on the sand, and wriggled
around to look at his hip, and I heard him mutter thickly: 'Look--look
at the b-bl-blood run!'"

Cairns felt that his companion suffered in this telling--that behind
the dark, the face close to his was deadly pale. He couldn't quite
understand the depths of Bedient's horror. It was war. All America was
behind it. One boy can't stand up against his nation. It was all very
queer. He felt that Bedient had a crystal gameness, but here was the
sensitiveness of a girl. Cairns thought of the heroes he had read of
who were brave as a lion and gentle as a woman, and these memories
helped him now to grasp his companion's point of view.... Hesitating,
Bedient finished:

"You know, to me all else was hushed when I felt that boy in my arms.
It was like a shouting and laughing suddenly ceased--as when a company
of boys discover that one of their playmates is terribly hurt.... I
imagine it would be like that--the sudden silence and sickness. It was
all so unnecessary. And that boy's mother--he should have been in her
arms, not mine. Poor little chap, he was all pimpled from beans, which
are poison to some people. He shouldn't have been hurt like that....
There was another who had needed but one shot. The Remington had gone
into his throat in front the size of a lead-pencil--and come out behind
like a tea-cup. The natives had filed the tip of the lead, so that it
accumulated destruction in the ugly way. It was like some one putting a
stone in a snow-ball--so vicious. You can't blame the natives--but the
war-game----"

Boss Healy growled at them to go to sleep.

* * * * *

Cairns remained with the Pack-train after that until the Rains. Never
did a boy have more to write about in three months. Every phase and
angle of that service, now half-forgotten, unfolded for his eyes. And
the impossible theme running through it all, was the carabao--the great
horned sponge that pulls vastly like an elephant and dies easily like a
rabbit--when the water is out.... They make no noise about their dying,
these mountains of flesh, merely droop farther and farther forward
against the yoke, when their skins crack from dryness; the whites of
their eyes become wider and wider--until they lay their tongues upon
the sand. The Chinese call them "cow-cows" and understand them better
than the Tagals, as they understand better the rice and the paddies.

Once Thirteen was yanked out of Healy's hand--