le still through his ribs.
Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body, asked to be
propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-belt beside him,
and the last his troop saw of him he was seated alone grimly firing over
their heads in the direction of the enemy.

Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy, who
was shot through the chest. The entrance to his wound was so small that
Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to stop the flow of
blood.

"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger," he said to the boy, "or
you'll bleed to death."

"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business." The
boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly quiet while Church, with
a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the wound. His patient
neither whimpered nor swore, but stared up at the sun in silence. The
bullets were falling on every side, and the operation was a hasty one,
but the trooper made no comment until Church said, "We'd better get out
of this; can you stand being carried?"

"Do you think you can carry me?" the trooper asked.

"Yes."

"Well," exclaimed the boy admiringly, "you certainly know your business!"

Another of the Rough Riders was brought to the dressing station with a
shattered ankle, and Church, after bandaging it, gave him his choice of
riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being carried, a day later, on a
litter.

"If you think you can manage to ride the mule with that broken foot," he
said, "you can start at once, but if you wait until to-morrow, when I can
spare the men, you can be carried all the way."

The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six hospital stewards lifted
him and dropped him on the mule, and into a huge Mexican saddle.

He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup, and his untouched one into
the other, and gathered up the reins.

"Does it pain you? Can you stand it?" Church asked anxiously. The
cowboy turned and smiled down upon him with amused disdain.

"Stand _this_?" he cried. "Why, this is just like getting money from
home."

Toward the last, the firing from the enemy sounded less near, and the
bullets passed much higher. Roosevelt, who had picked up a carbine and
was firing to give the direction to the others, determined upon a charge.
Wood, at the other end of the line, decided at the same time upon the
same manoeuvre. It was called "Wood's bluff" afterward, for he h