for having said it.

There were not as many prone men on the field as he had expected to
find. To his bulging eyes which watched the first charge, men seemed to
be falling everywhere, but as a matter of fact this was not so.

They had gone quite a third of the distance across when Hastings stopped
and unrolled the stretcher, shouting:

"Here's one! Lend a hand, Jeb!"

The coolness of the voice, its utmost naturalness, gave Jeb a most
agreeable feeling, and before remembering again that men who drop in
battle are things of blood and pain, he was easing one gently over on
the brown canvas.

They started to come in, Hastings at the forward handles, he at the
rear; moving as fast as the added weight permitted, skirting shell holes
and stepping over fragments of barbed-wire. Crossing the first trench
bridge a hundred faces looked up at them, steadily, unemotionally.
Another division had been brought up after the second wave swept out,
and a few of these fellows now said quietly: "Bravo!" But their thoughts
were with the chap who lay silent on the canvas.

Reaching the top of the gravelly roadway that sloped to the
dressing-stations, burying their heels in the loose earth which rolled
along with them as they descended, the stretcher-bearers saw Barrow in a
white jacket, and several white-faced nurses expectantly waiting; for
this had been the first man brought in. Even as he was stripped and laid
upon the crude table, Jeb and Hastings were well on their way out again.

In four hours No Man's Land had been fairly well cleared of suffering.
Although Jeb was growing indifferent to the sight of blood, several
times, as a result of extreme fear, he had been actively sick. The
shells were as terrifying as ever; moreover, he and Hastings had to
penetrate farther each time in search of wounded. Their last trip took
them nearly to the scarp of blasted ground on which stood the
half-destroyed hamlet. True, there had been shells bursting within a
hundred yards of Jeb; but it so happened that he was particularly
engrossed with lifting or easing some of the wounded. Once, when a
splinter of steel cut Hastings' sleeve, the lanky westerner gave a
whistle.

"That was close," he said.

And Jeb, newly terrified by the words, looked up quickly, asking:

"Did one come by?"

"Well, if it did, it did," Hastings answered. "Cut out your chills, Jeb,
and let's get this feller in!"

But Jeb could not "cut out" the chill at once because