and he saw Martin Culpepper, perhaps with the large white plumes still
dancing in his eyes, dash out of the line and pick up a Union banner
that Sigel's men had lost, and that the enemy was flaunting just
before the artillery mowed the gray line down. He heard the hoarse men
cheer Martin, and as the tall swart figure came running back waving
the flag, the boy prayed to his father's God to save the man.

When the battle lulled, the boy found himself parted from "C" Company,
and fled back through the woods to the rear. There he came upon a
smell that was familiar. He had known it in the slaughter-house at
home. It was the smell of fresh blood, and with it came the sickening
drone of flies. In an instant he stood under a tree where men were
working smeared with blood. He stumbled over a little pile of
dismembered legs and hands. A man with a bloody knife was bending over
a human form stretched on a bloody and, it seemed to the boy, a greasy
table. Another was helping the big man. They were cutting the bullet
out of Watts McHurdie, who was lying white and unconscious and with
flies crawling over him, half naked and blood-smeared, on the table.
The boy screamed, and the man turned his head and snarled through his
clenched teeth that held the knife, "Get out of here--no--go get me
a bucket of water from the creek." Some one handed the boy a bucket,
and he ran where he was told to go, with the awful sight burned on his
brain, with the sickening smell in his nose, and with the drone of
flies in his ears. When he came back the firing had begun again. The
surgeon was saying, "Well, that's all that's waiting--now I'm going
for a minute." He grabbed a gun standing by the table and ran toward
the front; he did not take off his blood-splotched apron, and the boy
fled from the place in terror. In a few moments the firing ceased; but
the boy ran on, hunting for a hiding-place. He saw a troop of
Alabamians plunge over a log in a charge, and roll in an awful,