"Orders!" exclaimed the professional gentleman contemptuously. "One would think this was a regular garrison."
"That is about what it is," replied the overseer.
"Humbug!" said the surgeon, as he turned to his patient.
Levi called in one of the sentinels, and the bed of the wounded man was drawn out before the door where the light was best, and the doctor proceeded with his work. The morphine pills he had given the patient appeared to have relieved his pain. The operator probed for the ball, and soon found it. Then he dressed the wound with as much care as though the sufferer had been a Kentucky colonel. He had hardly completed his office before Buck dropped asleep under the influence of the powerful medicine he had taken. The bed was moved back without waking him, and Dr. Falkirk passed out of the fort, followed by the overseer.
"Keep the man quiet for a week, and give him anything he wants to eat," said he, as he looked about him at the warlike preparations which had been finished the day before.
"We have three more wounded men in the hospital who need a surgeon," added Levi.
"What are those niggers doing over on the other side of the creek?" asked the surgeon, whose gaze had wandered to the grove at the side of the road. Some of the hands had been directed to bury the man who had fallen behind the tree where he had taken refuge from the shots of the defenders of the plantation.
He had been seen in the act of levelling his gun at the advancing column, and Levi had brought him down before he could discharge his weapon.
"They are burying a man that fell in the skirmish last night," Levi replied to the question of the doctor.
"What skirmish?" inquired Dr. Falkirk, with evident astonishment.