“Then you’re half a man at least,” rumbled the doctor. Gently, he lifted away the poultice of crimson rags which the man had bunched against his side. There was a purple hole the size of a dime, from which the color oozed. “Open my grip,” Duffey ordered, and Dan clicked the fasteners. “There’s lint on top.” He lifted the fuzzy mass in his coarse fingers. He winked at the anxious face which gaped up at him. “Don’t prepare for glory yet, my friend—you might be disappointing yourself. Unn … it’s through the diaphragm, if I mistake not, at about the eighth intercostal. Doubtless it’s to the left of the ensiform cartilage extremity.” He rattled the words.

The ground quavered beneath them, like a crust over a deep jelly pie. The trooper wailed, “Reckon I’ll never see Marthy again. That sounds like an awful wound.” He whined and shuddered under Duffey’s inquisition. The doctor said, without raising his head: “Dan. Get me some water.” And he told his patient: “Sure, you’re sound as a cherry stone. Only pray to whatever church god you want, and bear in mind that folks have come all the way from Harrisburg to let me fool with their innards.”

When Bale came back with the water, he found the man lying in the shade with a bundle of grass under his head and Duffey’s coat around him; the wound was newly bandaged. Duffey wiped his hands on a cloth. “Give our friend a drink,” he directed, “and come along.” He led the way toward the seminary with Dan bringing the water pail and the satchel.

Someone screamed, “Wait! Wait where you are—” A man with the face of an enraged child trotted across the rutted grass, his long blouse dangling open, his buttons glittering. “I’m Captain Amos Larrabee,” he cried. His voice was wiry and girlish. “Who are you, and what are you going here? Who told you to attend that man?”

“President Lincoln sent me a telegram.” Duffey’s eyes protruded, hard and pink. “He said, ‘They’re having a war out past your town. Go out and try to be the Christian you’ve never been before.’”

The officer shook a white finger at him. “You’re absurd, sir. We can’t have country doctors fiddling with our wounded! I am a medical officer; in charge, and I order you to leave the field.”

“Come, Dan Bale.” The doctor lowered his head like a bull. “I see a poor man lying beside the school, and nobody caring for him.” The captain stepped aside, his smooth jaw quivering. He shrieked, “I’ll summon the provost and have you hustled out of this in two shakes!”