"Indeed I'm not!" said Helen as she bathed the soldier's head. "Not at all! Just as soon as he can hold my hand, we will be married by the chaplain. I'll never, never risk another misunderstanding!"
"See that you don't!" said Zaidos quite gruffly.
CHAPTER IX
VISIONS
While Zaidos, aided by Velo, continued his heart-rending task among the dead and wounded on that bloody field, now applying the tourniquet to some emptying artery, now administering, drop by drop, the stimulant needed to hold life in some poor fellow, hurrying back with others on their stretcher, or giving way to the fearless and pitiful priests who moved among the dying—while all these things happened, it would be well to pause and reflect on the wise preparation which had made it possible for Zaidos to do well his allotted task.
As a Boy Scout, and in the extra work of school, he had taken a keen interest in the Red Cross work. Zaidos was the sort of a fellow who takes a keen pleasure in doing things well. He stood well in his classes always, not for the benefit of school marks, but because he thought that if he studied at all, he might as well be thorough about it and try to get at what the "book Johnny," as the boys called the textbook writers, really was driving at. It was the same with athletics. He had jumped higher and run faster than anyone else in school, not so much because he was quick and light and agile, but because, having found out that he could run and jump and put up a good boost for the team at other sports, he practiced every spare moment he could find. Zaidos was always trying to see if he could break his own records. He got a lot of fun out of it. It was like a good game of solitaire. He was not dependent on some other fellow. The other fellow was incidental, a sort of side issue and like a good pace-maker. Of course you had to beat him, but the sport was in coming in ahead of your own time.
It was for this that Zaidos had always worked. It had kept him from feeling the petty jealousies and envy which retard the progress of so many of the fellows. Racing with himself, in Red Cross drills, or running, racing, riding or studying, his rival was always present, always ready and willing to take another "try" at something. It was like having a punching bag in his room. Every time he passed it he took a whack or two, and developed his muscles accordingly.
So, in this unexpected and supreme test of his life, Zaidos found himself fit. As the work went on and on, endlessly as it seemed, Zaidos found that his brain commenced to work independently of his hands. The unbelievable wounds of war no longer shocked his deadened nerves. His hands worked more and more accurately and rapidly, but on the inside of his brain was a sort of screen on which flashed the moving picture of his life.
They started from his little boyhood, when he first crossed the ocean up to the time of the last crossing, at the sad summons which had taken him to his dying father. No real moving picture, thought Zaidos, had ever been screened with so many thrills and exciting incidents as the real life-film through which he saw himself rapidly moving. Here and there on the bloody field he puzzled it out for himself, finding that the plot was complete, and that Velo, his cousin, must be the villain.