"Go bring a stretcher."
The men shook their heads with a grim smile—they had no stretcher.
The boy talked dreamily.
"Say, Yank, didn't we give you hell in—oh, well, in lots o' places. But you've got me." The two soldiers were lifting him in their arms. "Goin' to take me to prison? Goin' to take me out to shoot me, Yank? You ARE a damned Yank." A hoarse growl rose behind them and the giant lifted himself on one elbow, swaying his head from side to side.
"Let that boy alone!" Dan nodded back at him confidently.
"That's all right, Jerry. This Yank's a friend of mine." His brow wrinkled. "At any rate he looks like somebody I know. He's goin' to give me something to eat and get me well—like hell," he added to himself—passing off into unconsciousness again. Chad had the lad carried to his own tent, had him stripped, bathed, and bandaged and stood looking down at him. It was hard to believe that the broken, aged youth was the red-cheeked, vigorous lad whom he had known as Daniel Dean. He was ragged, starved, all but bare-footed, wounded, sick, and yet he was as undaunted, as defiant, as when he charged with Morgan's dare-devils at the beginning of the war. Then Chad went back to the hospital—for a blanket and some medicine.
"They are friends," he said to the Confederate surgeon, pointing at a huge gaunt figure.
"I reckon that big fellow has saved that boy's life a dozen times. Yes, they're mess-mates."
And Chad stood looking down at Jerry Dillon, one of the giant twins—whose name was a terror throughout the mountains of the middle south. Then he turned and the surgeon followed.
There was a rustle of branches on one side when they were gone, and at the sound the wounded man lifted his head. The branches parted and the oxlike face of Yankee Jake peered through. For a full minute, the two brothers stared at each other.