ay with the wounded, and Thaine helped to straighten
out the forms about him and to fill the pit where they were placed in one
common grave.

"Wait till you see a Kansas boy brought in and then count the cost."

Somehow, the words, ringing again and again down his mind, could not take
away the picture of the thing he had just witnessed. And the dying gasp,
"For liberty!" seemed to stab his soul, as he ran forward.

Two days later his company had orders to hold the trenches before a jungle
filled with sharpshooters. All day the sun had blazed down upon them and
the humid atmosphere had scalded them. All day the murderous "ping! ping!"
of the hidden Mauser in the jungle had stung the air about them.

Late in the afternoon Thaine lay crouched behind his low defense with a
college comrade on either side. Colonel Funston had just given the command
to rid the woods of the sharpshooters, and the force ordered to the attack
came racing by. Captain Clarke stood near Thaine's post, and as the
soldiers rushed forward, Lieutenant Alford halted beside him. Even in the
thrill of the hour, the private down in the trenches felt a sense of
bigger manhood as he looked at the young officer, for Alford was every
inch a king; his soldier uniform became him like a robe of royalty. His
fine face was aglow now with the enthusiasm of the battle and the
assurance of victory.

Thaine did not hear the words of the two officers, for the jungle was
beginning to roar with battle cries and bursting fire from many guns. But
he knew the two had been boyhood friends, university chums, and military
comrades, and the love of man for man shone in their faces.

Alford tarried but a moment with Clarke. As he spied Thaine and his
comrades, he gave an instant's glance of kindly recognition to the
admiring young privates, and was gone. The three involuntarily rose to
their feet, as if to follow him, and from three lusty throats they sent
after him the beloved battle yell of the regiment, "Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk!
K. U.!" then dropped to their places again and hugged the earth as the
rifle balls whizzed about them.

"I'm glad I'm alive and I'm glad I know that man," Thaine said to his
neighbors.

"Alford's a prince. I'll bet he'll clean that woods before he's through.
His work is always well done. Would you listen to that?" his comrade
replied.

A tremendous crash of rifle shots seemed to split the jungle as the Kansas
troops charged into it. The men in th