and bayonet grass; now creeping; now a dash through
an open spot; now flat on the stomach, until Crittenden saw a wire fence
stretching ahead. Followed another wait. And then a squad of negro
troopers crossed the road, going to the right, and diagonally. The
bullets rained about them, and they scuttled swiftly into the brush. The
hindmost one dropped; the rest kept on, unseeing; but Crittenden saw a
Lieutenant--it was Sharpe, whom he had met at home and at
Chickamauga--look back at the soldier, who was trying to raise himself
on his elbow--while the bullets seemed literally to be mowing down the
tall grass about him. Then Crittenden heard a familiar grunt behind him,
and the next minute Bob's figure sprang out into the open--making for
the wounded man by the sympathy of race. As he stooped, to Crittenden's
horror, Bob pitched to the ground--threshing around like an animal that
has received a blow on the head. Without a thought, without
consciousness of his own motive or his act, Crittenden sprang to his
feet and dashed for Bob. Within ten feet of the boy, his toe caught in a
root and he fell headlong. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Sharpe
making for him--thinking that he had been shot down--and, as he turned,
with Bob in his arms, half a dozen men, including Grafton and his own
Lieutenant, were retreating back into cover--all under the same impulse
and with the same motive having started for him, too. Behind a tree,
Crittenden laid Bob down, still turning his head from side to side
helplessly. There was a trail of blood across his temple, and, wiping it
away, he saw that the bullet had merely scraped along the skull without
penetrating it. In a moment, Bob groaned, opened his eyes, sat up,
looked around with rolling eyes, grunted once or twice, straightened
out, and reached for his gun, shaking his head.

"Gimme drink, Ole Cap'n, please, suh."

Crittenden handed him his canteen, and Bob drank and rose unsteadily to
his feet.

"Dat ain't nuttin'," he said, contemptuously, feeling along the wound.
"'Tain't nigh as bad as mule kick. 'Tain't nuttin', 't all." And then he
almost fell.

"Go back, Bob."

"All right, Ole Cap'n, I reckon I'll jus' lay down heah little while,"
he said, stretching out behind the tree.

And Grafton reached over for Crittenden's hand. He was getting some new
and startling ideas about the difference in the feeling toward the negro
of the man who once owned him body and soul and of the man