answered sheepishly, "but I didn't seem to be doing any good there."

They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went
into the fight of the San Juan hills with the hole still through his
ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body,
asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-
belt beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he was seated
alone grimly firing over their heads in the direction of the enemy.

Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy,
who was shot through the chest. The entrance to his wound was so
small that Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to
stop the flow of blood.

"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger, he said to the boy,
"or you'll bleed to death."

"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business."
The boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly quiet while
Church, with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the
wound. His patient neither whimpered nor swore, but stared up at the
sun in silence. The bullets were falling on every side, and the
operation was a hasty one, but the trooper made no comment until
Church said, "We'd better get out of this; can you stand being
carried?"

"Do you think you can carry me?" the trooper asked.

"Yes."