Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/238

WAR do you won't be hurt. I'm armed. Give the password!"

Well, just about the last syllable, he fires at me, the charge going somewhere up in the treetops. Then came several shots at me from different directions.

You know how it is. When a man fires on you, especially several, you fire, too, though he may have missed you by a mile. I suppose it's the intention you don't like. I fired as I ran—straight at the spot in the bushes where the other lead had come from. I heard a cry and knew I hadn't missed.

"It's your own fault," I says, as I runs up.

"If you'd stopped and answered I wouldn't have fired. Are you badly hurt? I don't like to kill people. But these are war-times and—"

I had reached the man. He lay quite still. I lifted him in my arms and ran to the house. Now and then he'd murmur, "Washington!" I remembered, afterward, that he seemed not quite the sort of body I had thought to pick up. 222