's eye stark faces in the long grass
of the valley and the Spanish-bayonet clumps in the woods. All day he
had seen them there--dying of thirst, bleeding to death--alone. As he
went down the hill, lights were moving along the creek bed. A row of
muffled dead lay along the bed of the creek. Yet they were still
bringing in dead and wounded--a dead officer with his will and a letter
to his wife clasped in his hand. He had lived long enough to write them.
Hollow-eyed surgeons were moving here and there. Up the bank of the
creek, a voice rose:

"Come on, boys"--appealingly--"you're not going back on me. Come on, you
cursed cowards! Good! Good! I take it back, boys. _Now_ we've got 'em!"

Another voice: "Kill me, somebody--kill me. For God's sake, kill me.
Won't somebody give me a pistol? God--God...."

Once Grafton started into a tent. On the first cot lay a handsome boy,
with a white, frank face and a bullet hole through his neck, and he
recognized the dashing little fellow whom he had seen splashing through
the Bloody Ford at a gallop, dropping from his horse at a barbed-wire
fence, and dashing on afoot with the Rough Riders. The face bore a
strong likeness to the face he had seen on the hill--of the Kentuckian,
Crittenden--the Kentucky regular, as Grafton always mentally
characterized him--and he wondered if the boy were not the brother of
whom he had heard. The lad was still alive--but how could he live with
that wound in his throat? Grafton's eyes filled with tears: it was
horror--horror--all horror.

Here and there along the shadowed road lay a lifeless mule or horse or a
dead man. It was curious, but a man killed in battle was not like an
ordinary dead man--he was no more than he was--a lump of clay. It was
more curious still that one's pity seemed less acute for man than for
horse: it was the man's choice to take the risk--the horse had no
choice.

Here and there by the roadside was a grave. Comrades had halted there
long enough to save a comrade from the birds of prey. Every now and
then he would meet a pack-train loaded with ammunition and ration boxes;
or a wagon drawn by six mules and driven by a swearing, fearless,
tireless teamster. The forest was ringing with the noise of wheels, the
creaking of harness, the shouts of teamsters and the guards with them
and the officer in charge--all on the way to the working beavers on top
of the conquered hill.

Going the other way were the poor wounded, on foot, in li