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Dempsey, aged nineteen, spoke as the grizzled veteran of many campaigns might have spoken.

“Yes, sir! He certainly snatched you out of a damn bad hole in jig time.”

“I’d like to have a look at him,” said Ginsburg. “And my old mother back home would, too, I know.”

“Your mother’ll have to wait, but you kin have your wish,” said Dempsey gleefully. He had been saving his biggest piece of news for the last. “If you’ve got anything to ask him just ask him. He’s layin’ there–right over there on the other side of you. We all three of us rode down here together in the same amb’lance load.”

Ginsburg turned his head. Above the blanket that covered the figure of his cot neighbour on the right he looked into the face of the man who had saved him–looked into it and recognised it. That dark skin, clear though, with a transparent pallor to it like brown stump water in a swamp, and those black eyes between the slitted lids could belong to but one person on earth. If the other had overheard what just had passed between Ginsburg and Dempsey he gave no sign. He considered Ginsburg steadily, with a cool, hostile stare in his eyes.

“Much obliged, buddy,” said Ginsburg. Something already had told him that here revealed was a secret not to be shared with a third party.

“Don’t mention it,” answered his late rescuer shortly. He drew a fold of the blanket up across his face with the gesture of one craving solitude or sleep.

“Huh!” quoth Dempsey. “Not what I’d call a talkative guy.”

This shortcoming could not be laid at his own door. He talked steadily on. After a while, though, a reaction of weariness began to blunt Dempsey’s sprightly vivacity. His talk trailed off into grunts and he slept the sleep of a hurt tired-out boy.

Satisfied that Dempsey no longer was to be considered in the role of a possible eavesdropper, Ginsburg nevertheless spoke cautiously as again he turned his face toward the motionless figure stretched alongside him on his left.

“Listening?” he began.

“Yes,” gruffly.

“When did you begin calling yourself Goodman?”

“That’s my business.”

“No, it’s not. Something has happened that gives me the right to know. Forget that I used to be on the cops. I’m asking you now as one soldier to another: When did you begin calling yourself Goodman?”

“About a year ago–when I first got into the service.”

“How did you get in?”

“Enlisted.”

“Where? New York?”

“No. Cleveland.”

“What made you enlist?”

“Say, wot’s this–thoid-degree stuff?”

“I told you just now that I figured I had a right to know. When a man saves your life it puts him under an obligation to you–I mean puts you under an obligation to him,” he corrected.

“Well, if you put it that way–maybe it was because I wanted to duck out of reach of you bulls. Maybe because I wanted to go straight a while. Maybe because I wanted to show that a bad guy could do somethin’ for his country. Dope it out for yourself. That used to be your game–dopin’ things out–wasn’t it?”

“I’m trying to, now. Tell me, does anybody know–anybody in the Army, I mean–know who you are?”

“Nobody but you; and you might call it an accident, the way you come to find out.”

“Something like that. How’s your record since you joined up?”

“Clean as anybody’s.”

“And what’s your idea about keeping on going straight after the war is over and you get out of service?

“Don’t answer unless you feel like it; only I’ve got my own private reasons for wanting to know.”

“Well, I know a trade–learnt it in stir, but I know it. I’m a steamfitter by trade, only I ain’t never worked much at it. Maybe when I get back I’d try workin’ at it steady if you flatties would only keep off me back. Anything else you wanted to find out?” His tone was sneering almost. “If there’s not, I think I’ll try to take a nap.”