Just then I heard somebody yell, “Look out, Westy, the boards are gone!  You’ll have to climb!”

After that, everything seemed to be all jumbled up.  I saw Skinny standing near his sapling just staring at me and he looked as if I had just hit him and he didn’t understand at all.  He didn’t even notice all the other fellows who were running.  Then I looked and I didn’t see Westy, but all the fellows were heading for the ditch and I knew right away what had happened.  Somebody hollered, “Get your kit, Doc, and hurry up.”

There was a ditch near where the saplings grew and usually there were a couple of boards across it.  But they weren’t there when all of us fellows went across and we had to go down into the ditch and climb up the other side.  I guess the woodsmen had taken them, maybe.

Anyway, when Westy came along the path he was running so hard he didn’t notice in time that the boards weren’t there, and he went head over heels into the ditch.  I guess I was the last one to get there, and all the fellows were standing around and Doc was kneeling over Westy, and feeling his pulse.  Westy’s face was all white and there was blood coming down from his eye and he looked straight up and didn’t notice anybody.  All the fellows were quiet and scared, kind of, and waiting for Doc to speak.  But he wasn’t excited, only he said we’d better get a doctor.  “It isn’t a fracture,” he said; “it’s only a cut, but anyway, we’d better get the doctor.”

Then I saw some blood on the front of Westy’s khaki shirt.  But Doc saw it first and he said, “Open his shirt, maybe he has something hanging from his neck that cut him.  Feel and see if he has a knife in his breast pocket.  Open his shirt first.  Give me the iodine and some bandage, one of you fellows.”

I thought I ought to be the one to open his shirt, because he was in my patrol and besides we were special friends, as you might say.  So I pushed through past the others and just as I was kneeling down I saw Skinny standing up on the edge of the ditch and his eyes looked big and he was all trembling and excited.  There were big red spots on his cheeks and I knew that was the consumption that showed whenever he got excited.  He was all by himself up there and he looked kind of wild—­I can’t exactly tell you..

Then I opened Westy’s shirt and I saw he had a ring with two keys hanging there and they must have pressed into his chest and cut him.  It kind of scared me, because there was so much blood, but Doc said, “Give me the iodine—­that’s nothing.”

And I knew he knew what he was talking about.

While he was putting iodine in the cut I felt in Westy’s pocket like Doc told me to do, but there wasn’t any knife there.  But there was something else there and I pulled it out.  Oh, gee, I hate to tell you about it.  It was my two dollar bill.  I could tell because it was new and because it had a stain on it in the shape of a half circle.