Accordingly, after consulting with his chums, the scout master selected five of whom he wished to accompany him on his errand of mercy. Of course, in picking these members of Oakvale troop, Hugh considered their availability along the line of knowledge of surgery in its first principles as well as their ability to handle a stretcher in case such should be needed.

So they had hastened across country and arrived on the scene to find that their worst fears were realized. Several badly wounded men had already been helped back to the settlement where these foreigners lived in shacks and even tents. Others, to an unknown number, were said to be lying on the ground where they had fallen at the time they tried to rush the guards, who shot them down by a murderous fire.

Besides Hugh Hardin and his stout, good-natured chum, Billy Worth, there were present Arthur Cameron, said to be the best hand at surgery in the troop, Alec Sands, Bud Morgan and Ralph Kenyon.

They had managed with the aid of a rude stretcher made from a mattress tick obtained from the padrone of the foreign settlement to carry the last of the badly wounded strikers to the temporary field hospital which had been started under a tree. There were a couple of women patients as well, for in that rush toward the gates of the stockade surrounding the cement works, the women had urged on their husbands, just as the Amazons outvied all others during the Revolution in Paris long ago.

Here the six boys had labored, and tried to do all they could to relieve the suffering of those wretched victims of the riot, some of whom were injured so badly that Hugh and Arthur feared for their lives.

Wisely foreseeing that they had a greater task cut out for them than it would appear lay within the province of Boy Scouts, with their limited knowledge of surgery, Hugh from the beginning had determined to seek assistance.

It happened that just then the Red Cross movement in the State was receiving an impetus, and those deeply interested in the advance of the cause of mercy were holding some sort of a convention in the city of Farmingdale, not a great many miles away from the pitiful little field hospital which Hugh and his mates had organized under such discouraging conditions.

Hugh understood that at this convention there was to be shown one of the very newest motor ambulances, together with its regular traveling doctor and two nurses of the Red Cross.

It was feared that those in charge of the works might delay sending off an account of the battle, and hence help would be slow in coming. Accordingly, Hugh Hardin, with his accustomed zeal, had conceived the idea of telegraphing direct to the Red Cross at Farmingdale. He had explained in brief language what a terrible condition of affairs prevailed, and begged that they dispatch their new motor ambulance forthwith, in order to save the lives of several whose cases were beyond the limited capabilities of the scouts.

As the boys, though never slackening their arduous duties, had been watching eagerly for much more than an hour after this urgent message had been dispatched, it can easily be understood why they should hail the appearance of that oncoming ambulance with hearty cheers.

“There, you can see the surgeon all in white sitting beside the chauffeur!” exclaimed Alec Sands, as they gathered in a cluster and anxiously awaited the coming of those who would relieve them from the weight of care pressing so heavily on their young shoulders.

“Yes, and I c’n also see two nurses, also in snowy garments, peeping out back of the surgeon,” added Billy Worth.

The foreigners were wildly excited. Of course most of them had never before set eyes on a Red Cross ambulance, and they hardly knew whether they should allow the strangers to take their wounded away, or to resist them. They rushed this way and that, all the while talking at a furious rate, until as Ralph Kenyon, who had always been a lover of the woods, declared it reminded him of a crow caucus, where a thousand birds cawed and scolded and clamored.

The ambulance drew up close to where the six scouts stood, as though the one at the wheel recognized them as being in authority; or it may be the surgeon saw the significant signs of a field hospital in the figures scattered on dirty blankets under the shade of that wide-spreading oak.

“Which one of you sent that message, boys?” asked the surgeon, a young energetic man, who looked as though he knew his business; and as the other five scouts immediately turned their eyes toward Hugh, he understood, so he went on to say: “From another source news came in that many were seriously injured, and a few killed outright. Is that a fact?”

“So far as we have been able to find out, sir, there were no actual fatalities,” Hugh told him, “though several are badly hurt, having been shot in the back!”

“What’s that you say—shot in the back?” demanded the surgeon quickly. “That is a significant admission which may have considerable bearing on the finding of a coroner’s jury in case death results. But show me what you have been doing in this emergency, my boys.”

“We had hardly any facilities worth mentioning, you understand, sir,” remarked Arthur Cameron, “and a number of the patients had to be carried from the place where they were hurt to this amateur field hospital. We made a stretcher, you see, for that purpose.”

“And well done at that. I’ll be bound it answered the purpose as well as the up-to-date one connected with the ambulance!” cried the astonished Red Cross surgeon.

He went from one patient to another and examined the work of the scouts. Loud was his praise for the cleverness shown by Arthur Cameron. While doubtless in many things it was far from the finished product of a graduated surgeon, at the same time there was much about it to cause the surgeon to commend the boys.

“I want to tell you, my boy,” he said directly to the blushing Arthur, when Hugh informed him that most of the work had been done by that modest member of the scout troop, “you’ll make the mistake of your life if you fail to continue along this road, for you have it in you to accomplish wonders. Take my advice, and think very seriously before you commit the blunder of putting a square man in a round hole.”

Of course, that was very pleasant talk for Arthur, and his chums seemed to take quite as much delight in hearing him praised as though they themselves came within the scope of the surgeon’s flattery.

They watched how deftly he worked when examining the wounds that had been already treated, turning most of the ordinary cases over to the two nurses. Hugh learned, as he chatted with the other, that the young surgeon’s name was Doctor Richter, and the attendants of the ambulance were Nurse Arnold and Nurse Jones.

The former was a middle-aged woman who had doubtless had much experience in her line; but Nurse Jones, Hugh found, was rather young and with rosy cheeks, as well as bright eyes. As a rule the scout master paid very little attention to the looks of girls, but somehow, in this case, he found himself more or less interested in the two women whose sleeves bore the magic insignia of the Red Cross.

When presently they came to one of the poor fellows who had received so serious a wound, the boys waited with more or less concern while the surgeon made his examination. Hugh could see that he looked grave, and this fact convinced him of the seriousness of the case. It also told the scout master that he had acted wisely in wiring to the Red Cross to send help, so as to relieve the inexperienced scouts from further responsibility.