Beyond the base of the hill they came into the small ravine which had been turned into a rude field hospital. Here the stretcher was put down, and a tired-looking surgeon, wiping his hands upon a soiled towel, came and knelt down beside the wounded man.
“Bring a light--I can't see--bring a light!” he exclaimed irritably, as he cut away the clothes with gentle fingers.
Dan was passing on, when he heard his name called from behind, and turning quickly found Governor Ambler anxiously regarding him.
“You're not hurt, my boy?” asked the Governor, and from his tone he might have parted from the younger man only the day before.
“Hurt? Oh, no, I'm not hurt,” replied Dan a little bitterly, “but there's a whole field of them back there, Colonel.”
“Well, I suppose so--I suppose so,” returned the other absently. “I'm looking after my men now, poor fellows. A victory doesn't come cheap, you know, and thank God, it was a glorious victory.”
“A glorious victory,” repeated Dan, looking at the surgeons who were working by the light of tallow candles.
The Governor followed his gaze. “It's your first fight,” he said, “and you haven't learned your lesson as I learned mine in Mexico. The best, or the worst of it, is that after the first fight it comes easy, my boy, it comes too easy.”
There was hot blood in him also, thought Dan, as he looked at him--and yet of all the men that he had ever known he would have called the Governor the most humane.
“I dare say--I'll get used to it, sir,” he answered. “Yes, it was a glorious victory.”
He broke away and went off into the twilight over the wide meadow to the little wayside spring. Across the road there was a field of clover, where a few campfires twinkled, and he hastened toward it eager to lie down in the darkness and fall asleep. As his feet sank in the moist earth, he looked down and saw that the little purple flower was still blooming in the mud.
The field of trampled clover looked as if a windstorm had swept over it, strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay beside the charred remains of fires, and loose fence rails showed red and white glimpses of playing cards, hidden, before the fight, by superstitious soldiers.