There was no answer. And suddenly Dick knew that there would be none. His mind recalled something that he had only half grasped as he ran up the hill, with the patter of the bursting shrapnel, with its load of slugs and bullets, nails and pieces of iron, all about him. He had seen a man stumble, the one man in uniform.
"Is Captain Obrenovitch the one who was in uniform?" he asked.
"Yes, Dick. Why? Was he hit? Did you see him go down?"
"I'm afraid so, yes. Here, I'm going to find out!"
Before Steve realized what he was doing, Dick had turned and plunged back in the direction from which he had just come.
"Dick!" cried Stepan. "Where are you going? What are you doing?"
"I'm going after him!" Dick shouted back.
"Wait! That's madness! Let me go with you!"
But if he heard, Dick made no answer. He did hear, but he paid no attention, and scarcely understood the words. All that Dick knew was that he had run away from a man who had been wounded because he had braved death to save his, Dick's, life. He had seen him fall, as he understood now, and he had not stopped to see if he could help! Dick felt a surge of shame. He felt as if he could never respect himself again unless he tried to make atonement now for having run on! It was fantastic, quixotic, absurd perhaps, but it was Dick Warner's way, as anyone who had known him at home in New York would have realized at once!
"I saw him fall. I know just where he is," Dick told himself again and again, as he ran on, stumbling over roots, tripping repeatedly in his hasty descent of the slope that had seemed so hard to climb a few moments before. "It's up to me to find him and make up to him for sticking to that rope!"