You said
you would. They've killed my captain - do you understand? They've
killed Captain Capron. The - - Mexicans! They've killed my
captain."
The troopers assured him they were carrying him to the firing-line,
but he was not satisfied. We stumbled over the stones and vines,
bumping his wounded body against the ground and leaving a black
streak in the grass behind us, but it seemed to hurt us more than it
did him, for he sat up again clutching at us imploringly with his
bloody hands.
"For God's sake, take me to the front," he begged. "Do you hear? I
order you; damn you, I order - We must give them hell; do you hear? we
must give them hell. They've killed Capron. They've killed my
captain."
The loss of blood at last mercifully silenced him, and when we had
reached the trail he had fainted and I left them kneeling around him,
their grave boyish faces filled with sympathy and concern.
Only fifty feet from him and farther down the trail I passed his
captain, with his body propped against Church's knee and with his
head fallen on the surgeon's shoulder. Capron was always a handsome,
soldierly looking man - some said that he was the most soldierly
looking of any of the young officers in the army - and as I saw him
then death had given him a great dignity and nobleness. He was only
twenty-eight years old, the age when life has just begun, but he
rested his head on the surgeon's shoulder like a man who knew he was
already through with it and that, though they might peck and mend at
the body, he had received his final orders. His breast and shoulders
were bare, and as the surgeon cut the tunic from him the sight of his
great chest and the skin, as white as a girl's, and the black open
wound against it made the yellow stripes and the brass insignia on
the tunic, strangely mean and tawdry.
Fifty yards farther on, around a turn in the trail, behind a rock, a
boy was lying with a bullet wound between his eyes. His chest was
heaving with short, hoarse noises which I guessed were due to some
muscular action entirely, and that he was virtually dead. I lifted
him and gave him some water, but it would not pass through his fixed
teeth. In the pocket of his blouse was a New Testament with the name
Fielder Dawson, Mo., scribbled in it in pencil. While I was writing
it down for identification, a boy as young as himself came from
behind me down the trail.
"It is no use," he said; "the surgeon has seen him; he says he is
just the same as dead.
