to three canteens, and it opened his lips
for an oath that he was too lazy to speak; it smote Abe Long cooking
coffee on the bank some ten yards away, and made him raise from the fire
and draw first one long forearm and then the other across his
heat-wrinkled brow; but, unheeded, it smote Crittenden--who stood near,
leaning against a palm-tree--full in his uplifted face. Perhaps that was
the last sunrise on earth for him. He was watching it in Cuba, but his
spirit was hovering around home. He could feel the air from the woods in
front of Canewood; could hear the darkies going to work and Aunt Keziah
singing in the kitchen. He could see his mother's shutter open, could
see her a moment later, smiling at him from her door. And Judith--where
was she, and what was she doing? Could she be thinking of him? The sound
of his own name coming down through the hot air made him start, and,
looking up toward the Rough Riders, who were gathered about a little
stuccoed farm-house just behind the guns on the hill, he saw Blackford
waving at him. At the same moment hoofs beat the dirt-road behind
him--familiar hoof-beats--and he turned to see Basil and Raincrow--for
Crittenden's Colonel was sick with fever and Basil had Raincrow now--on
their way with a message to Chaffee at Caney. Crittenden saluted
gravely, as did Basil, though the boy turned in his saddle, and with an
affectionate smile waved back at him.

Crittenden's lips moved.

"God bless him."

* * * * *

"Fire!"

Over on the hill, before Caney, a man with a lanyard gave a quick jerk.
There was a cap explosion at the butt of the gun and a bulging white
cloud from the muzzle; the trail bounced from its shallow trench, the
wheels whirled back twice on the rebound, and the shell was hissing
through the air as iron hisses when a blacksmith thrusts it red-hot into
cold water. Basil could hear that awful hiss so plainly that he seemed
to be following the shell with his naked eye; he could hear it above the
reverberating roar of the gun up and down the coast-mountain; hear it
until, six seconds later, a puff of smoke answered beyond the Spanish
column where the shell burst. Then in eight seconds--for the shell
travelled that much faster than sound--the muffled report of its
bursting struck his ears, and all that was left of the first shot that
started the great little fight was the thick, sunlit smoke sweeping away
from the muzzle of the gun and the