"Oh, durn their skins," he said in the cheerfulest way, turning to me with a smile, "they got me twice—a splinter of a shell in the foot and a bullet through the calf of the same leg when I was being carried back from the firing line."
"A sharpshooter?"
"The son of a mongrel was up in a tree."
"And you're walking back to Siboney. Wasn't there room for you to ride?" I expected an angry outburst of indignation in reply to this question. But I was mistaken. In a plain, matter-of-fact way he said:
"Guess not. They wanted all the riding room for worse cases 'n mine. Thank God, my two wounds are both in the same leg, so I can walk quite good and spry. They told me I'd be better off down at the landing yonder, so I got these crutches and made a break."
"And how are you getting along?" I asked.
"Good and well," he said, as cheerfully as might be, "just good and easy." And with his one sound leg and hist two sticks he went cheerfully paddling along.
It was just the same with other walking wounded men. They were all beautifully cheerful. And not merely cheerful. They were all absolutely unconscious that they were undergoing any unnecessary hardships or sufferings. They knew now that war was no picnic, and they were not complaining at the absence of picnic fare. Some of them had lain out all the night, with the dew falling on them where the bullets had dropped them, before their turn came with the overworked field surgeons.
CAPTAIN PADDOCK TELLS OF THE FIGHTING BEFORE SANTIAGO.
On the Battlefield, One Mile East of Santiago, Sunday, July 3.