“We haven’t an inch of room.”
“We’ve got to make room.” Doctor Lake, sweating, dog-tired, swaying on his feet from nine unbroken hours at the operating-table, took command. “Take my hut; it’ll hold four at a pinch. You nurses will give up your cubby-hole? Thought so. Plenty hot water, Octave? Bring ’em along.”
They brought them along. Every stretcher, every bunk, every crack was crowded now. Then came the whir of a racing motor. One more ambulance plunged up the sodden road.
“Ah! Grand blessé!” murmured old Octave.
“Grand blessé! And not a blanket left, even. Put him in the coal-hole,” groaned the head nurse.
“Nix on the coal-hole.” Thus the muddy young driver, hauling out the stretcher with its long, moveless shape. “This is the candy kid—hear me? Our crack scout. Escadrille 32.”
“Escadrille 32?” The number held no meaning for me. Yet I pushed nearer. Grand blessé, indeed, that lax, pulseless body, that shattered flesh, that blood and mire. I bent closer. Red hair, shining and thick, the red that always goes with cinnamon freckles. A clean-cut, ashen young face, a square jaw, a stubborn, boyish chin with a deep-cleft dimple.
Then my heart stopped short. The room whirled round me.
“Buster!” I cried out. “You naughty, darling little scamp! So you got your way, after all. You ran off from school, and joined the escadrille—oh, sonny-boy, don’t you hear me? Listen! Listen!”
The gaunt face did not stir. Only that ashy whiteness seemed to grow yet whiter.