United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
"Four ... five ... some--" Driscoll repeated. "Standish, he's dead. Did
I tell you about Standish? A shell came along and--"
"Yes, you told me about Standish. Now show me where the others are!"
Still keeping his shoulder grip, Drew edged Driscoll about until the
trooper was pointed in the general direction to which he had gestured.
Now Drew gave the man a push and followed.
"Rennie!" That was Captain Campbell. He was kneeling by a man on the
ground, a canteen in his hand.
Drew lurched forward. He was so sure that that inert casualty was Boyd,
and that Boyd was dead.
"Boyd--" he murmured stupidly, refusing to believe his eyes. The man
lying there had a brush of grayish beard on his chin, a mat of hair
which moved up and down as he breathed in heavy, panting gasps.
"Boyd?" This time the scout made a question of it.
One of the men in that little group moved. "He got it--out there."
Drew shifted his weight. He felt as if he were striving to move a body
as heavy and as inert as that of an unconscious man. It took so long
even to raise his hand. Before he could question the trooper further,
another was before him.
Kirby, his powder-blackened face only inches away from that of the man
he had seized by a handful of shirt front, demanded: "How do you know?"
The man pulled back but not out of Kirby's clutch. "He was right beside
me. Went down on the slope before we fell back--"
So--Drew's thinking process was as slow as his weary body--he had been
right back there on the field! Boyd had been in the first line, and he
was still out there.
Again, Drew made one of those careful turns to keep his unsteadiness
under control. If Boyd was out there, he must be brought back--now!
Hands closed on Drew's shoulders, jerking him back so that he collided
with another body, and was held pinned against his captor.
"You can't go theah now!" Kirby spoke so closely to his ear that the
words were a roaring in his head. But they did not make sense. Drew
tried to wrench loose of that hold, the pain in his half-healed arm
answering. Then there was a period he could not account for at all, and
suddenly the sun was fading and it was evening. Somebody pushed a
canteen into his hand, then lifted both hand and canteen for him so that
he could drink some liquid which was not clear water but thick and
brackish, evil-tasting, but which moistened his dry mouth and swollen
tongue.
Through the gathering dusk he could see distant splotches of red and
yellow--were they fires? And shells screamed somewhere. Drew held his
head between his hands and cowered under that beat of noise which
combined with the pulsation of pain just over his eyes. Men were moving
around him, and horses. He heard tags of speech, but none of them were
intelligible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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