"Well, the next time I hope there'll be a Maxwell or a Packard there instead," Barnard said in his funny way.
"A false ford is a shadow across a hollow place," Tom said. "You see them mostly in the moonlight. Don't you remember how lots of fellows were fooled like that, trying to cross trenches. The Germans could make it look like a bridge where there wasn't any bridge—don't you remember?"
"Some engineers!" Barnard observed. "Ouch, but my head hurts! Going down, hey? I don't like those shadow bridges; it's all a matter of taste, I suppose. Oh boy, how my head aches!"
"If it was broken it wouldn't ache," said Tom consolingly, "or you wouldn't know it if it did. Can you get up?"
"I can't go up as quick as I came down," Barnard said, sitting there and holding his head in a way that made even sober Tom smile, "but I guess I can manage it."
He arose and Tom helped him through the gully to where it petered out, and so to their cabin. Barnard's ankle was strained somewhat, and he had an ugly cut on his forehead, which Tom cleansed and bandaged, and it being already late, the young man who had tried walking on a shadow decided that he would turn in and try the remedy of sleep on his throbbing head.
"Look here, Slady," he said, after he was settled for the night, "I've got your number, you old grouch. I know what it means when you get an idea in your old noddle, so please remember that I don't want any of that bunch from down below up here, and I don't want any doctor. See? You're not going to pull any of that stuff on me, are you? Just let me get a night's sleep and I'll be all right. I'm not on exhibition. I don't want anybody up here piking around just because I took a double header into space. And I don't want any doctors from Leeds or Catskill up here, either. Get me?"
"If you get to sleep all right and don't have any fever, you won't need any doctor," Tom said; "and I won't go away till you're all right."
"You're as white as a snowstorm, Slady," his friend said. "I've had the time of my life here with you alone. And I'm going to wind up with you alone. No outsiders. Two's a company, three's a mob."
Something, he knew not what, impelled sober, impassive Tom to sit down for a few moments on the edge of the bunk where his friend lay.