orse stumbled in a gully and fell so hard
that I was thrown over his shoulder, giving my own shoulder a painful
bruise that's just getting well."

"We'll allow that, since it happened in battle. What else now? Speak
up!"

"That's all. Three good wounds, according to your own somewhat severe
definition of a wound. I'm one behind Dick, but I believe that when I
was thrown over my horse's head I was hurt worse than he was at any time."

"Frank Pennington, you're a good comrade, but you're a liar, an
unmitigated liar."

"George, if I weren't so tired and so unwilling to be angry with anybody
I'd get up and belt you on the left ear for that."

"But you're a liar, just the same. You're holding something back."

"What are you driving at, you chattering Green Mountaineer?"

"Why don't you tell something about the time the trooper fell from his
horse wounded, and you, dismounting under the enemy's fire, helped him on
your own horse, although you got two wounds in your body while doing it,
and brought him off in safety? Didn't I say that you were a liar,
a convicted liar from modesty?"

Pennington blushed.

"I didn't want to say anything about that," he muttered. "I had to do
it."

"Lots of men wouldn't have had to do it. You go down for five good
wounds, Frank Pennington."

"Now, then, what about yourself, George?" asked Dick.

"One in the arm, one on the shoulder and one across the ankle. I don't
waste time in words, like you two, my verbose friends. That gives the
three of us combined twelve wounds, a fair average of four apiece."

"And it's our great good luck that not one of the twelve is a disabling
hurt," said Dick.

"But we get the credit for the full twelve, all the same," said Warner,
"and we maintain our prestige in the army. Our consciences also are
satisfied. But the last two or three weeks of battles and marches have
fairly made me dizzy. I can't remember them or their sequence. All I
know is that we've cleaned up the valley, and here we are ready at last
to take a couple of minutes of well earned rest."

"Do you know," said Pennington, "there were times when I clear forgot
to be hungry, and I've been renowned in our part of Nebraska for my
appetite. But nature always gets even. For all those periods of
forgetfulness memory is now rushing upon me. I'm hungry not only for the
present but from the past. It'll take a lot to satisfy me."

The briskness of the night also sharpened Pe