"Silence in the ranks," roared a Lieutenant. Bob hesitated. Just then a company of the Tenth Cavalry filed down the road as they were deployed to the right. Crittenden's file of soldiers could see that the last man was a short, fat darky--evidently a recruit--and he was swinging along as jauntily as in a cake-walk. As he wheeled pompously, he dropped his gun, leaped into the air with a yell of amazed rage and pain, catching at the seat of his trousers with both hands. A bullet had gone through both buttocks. "Gawd, Ole Cap'n, did you see dat nigger?" A roar of laughter went down the bed of the creek. "Go back!" repeated Crittenden, threateningly, "and stop calling me Old Captain." Bob looked after the file of coloured troops, and then at Crittenden. "All right, Ole Cap'n; I tol' you in ole Kentuck that I gwine to fight wid the niggers ef you don't lemme fight wid you. I don't like disgracin' the family dis way, but 'tain't my fault, an' s'pose you git shot--" the slap of the flat side of a sword across Bob's back made him jump. "What are you doing here?" thundered an angry officer." Get into line--get into line." "I ain't no sojer." "Get into line," and Bob ran after the disappearing file, shaking his head helplessly. The crash started again, and the hum of bees and the soft snap of the leaves when bullets clipped them like blows with a rattan cane, and the rattling sputter of the machine guns, and once more came that long, long wait that tries the soldier's heart, nerve, and brain. "Why was not something done--why?" And again rose the cry for the hospital men, and again the limp figures were brought in from the jungle, and he could see the tall doctor with the bare head helping the men who had been dressed with a first-aid bandage to the protecting bank of the creek farther up, to make room for the fresh victims. And as he stood up once, Crittenden saw him throw his hand quickly up to his temple and sink to the blood-stained sand. The assistant, who bent over him, looked up quickly and shook his head to another, who was binding a wounded leg and looking anxiously to know the fatal truth. "I've got it," said a soldier to Crittenden's left; joyously, he said it, for the bullet had merely gone through his right shoulder. He could fight no more, he had a wound and he could wear a scar to his grave. "So have I," said another, with a groan. And then next him there was a sudden, soft thud: