"Trouble with a big 'T,'" muttered Private Kelly.
Sergeant Hal said no more. He walked quickly down the road as horse and rider drew nearer. The mount was running more feebly now. Fifty feet away from the young sergeant the animal pitched suddenly, staggered, then fell.
For an instant it looked as though the rider would also be stretched in the dust. Then he recovered, leaped painfully away from the horse—and just then Hal Overton reached and caught him.
"Shall I carry you, friend?" demanded the Army boy, for the stranger was a white man, doubtless an American.
At the stranger's belt hung a holster, the flap unbuttoned. He was wild-eyed and breathing hard, but there was no sign of cowardice in the man's sternly set face.
Bloodstains showed over three wounds in the trunk of his body. The right shoulder, also, had been touched.
"I can walk—but give me your arm," gasped the wounded man. "Take me to your commanding officer!"
Hal started, but had not far to go, for Captain Cortland was coming forward on the run.
"Take that man to the porch of barracks," called the captain, whose eye, practised in wounds, saw much. "Don't make him walk far."
Kelly sprang to Hal's aid. Between them they lifted the wounded stranger to a seat on their arms. The man put his arms about their necks, and thus they conveyed him to a broad armchair on the porch.