"Tenth Cav'rly--Tenth!" was the answer. Bob laughed long and loud.
"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.