Someone must have told her the news
and which was my tent, for she walked straight up to where I was
and said: "William, William!" like that. She didn't cry or
nothing, and anybody at a distance might have thought she was just
talking to a stranger; but there was a whole funeral march in the
sound of her voice, and you could read Benny's death like print in
her wrinkled old face. I took her out to where we had buried him,
and she plumped down on her knees and prayed, with the umberella
and the valise beside her, while I held my hat in one hand and my
pistol in the other, ready for any bolo business that might come
out of the high grass.
Then we went back to the field-hospital and had a look in, she
explaining on the way how she had mortgaged her home, so as to
come and look after Benny. I guess the hospital must have appeared
kind of cheerless, for lots of the wounded were lying on the bare
ground, and it was a caution the way some of them groaned and
groaned. You see Battery K had just come in, having had an
engagement by the way at Dagupan, and Wilson's cavalry, besides,
had dumped a sight of their men on us.
"And it was in a place like this that my boy died?" said the old
lady, her mouth quivering and then closing on the words like a
steel trap.
"There's the very cot, Ma'am," I said.
She said something like "Oh, oh, oh!" under her breath, and,
taking out her handkerchief, wiped the face and lips of the man in
the cot, who was lying there with his uniform still on him.
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