The Better Angels of Our Nature by S. C. Gylanders

you have Private Davis to thank.”
    “Dr. Cartwright made his arm well again, sir, I merely changed the dressing.”
    “I’m sure the good doctor will have no objection to sharing the praise with you,” Ransom said, looking across at the surgeon seated at the table, watching.
    Cartwright “Humphed—!” loudly and went back to his prodigious scribbling.
    “Lieutenant Bennett told me how you singlehandedly captured a Rebel horseman in Charleston, Missouri,” the boy said excitedly, looking up at the tall officer and forgetting to address him as sir. “You shouted we must take the courthouse or bust!”
    “I think it such a grand story,” said the lieutenant defensively because Ransom was looking at him in a disapproving way. “Sir, I refuse to apologize for telling it to this admiring boy.”
    “The Rebel shouted at you in the darkness that he was for ‘
Jeff Davis!
’—and you barked back”—Jesse raised an imaginary pistol above his head—“‘
Then you are the man I’m after!
’ Then you shot him dead in the saddle, though not before
he
had shot you in the shoulder. You were wounded again at Fort Donelson. A bullet smashed into your right shoulder. Your coat was ripped by six Rebel bullets and your hat pierced by another. You left the field only for a moment to get your shoulder dressed before you returned once more to take command,” the boy concluded breathlessly, his bright blue eyes glistening with admiration.
    The Vermonter mussed Jesse’s hair and spoke to the officer in the cot. He was laughing as he said, “James, it is my biggest regret that you were with me that night and at Fort Donelson. There were
others
present; if I recall, General Grant was in command.”
    Bennett laughed. “Sir, you must admit this boy is marvelous, he has remembered every word I told him, line for line.”
    “Fort Donelson was a savage fight, not one I would care to relive,” Ransom said, his smile fading. “The Eleventh lost some good men.”
    “Evening.” Cartwright chose that moment to join them. “Is this for invited members of the Ransom Admiration Society or can anyone attend? We had a fully fledged prayer meeting this morning, you should have been here, they were all prayin’ over the recently deceased.” He slapped Jesse around the head lightly. “I told this boy, no time to pray for the dead, too many of ’em.” To Cartwright’s stunned amazement the colonel stepped between him and the boy.
    “We are all entitled to have a few words of scripture spoken over us, Doctor, even if they are shared with a dozen other souls in a burial trench. If I fall in this war I hope there will be someone as compassionate as Private Davis to speak a few Christian words over
my
mortal remains, and I must say, sir, I think it unworthy of you to ridicule the boy for caring about the soul of a fellow human being.”
    Cartwright put away his ironically amused smile and brought out his disdainful one. “I wasn’t ridiculing the boy, I was making a point. In the next week there’ll be more dead around here than you can shake a stick at. If we stop to mumble scripture over every one of ’em, how we gonna get ’em planted before they start stinking up the place?” As always, he was brutally matter-of-fact.
    “I can’t believe you would wish us to become the kind of men who view death with no more feeling than the swatting of a troublesome fly?”
    “Spare me your pious zeal, Colonel, if I want a sermon I’ll see a chaplain.”
    “I’m sorry, Doctor, if you think I was preaching. But is it pious zeal to maintain and nurture the principles that separate us from the beasts?”
    “And just what the hell do you think we do in here all day and all night, Colonel, fiddle while Rome burns?”
    “No sir.”
Ransom drew himself up to his full six feet. “I have only to look at Lieutenant Bennett to know that you are the most dedicated of men. That was the very reason why I said your criticism of this private was