Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/203

Rh struggling through the tangled bush, caps gone, uniforms torn, nearly every man either wounded or blood-stained from his comrades' wounds.

The sun had just set. The ghostly tree-shadows lengthened, and it was already dark in the deeper thicknesses of the bush.

Just after the retreat commenced one of Captain Roberts' steadiest men, Corporal Russell, dropped his carbine and fell; a big-calibre bullet had smashed his thigh-bone.

"Shoot me, boys—shoot me!" he begged his comrades. "Don't leave me to be tomahawked."

He knew as well as they did that his smashed leg meant death. The rear-guard was already encumbered with wounded and could carry no more,

"No, we can't shoot you, old man," said a big, tall volunteer sergeant, who was a tower of strength to Roberts' little band, shooting with deadly aim from his post in the rear of the retreat. "Take this," and he shoved into the wounded man's hand a loaded revolver.

Then the sergeant (James Livingston) picked up the corporal's empty carbine, and swinging it by the barrel, hot with much firing, smashed it against a tree-butt. "Old Tito 'll never use that gun, anyhow," he said.

Bursting from the trees, the brown, nearly naked savages came yelling at the rear-guard. Hastily slipping fresh cartridges into their carbines, the