"Kicked you nothin'! You got a machine-gun bullet glancin' on your short ribs and acrost your chest right under the skin--that was what put you down and out. And then just as Goodman fetched you in acrost over the top here come another lot of machine-gun bullets, and one of 'em drilled you through the ankle and another one of them bored Goodman clean through the shoulder; but that didn't keep him from goin' right back out there, shot up like he was, after the captain. Quick as a cat that guy was and strong as a bull. Naw, Goodman he never kicked you--that was a little chunk of lead kicked you." "But I didn't feel any pain like a bullet," protested Ginsburg. "It was more like a hard wallop with a club or a boot." "Say, that's a funny thing too," said Dempsey. "You're always readin' about the sharp dartin' pain a bullet makes, and yet nearly everybody that gets hit comes out of his trance ready to swear a mule muster kicked him or somethin'. I guess that sharp-dartin' pain stuff runs for Sweeney; the guys that write about it oughter get shot up themselves oncet. Then they'd know." "This Goodman, now?" queried Ginsburg, trying to chamber many impressions at once. "I don't seem to place him. He wasn't in B Company?" "Naw! He's out of D Company. He's a new guy. He's out of a bunch of replacements that come up for D Company only the day before yistiddy. Well, for a green hand he certainly handled himself like one old-timer." Dempsey, aged nineteen, spoke as the grizzled veteran of many campaigns might have spoken. "Yes, sir! He certainly snatched you out of a damn bad hole in jig time." "I'd like to have a look at him," said Ginsburg. "And my old mother back home would, too, I know." "Your mother'll have to wait, but you kin have your wish," said Dempsey gleefully. He had been saving his biggest piece of news for the last. "If you've got anything to ask him just ask him. He's layin' there--right over there on the other side of you. We all three of us rode down here together in the same amb'lance load." Ginsburg turned his head. Above the blanket that covered the figure of his cot neighbour on the right he looked into the face of the man who had saved him--looked into it and recognised it. That dark skin, clear though, with a transparent pallor to it like brown stump water in a swamp, and those black eyes between the slitted lids could belong to but one person on earth. If the other had overheard what just had passed between Ginsburg and Dempsey he gave no sign. He considered Ginsburg steadily, with a cool, hostile stare in his eyes. "Much obliged, buddy," said Ginsburg. Something already had told him that here revealed was a secret not to be shared with a third party. "Don't mention it," answered his late rescuer shortly. He drew a fold of the blanket up across his face with the gesture of one craving solitude or sleep. "Huh!" quoth Dempsey. "Not what I'd call a talkative guy."