CHAPTER THIRTEENPolly Chesbro went through the ranks of litters to the one on which the burgess lay. A nurse in the pinstriped cotton fatigue uniform had shoved a thermometer under his tongue and was looking at her watch.
“How is he, Lieutenant?” Polly asked.
The nurse whipped out the thermometer, read it, jotted down a figure on her clipboard and said, “Holding his own. Excuse me.” She shook down the thermometer, popped it into a glass that held many thermometers, picked out another one and slipped it under the tongue of the person in the next litter, a girl of ten with a dry, burning face and dry, burning eyes.
In the marble lobby of the schoolhouse Mickey Groff was studying an extraordinary organization that had sprung up within a very few hours. Card tables had been set up and confe
