and the stewards carrying the litters, and killed the wounded men on
the litters. A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough
Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry Captain Morton
Henry to the dressing-station, the ball passing down through him, and
a second shot, from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on
the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice wounded
and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his
condition. The surgeons at work along the stream dressed the wounds
with one eye cast aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets
they feared, though they passed continuously, but too high to do
their patients further harm, but the bullets of the sharp-shooters
which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and
scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets were as
different as is the sharp pop of a soda-water bottle from the buzzing
of an angry wasp.

For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or
wounded; one came upon them lying behind the bush, under which they
had crawled with some strange idea that it would protect them, or
crouched under the bank of the stream, or lying on their stomachs and
lapping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty dogs. As to their
suffering, the wounded were magnificently silent, they neither
complained nor groaned nor cursed.

"I've got a punctured tire," was their grim answer to inquiries.
White men and colored men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each
lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be
carried away to safety, for the wounded were in as great danger after
they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but none
questioned nor complained.