Bale thought: here we played war, here I wounded Ty Fanning with a sharp weed. Here, good God, here behind this lichened bowlder I lay flat and plotted that I was Robin Hood. Here I conducted my growing self and lay spread on the ground, and looked at the stars. And at this place I filled my pipe and smoked it, and talked to Hud, and laughed at him for his prophecies.

The wounded man twisted, sighing. He began to vomit; the froth dripped down across Bale’s arm and splashed upon his pantaloons. It was odd to see him vomiting, when you knew that his stomach was not pierced. Dan stopped and lifted his knee, supporting the load until he could wriggle his arms into a better position. Then he went on, quartering across the pasture toward his own house. Through all the stormy world, he could make out the sound of his own pump—squeaking, squeaking.

One man was coming forward up this slope where so many others went down. He wore a white hat … I have observed that hat many times, Dan said, and long ago … He could see the hickory-nut face, the bony jaws and gummed jowls of a very old man. He thought of a jail where night rain dripped tenderly; he thought of a lantern. “Hello,” he said.

John Burns moved out of the path. He had a long-barreled musket in his hand, and he was coughing, with all the road dust and smoke which had settled across the field. “Is that fellow bad hurt, Mister Bale?”

“He’ll lose a foot,” Dan said. He looked at the musket.

The old constable spat, and nodded. He hoisted the gun. His hands were stringy, colored with the lavender stains of age. “Now,” he remarked as if in apology, “this ain’t what I would of picked. It was a good enough gun in its day; we fit the British with such as this here.” His eyes hunted past Dan and the unconscious cavalryman in his arms. “Hah,” he whispered. Bale turned. A soldier sat among some bushes—he had a wet handkerchief, and he was swabbing at the blood which sopped in his dark hair; his face and beard were tinted from it. He snarled, “Haven’t you people ever seen blood before? Go up there and see how you like it!”

Burns told him, “I aim to go.” He went over to the man and picked up the rifle which lay beside him.

The soldier blinked up at the old constable. “Well, damn me to hell. That weepon belongs to Uncle Sam, granddad.”

“I’ll mind it for him. Give me what ca’tridges you got, sonny.”

Blood sluiced down, wavering channels of it, unchecked and unrubbed by the handkerchief. “I’ll call you, old man,” declared the soldier. He handed up a leather cartridge box. “Here’s balls, too. Go out and get your hair parted, and give ’em one for me.”