
“You lead the way with the lantern.”
“Never you mind about me or the lantern.”
“What you goin’ to do?”
“Me? I’m goin’ to keep this lantern an’ help Yank here find his friend. Ain’t he done stuck with us till we found Sam, an’ I reckon I’ll stick with him till he gits the boy he’s lookin for, dead or alive. Now, you keep Sam straight, and walk him back to camp. He ain’t hurt. Why, that bullet didn’t dent his skull. It said to itself when it came smack up against the bone: ‘This is too tough for me, I guess I’ll go ‘roun’.’ An’ it did go ‘roun’. You can see whar it come out of the flesh on the other side. Why, by the time Sam was fourteen years old we quit splittin’ old boards with an axe or a hatchet. We jest let Sam set on a log an’ we split ‘em over his head. Everybody was suited. Sam could make himself pow’ful useful without havin’ to work.”
Nevertheless, the lantern bearer gave his brother the tenderest care, and watched him until he and the men on either side of him were lost in the darkness as they walked toward the Southern camp.
“I jest had to come an’ find old Sam, dead or alive,” he said. “Now, which way, Yank, do you think this friend of yours is layin’?”
“But you’re comin’ with us,” repeated Jim.
“No, I’m not. Didn’t Yank here help us find Sam? An’ are we to let the Yanks give us lessons in manners? I reckon not. ‘Sides, he’s only a boy, an’ I’m goin’ to see him through.”
“I thank you,” said Dick, much moved.
“Don’t thank me too much, ‘cause while I’m walkin’ ‘roun’ with you friendly like to-night I may shoot you to-morrow.”
“I thank you, all the same,” said Dick, his gratitude in nowise diminished.
“Them that will stir no more are layin’ mighty thick ‘roun’ here, but we ought to find your friend pretty soon. By gum, how it rains! W’all, it’ll wash away some big stains, that wouldn’t look nice in the mornin’. Say, sonny, what started this rumpus, anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“An’ I don’t, either, so I guess it’s hoss an’ hoss with you an’ me. But, sonny, I’ll bet you a cracker ag’in a barrel of beef that none of them that did start the rumpus are a-layin’ on this field to-night. What kind of lookin’ feller did you say your young friend was?”
“Very tall, very thin, and about my age or perhaps a year or two older.”
“Take a good look, an’ see if this ain’t him.”
He held up the lantern and the beams fell upon a long figure half raised upon an elbow. The figure was turned toward the light and stared unknowing at Dick and the Southerner. There was a great clot of blood upon his right breast and shoulder, but it was Warner. Dick swallowed hard.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s my comrade, but he’s hurt badly.”
“So bad that he don’t know you or anybody else. He’s clean out of his head.”
They leaned over him, and Dick called:
“George! George! It’s Dick Mason, your comrade, come to help you back to camp!”
But Warner merely stared with feverish, unseeing eyes.
“He’s out of his head, as I told you, an’ he’s like to be for many hours,” said the lantern bearer. “It’s a shore thing that I won’t shoot him to-morrow, nor he won’t shoot me.”
He leaned over Warner and carefully examined the wound.
“He’s lucky, after all,” he said, “the bullet went in just under the right shoulder, but it curved, as bullets have a way of doin’ sometimes, an’ has come out on the side. There ain’t no lead in him now, which is good. He was pow’ful lucky, too, in not bein’ hit in the head, ‘cause he ain’t got no such skull as Sam has, not within a mile of it. His skull wouldn’t have turned no bullet. He has lost a power of blood, but if you kin get him back to camp, an’ use the med’cines which you Yanks have in such lots an’ which we haven’t, he may get well.”