"I always need you, Doctor Carey," Thaine said earnestly. "Never more than now. When I saw Captain Clarke wounded and carried away on the other side of the Tulijan, and could only say 'Captain, my captain,' I needed you. When Captain Elliot was killed, I needed you; and when Captain William Watson was shot and wouldn't stay dead because we need him so, and when Metcalf, Bishop, Agnew, Glasgow, Ramsey, and Martin, and all the other big-brained fellows do big things, I need you again. Life is a great game; I'm glad I'm in it." Horace Carey had never before seen Thaine's bright face so alert with manly power and beauty and thoughtfulness. War had hardened him. Danger had tried him. Human needs, larger than battle lines alone can know, had strengthened him. Vision of large purposes had uplifted him. As he stood before the white-haired physician whom he had loved from earliest memory, Carey murmured to himself: "Can the world find grander soldiers to fight its battles than these sun-browned boys from our old Kansas prairies?" "We are going across to Luna's stronghold in a few minutes. Watch him go into eclipse before Fred Funston. If you stand right here, you'll see me helping at the job. Good-by," Thaine declared, and, at the bugle call, fell into his place. Beyond the river a steady fire was opened on the American forces, and no bridge nor boat was there by which to cross. Doctor Carey stood watching the situation with a strange sense of unrest in his mind. "There must be rafts," declared Colonel Funston. And there were rafts, hastily made of bamboo poles. "Somebody must swim across and fasten a cable over there by which to tow the rafts across. Who will volunteer? You see what's before you," Funston asserted. Horace Carey saw two soldiers, Corporal Trembly and Private Edward White, seize the cable, plunge into the river, and strike out directly toward the farther side filled with Filipino forces. Rifle balls split the water about them. Bullet after bullet cut the air above them. Shot after shot from the ambushed enemy hurtled toward them. The two young men surged steadily ahead, bent only on reaching the bank and fastening the cable. They knew only one word, duty, and they did the thing they had agreed to do. Once across the river, they ran nimbly up the bank and made fast the rope's end, while cheer after cheer rose from their comrades watching them, and the battle cry of the Fighting Twentieth, "Rock Chalk, Jay Hawk, K. U.," went pulsing out across the waters of the Rio Grande as full and strong as in the days when it rolled out on the university campus on far-away Mount Oread, beside the Kaw. The rafts sped along the cable, and squad after squad went pell mell into General Luna's stronghold, under stubborn fire from the frantic rebels.