“No, he won’t, buddy. He’s all right.” Hicks spoke reassuringly. For a moment he could not think whom the man was speaking of, but then he recollected that a German Red Cross attendant had been busy in the field, binding the wounds of the soldiers. Hicks looked around and saw the attendant a few yards off. He beckoned to him, and tried to illustrate by motions that he wanted the soldier carried back to the first-aid station. The German came over, lowered his head to the soldier’s chest. “Nein. Caput.” He pointed to a rust-colored spot on the soldier’s tunic over the heart. While Hicks was standing there, wondering what to do, the soldier’s eyelids fluttered, he breathed once and deeply—and died. Hicks gave up hope of finding his cousin. He had either been taken prisoner, and that was not at all likely, or else he had been sent back wounded, he thought. * * * * * Hicks tramped back through the thick woods that suddenly had become quiet. The rays of the noonday sun were filtering through the boughs of the trees, seeking out the now inanimate bodies, which would soon turn black and bloat out of shape under the intense heat. Before him, on a knoll of green, was a pile of heavy boulders, and, peeping through a crevice, stuck the nose of a Maxim. Climbing the knoll to the right, he looked into the machine-gun nest. Three bodies, motionless as the rocks themselves, were stretched at length. One had fallen face forward, an arm thrown over the stock of the weapon. His back, that swelled under the gray coat, was turned reproachfully toward the sky. Another was sprawled on his back, his hands and legs frozen in a gesture of complete negation. His chin had fallen heavily on his breast and upon his head his small trench cap was tilted forward at a rakish angle. The other man’s face was a clot of blood. Death, camera-like, had caught and held him fast, his body supported by the rocks, his face like a battered sunflower in the evening. Hicks stooped over and gently drew the Maxim away from the man who had been firing it when he had been killed. Shouldering it, and carrying an extra belt of cartridges and the water-cooler, he left the knoll and walked toward the ravine. The spectacle that he had just witnessed left very little impression upon him. The platoon was gathered closely together in the ravine. The ravine was deep and wide, and every so often passage along it was obstructed by a huge stone over which the men would have to climb. Evidently, a few days before, the French soldiers had used the ravine as a trench from which to conceal themselves while they fought against the onslaught of the enemy. Little holes had been dug in the side of the ravine nearest to the field in which men could throw themselves to be protected from the bursting shell casings and shrapnel. As he approached, three of the men were scuffing dirt over the body of a dead French soldier who had fallen near one of the small burrows in the ravine.