He held up the lantern and the beams fell upon a long figure half raised upon an elbow. The figure was turned toward the light and stared unknowing at Dick and the Southerner. There was a great clot of blood upon his right breast and shoulder, but it was Warner. Dick swallowed hard.
“Yes,” he said, “it's my comrade, but he's hurt badly.”
“So bad that he don't know you or anybody else. He's clean out of his head.”
They leaned over him, and Dick called:
“George! George! It's Dick Mason, your comrade, come to help you back to camp!”
But Warner merely stared with feverish, unseeing eyes.
“He's out of his head, as I told you, an' he's like to be for many hours,” said the lantern bearer. “It's a shore thing that I won't shoot him to-morrow, nor he won't shoot me.”
He leaned over Warner and carefully examined the wound.
“He's lucky, after all,” he said, “the bullet went in just under the right shoulder, but it curved, as bullets have a way of doin' sometimes, an' has come out on the side. There ain't no lead in him now, which is good. He was pow'ful lucky, too, in not bein' hit in the head, 'cause he ain't got no such skull as Sam has, not within a mile of it. His skull wouldn't have turned no bullet. He has lost a power of blood, but if you kin get him back to camp, an' use the med'cines which you Yanks have in such lots an' which we haven't, he may get well.”
“That's good advice,” said Dick. “Help me up with him.”