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They could hear the beating of his wings, could see the red sweep of his blood-wet, dripping scythe. And they prayed as they had never prayed before these things befell: "Have mercy on us!" They sang the Tantum Ergo, and the cloud of incense rose from the censer in the priest's hand.
Bas rose and hefted him slowly and laboriously, straightening up with a muscle-straining effort, until he stood with one arm under the limp knees and one under the blood-wet shoulders of his charge. For a moment he stood balancing himself with his feet wide apart, and then he started staggering doggedly down the stony grade, groping, at each step, for a foothold.
Then, working cautiously, we rolled back the log, replaced the dead leaves, brushed up the deep green pile of the moss, and smoothed all as craftily us we might, so that no Seneca prowling might suspect that a grave was here, and disinter the dead to take his scalp. Over the blood-wet leaves where he had fallen, we made a fire of dry twigs, letting it burn enough to deceive.
Soon there were but eight of them facing the blood-wet steel, and then Brown shouted for a fresh formation, swung his contingent into line and led them with a rush across the floor that swept the remaining mutineers off their feet. Three more went down with steel through them, and then the rest surrendered, throwing down their arms, and begging mercy.
But the clang of the volley precluded any response from him except the half tender, half reckless smile that remained on his youthful face where he lay looking up at the sky with pleasant, sightless eyes, and a sunbeam touching the metal mule on his blood-wet collar. She tried once more to lift the big, warm, flexible body, exerting all her slender strength. It was useless.
It was enough that France lay prostrate, that the wounded screamed from the blood-wet fields, that the quiet dead lay under the pall of smoke from the nation's funeral pyre. It was enough that the parents suffer, that the son drag out an existence among indifferent or hostile people in an alien land. The daughter should never know, never weep when they wept, never pray when they prayed.
He stirred; his lips moved; a small brown hand clenched in his blouse. Venters knelt with a gathering horror of his deed. His bullet had entered the rider's right breast, high up to the shoulder. With hands that shook, Venters untied a black scarf and ripped open the blood-wet blouse. First he saw a gaping hole, dark red against a whiteness of skin, from which welled a slender red stream.
"I tell you General Jackson was my friend we were brothers, sir I stood at his side on the glorious blood-wet field of New Orleans! You don't believe me " "Price, you've made more demands on my stock of credulity than any man I've ever known!" The judge became somber-faced.
The entire Devil's Row party followed him. They came to a stand a short distance away and yelled taunting oaths at the boy with the chronic sneer. The latter, momentarily, paid no attention to them. "What deh hell, Jimmie?" he asked of the small champion. Jimmie wiped his blood-wet features with his sleeve. "Well, it was dis way, Pete, see!
The martial trappings, the swaggering joy of life, the comradeship of camp and barracks, the hard discipline of drill yard and fatigue duty, the long sentry watches, the trench digging, forced marches, wounds, cold, hunger, makeshift hospitals, and the blood-wet laurels these were not for them.
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