blazed, and he spat out, "By hell-tam,
now I vos mad," and he fought the day out and died that night. But as
he sank to his place when the bullet hit him, Watts McHurdie saw
Schnitzler stagger, and through the smoke, knew that he was wounded.
Watts rushed to Schnitzler and bent over him, when a ball hit Watts
and went ripping through the fleshy part of his hip. "Shot in the
back--damn it, shot in the back!" he screamed, as he jumped into the
air. "What did I tell you, boys, I'm shot in the back." And he crawled
bleeding to the rear.

All the long forenoon the camp of the enemy continued to belch out
men. The battery mowed them down, and once the Kansans were ordered to
charge the hill, and the boys were left alone. It was there that the
two were separated. John saw men sink in awful silence, and the blood
ooze from their heads. He saw men cramp in agony and choke with blood,
and he saw Martin Culpepper, perhaps with the large white plumes still
dancing in his eyes, dash out of the line and pick up a Union banner
that Sigel's men had lost, and that the enemy was flaunting just
before the artillery mowed the gray line down. He heard the hoarse men
cheer Martin, and as the tall swart figure came running back waving
the flag, the boy prayed to his father's God to save the man.

When the battle lulled, the boy found himself parted from "C" Company,
and fled back through the woods to the rear. There he came upon a
smell that was familiar. He had known it in the slaughter-house at
home. It was the smell of fresh blood, and with it came the sickening
drone of flies. In an instant he stood under a tree where men were
working smeared with blood. He stumbled over a little pile of
dismembered legs and hands. A man with a bloody knife was bending over
a human form stretched on a bloody and, it seemed to the boy, a greasy
table. Another was helping the big man. They were cutting the bullet
out of Watts McHurdie, who was lying white and unconscious and with
flies crawling over him, half naked and blood-smeared, on the table.
The boy screamed, and the man turned his head and snarled through his
clenched teeth that held the knife, "Get out of here--no--go get me
a bucket of water from the creek." Some one handed the boy a bucket,
and he ran where he was told to go, with the awful sight burned on his
brain, with the sickening smell in his nose, and with the drone of
flies in his ears. When he came back the firing had begun again. The
s