"More fighting! Camera!" called Mr. Pertell, and again the spirited action was under way. Cannon boomed; rifles spat fire and smoke; men fought hand to hand, often rolling over dead; riderless horses dashed here and there. Now and then a man would narrowly escape being run down. As it was, several were burned from being too near the cannon or the guns, and one man's leg was broken in a fall from his horse.
But it was part of the game, and no one seemed to mind. A real hospital was set up at Oak Farm, not a mere shell of a building, and here the injured, as well as those who simulated injury, were attended.
Ruth and some of the women made up as nurses, though this was not the big scene in which Ruth and Alice were to take part.
"Confederates retreat!" directed Mr. Pertell, and the Southern forces, having been defeated, were forced to withdraw. Their attempt to recapture their town had failed.
"Whew! that was hot work!" cried Paul, as he came back to the farmhouse, having played his part as a Confederate soldier.
"It certainly was," agreed Mr. DeVere, who had been the directing Union General. Now that the "war" was over Northerners and Southerners mingled together in friendly converse, their differences forgotten.
"I just can't bear the smell of powder!" complained Miss Dixon. "I wish I had my salts."
"I'll get them for you, dear," offered Miss Pennington. "I'm going up to our rooms." The former vaudeville actresses, with Ruth, Alice, and some of the others, were resting on the farmhouse porch.
Miss Dixon smelled the salts and declared she felt much better.
"There's to be a dance in the village to-night," Paul remarked at the supper table.