His fingers plucked at my sleeves. He whispered but I could not catch the words. Then the clay-white face relaxed, a blue shadow like rising water flooded over it. The lips parted. I took a letter out of the dead man's pocket.
A bullet whipped fur from my sleeve, one crashed against my carbine so that it stung my fingers, and half a dozen shattered through the sleigh as I turned back to the fighting. Those shadowy figures moving through the bush toward our rear must be stopped quickly.
Just then Doctor Miller came mooching along behind me, and half a dozen men were begging him to take cover, while in a gentle drawling voice he told us not to fuss.
"Fine scrapping, boys, make the most of the entertainment. Just been shot in the pocketbook myself. Bullet hit a pack o' debts but nary one receipt. So, this man's promoted, eh?" He knelt down beside Joe's body. "Beyond my jurisdiction, Blackguard, eh?"
He gave me the dead man's belt of ammunition, dusted the snow from his knees as he stood up, and went lounging back down the line, giving a new heart, a finer courage to every man he passed.
Red Saunders had found his place too warm a corner, so he climbed over Buckie and lay down on the dead man's outspread overcoat, his legs across my own. He said he always 'ated getting wet.
"Happy?" I asked him, for I liked the sailor hobo in those days.
"'Ungry. Gimme blood! Did ye see Sarde? 'E's the only h'orficer lying dahn. Got Gilchrist's carbine. I kicked 'im—by h'accident, cruel 'ard, too. 'Ad to appollergise."
"Aim lower," said I, "point-blank. And lie low; your blazing red hair draws fire."
My next shot got my man, at least I think so, although Buckie claimed him.