He did not look around, and she laid a hand gently on his arm, not daring to touch it firmly lest it be shattered.
"Tell me," she began again, in a louder voice, "are you badly wounded?"
Slowly he turned a face matted with sweat and powdered earth, haggard, as though it had been drawn up from a grave. She uttered a wild scream of recognition.
"Jeb!"
Her eyes opened to him. They suggested fluid-vague sympathies and fears that many a man would have bartered his life for; but this one before her only stared back with a look that was hardly sane, then turned again to the crater wall. He seemed to be stunned; without feeling, indeed, because dust and grit were plastered on one of his eye-balls.
"Jeb," she screamed, horrified at this, "tell me quickly where you're hurt!—oh, Jeb!"
He shook his head, muttering something she could not hear; but his gesture implied a negative. At first she did not understand; she could not reconcile this with the fact that he crouched inactive when wounded men were gasping for relief.
"Not hurt?" she insisted, taking hold of his arm. "But you must be, Jeb! You must be—to be here!"
Petulantly he shook off her hand; slowly she drew away from him, beginning—yet fearing—to understand. "But you must be, Jeb! You must be—to be here!"
"Help me, Jeb! There's a man behind you hit pretty hard!—help me get him in!"