CHAPTER XVI
July 1, 1898, at sunset, the fair folds of our own stars and stripes were gently floating over San Juan hill.
On that day some of the most heroic deeds in American history had been performed by those who represent the highest types of American virility.
Roosevelt's Rough Riders had, that day, advanced behind their intrepid leader, into the very jaws of death and very many of them never came again into the pleasant walks of life they'd known before that fateful day ... very many of them lay scattered over the different heights that led on to the very top of San Juan hill, inert and helpless human tenements that had once held the proud and willing spirits of the men who followed Roosevelt with love and daring.
Some of them were picked up and carried to temporary hospitals that had sprung up near the scene of active warfare; in one of these shelters for the wounded Ruth Wakefield stood, that evening, bending low above a little cot on which was stretched a manly form ... the form of one who'd ridden with the rest of those who followed him they called, in brotherly affection, "Teddy," and who was beside him when his horse was shot from under him.
"Nurse," he whispered, through the bandages that bound his head, "Nurse, it would have done you good to hear him say 'Forward! Charge the hill!' It would have heartened you could you have seen him, when he was unhorsed, grab a rifle and fire it as he went on up, on foot."
"You must not talk," said Ruth. "You must rest quietly, now. We won the hill," she added, proudly. "We won the hill and I'm as proud as anyone could ever be of Roosevelt and of you all who followed after him. I sometimes wish," she ended, "I sometimes wish that I had been a man to go into the battles instead of only caring for the wounded ... yet I'm thankful to be of some assistance to the ones who need the help that I can give to them."
"You should have seen," began the man again, "you should have seen our Teddy charge that hill! They do not make a man like that except about once in a century or so ... they do not make such men as that in every age.... I tell you he's a holy terror when it comes to fighting, Nurse! He mowed them down ... he made them crawl and creep.... I always knew he could do more on horseback than any man that ever lived but I never knew, until today, what he could do on foot."
"Our Teddy is a wonder.... I agree with you in everything you say of him, but, now," once more she was the nurse in charge, "you must be very still ... that is," she ended, with a happy little turn of thought, "if you ever want to go where Teddy is, again."
That was enough to silence him and he lay very still and fixed his eyes upon her face, and, finally, he slept, and rested from his labors for a time; but what he'd said stayed in Ruth's inner consciousness and the heart that throbbed within her beat more proudly after that, because she was, as was the man his comrades praised, an American; to her that title was enough to fill with pride a human heart ... to be a true American ... a citizen of the United States of America ... it seemed to her meant more than any royal appellation ever could; no crown adorned with priceless jewels could replace that name to her; at one time in her life, this question had been asked of her: