It was two days later when I got particulars. Seems I was out of my head for four hours, and like to die any minute; that I had a hole in the lower leg, another in the hip, a streak across the top of my head, and a bullet in the shoulder. Also a slash across the right hand, and another on the right forearm, and a stab in the same upper arm. I suppose that was during the hand-to-hand at the window and the door. I have a faint memory of getting the knife by pulling it out of my own arm. But the bullet-holes knocked me. I don't remember getting shot at all—only a dizziness when one man fired in my face. I guess that was the streak across the head.
I was the star performer. The other boys drew a couple of holes apiece or so. Gonzales wasn't even laid up, though Pedro had his arm shattered.
Well, they kept me quiet, although I was crazy to talk. At the third day I demanded food, instead of swill. The doctor looked troubled and shook his head.
"See here, Doc," says I, "how am I going to manufacture good new blood, without the raw material? Just let me have a half-a-dozen eggs and a hunk of bacon and a loaf of bread, and I'll do credit to you."
He snorted at the idea, but I begged so hard he says at last: "Well, all right; you are the toughest piece of humanity I ever struck; maybe it will do you good."
When I got outside that first square meal, William De La Tour Saunders felt less naked and ashamed inside of him, and proceeded to get better a mile a minute.
The fourth day I could sit up and hear Jim tell me all about it.
He had found a feller in the camp preaching revolution. For some time this had been expected. It was known that a General Zampeto was setting up for President, and it was also known that Belknap was backing him, although he took great care not to be mixed in it by name. But Zampeto and Belknap had fooled our crowd plenty, by being all ready for action when it was supposed they were just starting in.
When Jim caught and thumped that first revolutionist, he tumbled at once that things were about to boil, so he flew for help. His camp was a sort of turning-point. The two sides were about evenly divided as to forces, and, as Jim worked nearly three hundred men, it meant a great deal which side they fought on.
Jim's men were mainly peaceful, quiet fellows, like Gonzales and that other feller—(Pepe something-or-other—I don't know as I ever learned his full name)—and Jim had great authority with them. If the rebels smashed Jim on the start, his men would fall in on the winning side, or at worst remain neutral. Neither Zampeto nor Jim had the least idea they'd fight hard—it was just the moral effect of it, and then, too, the supplies in the store were valuable.