More fiends drowned him out—then he’d come through them again with his stern announcements. I’m shot through the hips. Can’t help the colonel. He’s killed. He’s Colonel Paul J. Revere, colonel, Twentieth Massachusetts. Another boy kept chuckling from his den in the humid blackness. Read it in the Atlantic Monthly—hah, you don’t know what Atlantic Monthly is—I read everything he’s ever written—it was one by the village clock when he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock swim in the moonlight as he passed. Know Paul Revere, repeated the Chuckler—learned him out of magazine at the academy.

It was well after midnight when they heard feet sliding down the hillside and a voice sang out of the gloom, “Here’s your damn crackers.” The surgeon cried: “Whom do you think you’re addressing, sir? Give me your name!” Dull shapes flew away as he came closer with his lantern. “Give me your name,” he roared again, and then began to entreat: “Officer of the day, oh, officer of the day—!” A voice jibed, “There’s only officers of the night around here,” and the ancient joke went trembling off amid the groans: officer of the day, if you’re officer of the day, what the devil are ye doing out at night?

The surgeon fell against the box, and swore, and set his lantern down. It was smudged with blood; the light shone pink. He said, “Only one box,” and began to tug at the lid. Bale went toward him; he felt something sharp under his foot. A bayonet. He came into the pale circle of light and offered the bayonet. The officer’s face was wan and ugly under its ragged beard. “You get it open,” he ordered, and stood breathing noisily while Dan broke the lid and ripped it off in pieces. Then the surgeon bent close, swinging his lantern over the open box.

“Smells like mice, and God only knows when those were packed. For the war with Mexico, probably. Do you mind giving out one apiece as far as they go?”

The men heard him, and they relayed the word through the underbrush. One piece. Mexican war—wouldn’t that physic you? Oh, mother, I’m cold as … say that Lincoln and his cabinet are living off the fat of the land while we … dying, I’m dying, and I don’t want to die. A man screeched, “You won’t die as long as you can yell like that!”