“Well, do something pretty quick!” growled one of the men supporting the stretcher.
Miss Parmalee had looked two or three times in an absent-minded way at the two men on the ground nearest her—obviously without recognizing either of them. There was a definite purpose in the glance she now bent upon Dwight Ransom—a glance framed in the resourceful smile he remembered so well.
“You seem to be able to sit up, my man,” she said, ingratiatingly, to him; “would you be so very kind as to let me have that place for Colonel Star-buck, here—he is on the headquarters staff—and I am sure we should be so very much obliged. You will easily get a nice place somewhere else for yourself. Oh, thank you so much! It is so good of you!”
Suppressing a groan at the pain the movement involved, and without a word, Dwight lifted himself slowly to his feet, and stepped aside, waving a hand toward the hay and knapsack in token of their surrender.
Then Miss Julia helped lift from the litter the object of her anxiety. Colonel Starbuck was of a slender, genteel figure, and had the top of his head swathed heavily in bandages. He wore long, curly, brown side-whiskers, and his chin had been shaved that very morning. This was enough in itself to indicate that he belonged to the headquarters staff, but the fact was proclaimed afresh by everything else about him—his speckless uniform, his spick-and-span gauntlets, his carefully polished boots, the glittering newness of his shoulder-straps, sword scabbard, buttons, and spurs. It was clear that, whatever else had happened, his line of communication with the headquarters baggage train had never been interrupted.
“It is so kind of you!” Miss Parmalee murmured again, when the staff officer had been helped off the stretcher, and in a dazed and languid way had settled himself down into the place vacated for him. “Would you”—she whispered, looking up now, and noting that the hospital steward and the litter-men had gone away—“would you mind stepping over to the house, or to one of the tents beyond—you’ll find him somewhere—and asking Dr. Willoughby to come at once? Tell him it is for Colonel Starbuck of the headquarters staff, and you’d better mention my name—Miss Parmalee of the Sanitary Commission. You won’t forget the name—Parmalee?”
“I don’t fancy I shall forget it,” said Dwight, gravely. “I’ve got a better memory than some.”
Miss Julia caught the tone of voice on the instant, and looked up again from where she knelt beside the Colonel, with a swift smile.
“Why, it’s Mr. Ransom, I do believe!” she exclaimed. “I should never have known you with your beard. It’s so good of you to take this trouble—you always were so obliging! Any one will tell you where Dr. Willoughby is. He’s the surgeon of the Eighteenth, you know. I’m sure he’ll come at once—to please me—and time is so precious, you know!”
Without further words, Dwight moved off slowly and unsteadily toward the house.