Bale wrapped the blouse tighter around Ty’s shoulders and went down toward the doctor’s lantern. The bulb kept thudding, thudding, though Duffey tried to hold it still. Their combined light showed a soldier who lay on his stomach, rigid from the waist down but with a bruised and unrecognizable face—the mouth a wide welt of dirt and blood. “I remember him well,” whispered Duffey. “I remember them striped pants. The only thing would have been to lay bare the calvaria and apply the trephine, and it couldn’t be done at the time.” The head struck against the ground again, again. This man made no sound, though his face was sticky with leaf-mould. His glassy eyes protruded; he did not know that he lived.

The trees bent under the sudden smash of rain; it came with no more warning than that, and in a solid layer.

Maggie, Maggie … they began to whimper, all the way along the ravine and all around the universe outside, a weak volley of complaint as the water roared over them. Bale held the lantern close against his legs, humping himself above it. Voice said, through the driven sheets, “You ought to know what’s good for him: one thing, Doctor.” Thunder struggled across the sky; for a moment the rain thinned, and there was a hopeful hush among the prone men—then the sea mashed the trees again, and now they might as well die.

The clear echo went round and round inside Dan Bale’s brain. As the son of a widow … son of a widow. I will always hear that talking to me, he thought.

Crackers in his hand began to soften as the water found them; in a few moments they were a glutinous dough which slid between his fingers. Cover the box, if it isn’t too late. He climbed back toward the thicket where the box of hard-tack lay. A lavender flash made a starchy design of all the faces among the trees, and found the silver in every eye … far down by the creek sounded a piercing yell.

Once Dan looked back at Duffey’s lantern, still stubborn with its flame through the torrent, and it seemed that the doctor was busy attending the man with the bloated head. I wonder, Bale thought with ghastly reckoning, I wonder what. He felt every pore of his skin lifting in nervous goose-flesh; he went on, sliding among the pasty leaves.