"Dead as the deadest kind of a herring!" he said. "Didn't hit him where I meant to, but it answered. Bored him right through the skull, and he lies there, hugging the root of the tree he was so fond of."
"Well, I am glad of that, at all events!" answered Crawford. Men, even of the best hearts and warmest natures, change terribly in times of war and among the influences of the camp and the battle-field. The man who by nature could only have said "Thank God!" at some benefit rendered to his kind or some dispensation of Providence by which the lives of his perilled fellow-men have been preserved—easily learns to be thankful for the explosion of a magazine or the sinking of a ship by which hundreds of men have been sent suddenly into eternity, those men being his enemies.
"But come—let us see what kind of a nick you have got!" said Webster, examining the arm with some skill once acquired in a doctor's shop to which run-over and fainted people were sometimes brought for sudden assistance. "No, the bones are not broken—all right! Here, let me bind it up with my handkerchief and put my scarf-belt around your neck for a sling." He proceeded to make these dispositions, with speed and dexterity, and in a moment after Crawford felt the sickening pain subsiding and the slight faintness leaving him.
"Humph! that is better—it scarcely hurts at all now," he said. "Thank you, Bob—or Doctor Bob, I ought to call you."
"Well, call me anything you like, except a coward or a humbug!" answered Webster. "And now, old fellow, think you are strong enough to get back to the Hill?"
"Yes, but I am not going there!" said John Crawford. "Don't you see how bright that fire through the trees is getting? In this hot weather nobody builds a camp-fire of that size, and I think there must be a house burning. If you say so, we will take a tour in that direction."
"Anywhere with you," said Webster. "But," he added, careful for his wounded companion though not for himself, "suppose it should be a burning house, with rebels around, and you with your lame arm."
"Oh, Bob, we'll take the chances," said the wounded Zouave. "My impression is that they have had enough of Little Mac for one day, and got out of this, and that you killed about the last one of them. At all events, we'll take the chances—come on!"
Bob Webster had been in the habit of following his file-leader, and he did so in this instance. The two struck across the woods in the direction of the fire, their path through the trees and under-growth being made an easy one by the light it cast. A few hundred yards brought them to the edge of the wood, at a narrow place where a spur of the Malvern Hill made a sudden curve Southward and broke into the timber. As they approached the edge of the clear space, they saw that a house was indeed on fire, the flames now licking through the roof and enveloping the chimneys, while all the lower portion seemed burned to a shell. The house, which stood at the foot of the hill, appeared to have been of fair size, and surrounded on three sides with carefully cultivated grounds, now marred and desolated alike by the foot of the invader and the defender.
Climbing a broken fence that lay between the wood and the cultivated ground, the two soldiers drew nearer to the burning house, which strangely enough showed no person moving around the flames, and no indication that it was not burning in utter loneliness. Such things as traps and decoys had been heard of by the comrades, however, as they had been heard of by every soldier subjected to the tricks of the Confederates; and they were not too certain that enemies might not lie concealed in the neighborhood, waiting to pick off any Union soldier discerned in the light of the fire. On this account, Webster, who had re-loaded his rifle, carried it ready for instant use, while Crawford carried his in the unwounded hand, at half-cock, and ready to make some kind of an attempt, in the event of danger, to use it as a pistol. These precautions seemed to be all superfluous, for as they came still nearer to the burning house, now almost ready to fall into a heap of blazing and smouldering ruins, no voice was heard and no sign of life was visible.