Zaidos looked up at the face, white with cowardice.
“Come here!” said Zaidos. Still kneeling he pointed a small but business looking revolver at his cousin’s heart. “Come here!” he ordered.
Velo obeyed, the look on his face changing from white terror to black hate.
Zaidos saw the look, and read it with unconcern.
“Come here, Velo!” He held Velo’s shifty eyes. “You get to work here. If you don’t, I shall shoot you, just as I would shoot a dog. There is no time to talk. Get to work! You hear what I tell you. Turn this man!”
Velo shudderingly put himself to the horrid task of lifting the bleeding and torn body. Zaidos talked as he worked in a deep, earnest tone that carried to Velo’s ears even in the noise of battle.
“I’m going to be after you every minute, Velo Kupenol! You won’t disgrace me if I can help it. Go get your stretcher. If you drop it I will kill you!”
He spoke so fiercely, and with such meaning, that Velo felt that for once his easy-going cousin had the upper hand.
As the doctor had said, they were suffering for lack of help, so Zaidos could not afford to let the coward run away. He had to have assistance if he was to save some of the lives which he felt were in a measure entrusted to him. So Velo had to be used. He stopped the gush of blood from a dozen wounds and, lifting on one end of the stretcher, ordered Velo, with a nod of his head, to lead on toward the First Aid Station.
Almost immediately they had the wounded man on the table, and again were off. The guns roared. Shrapnel dropped and exploded, or exploded in air. Overhead Zaidos was conscious that the duel in the clouds still went warily on, but he could not give it a glance. He lost all track of time. He saw others with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where the doctors and Nurse Helen worked with incredible swiftness and skill.