“What are you doing there?” demanded the young officer, indignantly. “Get up and go to work. Where’s your gun?”
“Gordon’s got it,” was the faint reply.
The lieutenant looked around and saw Don in the act of firing his piece out of the window. After he made his shot, the officer asked him whose gun he was using.
“I don’t know,” answered Don. “I found it on the floor, and thought it might as well take part in this fight as to lie idle there.”
“That’s all right; but it belongs to this man. Hand it over.”
Don was glad to know that his comrade was not injured, but he was reluctant to surrender the musket into the hands of one who had showed no disposition to use it when he had it. He gave it up, however, and then crouched behind a seat and passed out cartridges to Egan and Curtis, who fired as fast as they could load. Both these boys had won the marksman’s badge at five hundred yards, and it was not likely that all their shots were thrown away.
About this time report was made that some of the rioters had taken refuge under the car and were shooting up through the floor, and the professor determined to abandon his position. The company was called to attention, Don Gordon opened the door, as we have recorded, and when the order was given they left the car on a run, Don being the fourth to touch the ground. After moving down the track a short distance they came to a halt and faced toward the rioters, who arose from their places of concealment and rushed over the embankment in a body, evidently with the intention of annihilating the students. In fact they told the boys as they came on that they were going to “wipe the last one of ’em out,” but they did not do it. The young soldiers were as steady as veterans, and one volley was enough to scatter the rioters, and send them in confusion to their hiding-places. But the students did not escape unscathed. As Don stood there on the track offering a fair target to the rifles of the mob, and unable to fire a single bullet in response to those that whistled about his ears, he heard a suppressed exclamation from somebody, and turned quickly about to see the boy who stood on his left, bent half double and clasping both his hands around his leg.
“I’ve got it,” said he, as Don sprang to his assistance.
“Well, you take it pretty coolly,” replied the other. “Come down out of sight. You’ve no business up here now that you are shot.”
After leading his injured comrade to a place of safety behind the embankment, Don returned to the track just in time to receive in his arms the boy who stood on his right and who clapped his hand to his breast and reeled as if he were about to fall. That was the narrowest escape that Don ever had. If he had been in line, where he belonged, the bullet which struck this boy’s breast-plate and made an ugly wound in his chest, would have hit Don squarely in the side.