“Well, you jus the man I been lookin’ fer—­the fust white man I ever seed whut ’longed to a nigger regiment.  Come down, honey.”  There was the sharp, clean crack of a Krag-Jorgensen, and a yell of savage triumph.

“That nigger’s a bird,” said Grafton.

Something serious was going to be done now—­the intuition of it ran down the line in that mysterious fashion by which information passes down a line of waiting men.  The line rose, advanced, and dropped again.  Companies deployed to the left and behind—­fighting their way through the chaparral as a swimmer buffets his way through choppy waves.  Every man saw now that the brigade was trying to form in line of battle for a charge on that curving, smokeless flame of fire that ran to and fro around the top of the hill—­blazing fiercely and steadily here and there.  For half an hour the officers struggled to form the scattering men.  Forward a little way; slipping from one bush and tree to another; through the thickets and bayonet grass; now creeping; now a dash through an open spot; now flat on the stomach, until Crittenden saw a wire fence stretching ahead.  Followed another wait.  And then a squad of negro troopers crossed the road, going to the right, and diagonally.  The bullets rained about them, and they scuttled swiftly into the brush.  The hindmost one dropped; the rest kept on, unseeing; but Crittenden saw a Lieutenant—­it was Sharpe, whom he had met at home and at Chickamauga—­look back at the soldier, who was trying to raise himself on his elbow—­while the bullets seemed literally to be mowing down the tall grass about him.  Then Crittenden heard a familiar grunt behind him, and the next minute Bob’s figure sprang out into the open—­making for the wounded man by the sympathy of race.  As he stooped, to Crittenden’s horror, Bob pitched to the ground—­threshing around like an animal that has received a blow on the head.  Without a thought, without consciousness of his own motive or his act, Crittenden sprang to his feet and dashed for Bob.  Within ten feet of the boy, his toe caught in a root and he fell headlong.  As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Sharpe making for him—­thinking that he had been shot down—­and, as he turned, with Bob in his arms, half a dozen men, including Grafton and his own Lieutenant, were retreating back into cover—­all under the same impulse and with the same motive having started for him, too.  Behind a tree, Crittenden laid Bob down, still turning his head from side to side helplessly.  There was a trail of blood across his temple, and, wiping it away, he saw that the bullet had merely scraped along the skull without penetrating it.  In a moment, Bob groaned, opened his eyes, sat up, looked around with rolling eyes, grunted once or twice, straightened out, and reached for his gun, shaking his head.

“Gimme drink, Ole Cap’n, please, suh.”

Crittenden handed him his canteen, and Bob drank and rose unsteadily to his feet.