"Zack James was at the bottom of the whole fool business," Jenkins was saying. "He was drinkin' all night. You can see his empty bottle behind them permeters."
"Lucky for him that he beat it before I got my hands on him," said Buck.
While Peters and Jones were checking the red flow from Carter's wound and very carefully binding it up, Ted noticed with alarm that blood trickled down Buck's left wrist. He had received instruction in first aid as a part of his Boy Scout training and now insisted on dressing his friend's wound, although Buck protested that the bullet had "just grazed" his arm and no attention was necessary. Ted cleared the drying blood from around the scratch and, tearing into strips his handkerchief which he had washed and dried the previous afternoon, neatly employed a part of it as a bandage.
"Thank you, little doctor," said Buck, smiling and pleased.
Then Ted turned to Jenkins and very carefully performed the same office for him, in this case there being some real need.
"You sure are a nice kid," said Jenkins gratefully. "I didn't think you'd do it for me because I wasn't on your side in the fight."
"Do you take me for a German?" demanded Ted, vastly indignant. "The Americans and the English and the French always attend to wounded prisoners of war. Only the Germans leave the enemy wounded to die, or kill them. They fire on the Red Cross and sink hospital ships, too. But we are different."
"Lord, no; I'd never take you for a German," apologized Jenkins, with a twitch of his lip and a twinkle in his eye.
Ted looked around, bright-eyed, upon the scene about him and the swamp-island surroundings, sighing, not with sadness, but with relief and satisfaction in the shaping and fortunate issue of events. Well pleased, he noted that the sun had risen in a clear sky and that birds were singing joyfully.
The boy vaguely sensed the wonderful and ever-compensating fact that nature had received no shock and its marvelous mechanism remained untouched; that the world was beautiful and its inarticulate creatures were happy, in spite of man's strain and strife, his guns and his wars.