"Do you know me, old man?" I said. "Do you know me?"
"Good-bye, Bill," he said, and then, as I leaned over him, his
voice being that low and faint--he whispered: "Billy, I guess
you'll have to rustle for another chum!"
Them was his last words and he said them with a kind of a smile,
like he was happy and didn't give a damn to live. Then the little
life he had left went out. The orderly looked at his watch, and
then wrote the time on a slate after Benny's regimental number and
the word: "died." This was about all the epitaph he got, though we
buried him properly in the morning and gave him the usual send-
off. Then his effects was auctioned off in front of the captain's
tent, a nickel for this, ten cents for that--a soldier hasn't much
at any time, you know, and on the march less than a little--and
five-sixty about covered the lot. There was quite a rush for the
picture of his best girl, but I bought it in, along with one of
his Ma and a one-pound Hotchkiss shell and the hilt of a Spanish
officer's sword; and when I had laid them away in my haversack and
had borrowed a sheet of paper and an envelope from the commissary
sergeant to write to Benny's mother, it came over me what a little
place a man fills in the world and how things go on much the same
without him.
I was setting down to write that letter and was about midway
through, having got to "the pride of the battery and regretted by
all who noo him," when I looked up, and what in thunder do you
suppose I saw? The old lady herself, by God! walking into camp
with an umberella and a valise, and looking like she always did--
powerful grim and commanding.
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