Neale found that a bullet, perhaps glancing from the wood, had cut a
gash over Shane's eye, from which the blood poured. Shane's hands
and face and shirt were crimson. Neale bound a scarf tightly over
the wound.
"Let me take the rifle now," he said.
"Thanks, lad. I ain't hurted. An' hev Casey make me loife miserable
foriver? Not much. He's a harrd mon, thot Casey."
Shane crouched back to his port-hole, with his bloody bandaged face
and his bloody hands. And just then the train stopped with a
rattling crash.
"Whin we git beyond thim ties as was scattered along here mebbe
we'll go on in," remarked McDermott.
"Mac, yez looks on the gloomy side," replied Casey. Then quickly he
aimed the shot. "I loike it better whin we ain't movin'," he
soliloquized, with satisfaction. "Thot red-skin won't niver scalp a
soldier of the U. P. R.... Drill, ye terriers! Drill, ye terriers,
drill!"
The engine whistle shrieked out and once more the din of conflict
headed to the front. Neale lay there, seeing the reality of what he
had so often dreamed. These old soldiers, these toilers with rail
and sledge and shovel, these Irishmen with the rifles, they were the
builders of the great U. P. R. Glory might never be theirs, but they
were the battle-scarred heroes. They were as used to fighting as to
working.
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