though a retreating army had fled along it, rather than that one
troop had fought its way through it to the front. Except for the
clatter of the land-crabs, those hideous orchid-colored monsters that
haunt the places of the dead, and the whistling of the bullets in the
trees, the place was as silent as a grave. For the wounded lying
along its length were as still as the dead beside them. The noise of
the loose stones rolling under my feet brought a hospital steward out
of the brush, and he called after me:

"Lieutenant Thomas is badly wounded in here, and we can't move him.
We want to carry him out of the sun some place, where there is shade
and a breeze." Thomas was the first lieutenant of Capron's troop.
He is a young man, large and powerfully built. He was shot through
the leg just below the trunk, and I found him lying on a blanket half
naked and covered with blood, and with his leg bound in tourniquets
made of twigs and pocket-handkerchiefs. It gave one a thrill of awe
and wonder to see how these cowboy surgeons, with a stick that one
would use to light a pipe and with the gaudy 'kerchiefs they had
taken from their necks, were holding death at bay. The young officer
was in great pain and tossing and raving wildly. When we gathered up
the corners of his blanket and lifted him, he tried to sit upright,
and cried out, "You're taking me to the front, aren't you? You said
you would. They've killed my captain--do you understand? They've
killed Captain Capron. The --- Mexicans! They've killed my
captain."

The troopers assured him they were carrying him to the firing-line,
but he was not satisfied. We stumbled over the stones and vines,
bumping his wounded body against the ground and leaving a black
streak in the grass behind us, but it seemed to hurt us more than it