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So exhausted were the men that the Battalion was relieved that night and taken to the neighbourhood of Le Rutoire Farm. Acquitting themselves with a noble fortitude, the stretcher bearers whose task was, perhaps, the worst of all remained and toiled all night in evacuating the trenches of the wounded.
A man he had once known shoved two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl's voice speaking his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him, and he was clasped in two young, firm arms. "Of course it is not real, of course it is not She," he assured himself. "Because She would not do such a thing.
She was taller than Horton, and some of the men thought she was the tallest woman they had ever seen. "As tall as himself," some one whispered. Horton motioned to the men, and six of them lifted the stretcher and began to carry it up the embankment. Winifred followed them the half-mile to Horton's house. She walked quietly, without once breaking or stumbling.
One of them carried into the convent courtyard smiled as he lay on his stretcher and spoke imperfect French very politely to Englishwomen who bent over him, piteous as girls who see a wounded bird. He seemed glad to be let off slightly with only a wound in his foot which would make him limp for life; very glad to be out of all the horror of those trenches on the German side of the Yser.
Then, being fed, they were ready for a smoke, and my wife began walking down the foul-smelling ambulance car with boxes of supplies, letting each man take out a cigarette and a match. The car was slung with double layers of stretcher bunks. Some men were freshly wounded, others were convalescent. A few lay in a stupor.
That was all then, for Crowther came gently between them; and then he and Victor, with infinite care, lifted the stretcher and bore the master of the house into his own home. Half an hour later Avery turned from waving a farewell to Crowther, who had insisted upon going back to town with the car that had brought them, and softly shut out the night.
"That long, flat-topped box on the side car serves several purposes. When you want to take an unconscious person to the emergency hospital over on Beach Avenue you can use the box as a stretcher.
We spent the rest of the night building a crude litter of poles and blankets, and as soon as it was light we fastened one end of the stretcher to the horse, a pole on either side of him, and each one of us carried a pole at the other end. It took an hour for us to get down to the canyon road. In twelve hours your father died.
He was just in front of me at the time, and I made a shift to bandage his arm and tied it up to his body, and then he took his place in the ranks again and kept on with them until we got here; then when we halted he fainted right off, and we carried him down to the hospital camp by the water." Easton at once went down to visit his friend. He was lying on a stretcher.
The morphia was doing its merciful work. "Kept the faith," said Barry. "Yes," whispered Cameron with a smile, faint but exultant. "Good old boy," whispered Barry. "Yes, I kept I kept " The bearers came to carry out the stretcher. "Will he recover?" whispered Barry to the doctor. "Recover? Surest thing you know," said the doctor in a loud cheery voice. "We can't spare this kind of stuff, you know."
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