As luck would have it I
got into trouble about this time--a little matter of two silver
candle-sticks and a Virgin's crown--and Benny sent for Captain
Howard (it was him that commanded the battery), and weak as he
was, dying, he begged me off, and the captain swore awful to hide
how bad he felt, and struck my name off the sheet to please him.
There was little enough to do in this line, for it was plain as
day where Benny was bound for, and he knew himself he would never
see that little home in Oakland again.
Well, he got worse and worse, and sometimes when I went there he
didn't know me, being out of his head or kind of dopy with the
doctor's stuff, the shadow being over him, as Irish people say.
One night he was that low that I got scared, and I waylaid the
contract surgeon as he came out.
"Doctor," I said, "it's all up with Benny, ain't it?"
"He'll never hear reveille no more," he says.
I got my blanket and lay outside the door, it being against
regulations for any of us to be in the field-hospital after taps.
But the orderly said he'd call me if Benny was to wake up before
the end, and the doctor promised me I might go in. Sure enough, I
was called somewheres along of four o'clock and the orderly led me
inside the tent to Benny's cot. There was no light but a candle in
a bottle, and I held it in my hand and bent over and looked in
Benny's face. He was himself all right, and he put his cold,
sweaty hand in mine and pressed it.
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