Part 39

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"No," he gasped. "It's not an artery, I think. Must get on. Almost done."

She was terrified. All the tenderness she had denied him that night rose in her, an overwhelming flood. As he faltered she urged him forward with crooning words, with caresses. "Just a little farther, that's my brave dear! We're almost there. It can't be far now, darling, beloved, my precious!"

He grew too faint to understand her words, but her will toward the last carried him on, step by step, she staring desperately at the skyline, looking for the cornfield that was to be her landmark.--Could they have pa.s.sed it? Surely they had not come so long a way as this?

Suddenly the thought occurred to her that in starting back they might have entered the wrong ravine. There must be many such shallow fissures on the mountain-side. She heard near at hand the trickling of a spring, and stopped aghast. They had pa.s.sed no spring on the way out. She was too thoroughly country-bred not to have taken note of running water instinctively, as animals do.

"Lost!" she whispered to herself; lost in wild country, between midnight and dawn, with a wounded man on her hands and--no stockings on! The choking giggle she gave was more than half hysteria.

Then, without a word, Channing pitched forward on his face.

That steadied her. In a moment she had brought water in her cupped hands from that providential spring, had found his pocket-knife, ripped up his trousers-leg, and bandaged the wound as coolly as Jemima herself might have done it, though the sight of the blood nauseated her. She bathed his face with a wet handkerchief, but his eyelids merely fluttered once and were still again. In a panic she lifted his head to her bosom, trying to warm his cheeks; kissed him on the lips again and again, violently, begging him to wake and speak to her. It is a pity that the collector of impressions was unable to appreciate these manoeuvers.

"What shall I do? What _shall_ I do?" she moaned.

He had bade her leave him and run for help--but did she dare? Even as she considered it, there was a rustling in the underbrush, and startlingly near at hand sounded the eerie cry that had frightened her earlier in the night. It did not frighten her now, oddly enough. She regretted the pistol she had left in the cabin. Her hand tightened on the pocket-knife, however, and she placed herself between Channing and the direction of the sound.

"Go away! Get out of this! Scat!" she said firmly, flourishing her lantern.

For a tense moment she waited; but the cry was not repeated. It had put out of the question, however, any thought of leaving Channing there defenseless. There were wild-cats in these mountains, she knew, rattlesnakes, too, possibly bears; and even the foxes that barked far away at intervals were not to be trusted with an unconscious human smelling of fresh blood.

There seemed nothing better to do than shout for help, on the chance of somebody hearing her in this wild and desolate place. Through the ravine rang the golden voice that might one day enthrall the world, pitched to fill a wider auditorium than it had ever filled before. From side to side it rolled and echoed in musical cadences: "Help! Come! Somebody please hear me! Help!"

Birds awoke with startled twittering, and various creatures of the underbrush, which had been attracted to the light of the lantern, fled away in terror. She sent her voice in the direction of the cabin they had mistaken for their own. Drunk or not, there were men there, and she needed them.

But after some time, an answer came from the other side of the ravine, a little way beyond. A bobbing light appeared on the edge, and a faint halloa reached her.

"What's wrong down there?"

Jacqueline shouted: "Man hurt! Bleeding! Awfully!"

The lantern bobbed rapidly downward. Presently a man came into sight, stoop-shouldered and spectacled, and roughly dressed. He knelt beside Channing and examined him.

"Nothing broken. Just loss of blood. That's not a bad bandage. It will last till we get him up the hill. No need to cry, young lady," he added; for at the first sound of that pleasant, crisp, gentleman's voice, Jacqueline had broken into sobs. She knew that her immediate troubles were over.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The newcomer asked no questions, then or afterwards, but busied himself with a little satchel he carried. "Drink this, please," he said to Jacqueline in a moment.

It was aromatic ammonia, and she spluttered over it and stopped crying.

Then he forced some between Channing's lips; and presently the wounded man's eyes opened, to Jacqueline's almost sick relief.

"There! Now you will do nicely, though you will not feel like climbing my hill, perhaps," the stranger said to him. He eyed Jacqueline speculatively. "Are you a muscular young lady? I think so."

"Yes, indeed!" She doubled up her arm boyishly to exhibit the swelling biceps.

He nodded. "Excellent. Then we must make him a ladies' chair, you and I.

Fortunately he is not a large man."

Channing, however, was heavier than he looked. He was only conscious enough to keep his arms over their shoulders, otherwise unable to help them at all. They made slow progress. Frequently they had to put him down and rest, more for the stranger's sake than for Jacqueline's.

"I fear my biceps are less creditable than yours," he smiled once, panting a little. "Or it is the breath, perhaps. One grows older, unfortunately."

As he spoke he coughed slightly, and Jacqueline looked with quick understanding at his thin face. She had heard such a cough before. The White Plague was one of the enemies which Mrs. Kildare fought untiringly and unceasingly in her domain.

"I am afraid this effort is not good for you," she murmured.

He shrugged deprecatingly, as if to say, "What does it matter?"

The gesture was oddly familiar to Jacqueline. She had seen Philip Benoix shrug in just that way. Indeed, there were other things about this man that seemed oddly familiar. She looked at him, puzzled. The lantern showed him dressed in coa.r.s.e jeans, unkempt, unshaven. Yet his clear, well-modulated, slightly accented speech proved him no genuine mountaineer. Perhaps the cough accounted for his presence in the mountains.--But his appearance of familiarity?

Suddenly Jacqueline placed him. It was the man she had seen outside the window of the meeting-house, listening so absorbedly to Philip's sermon.

"You're the school-teacher, aren't you?" she asked.

"At your service," he replied with a slight, courteous formality that again reminded her of Philip.

"I saw you at church to-night, and wondered why you did not come in."

"I am not a Christian," he explained.

"Oh, but that doesn't matter! That is just why Philip--Mr. Benoix, I mean--has come up here. To make Christians."

The other smiled faintly. "The few Christians of my acquaintance have been born, and not made.--Now, shall we start again?"

They came at last to the first of two small cabins, whose door the man kicked open. They deposited their now unconscious burden upon a bed, one of several that stood in a neat, white row, each with curtains about it.

"Why, it's a regular dormitory! Is yours a boarding-school?"

He shook his head. "My hospital extension. It is easier to take care of sick scholars here than at their homes, and I have often sick scholars.

None at present, however. We have room here for several patients, as you see, and soon I hope to be able to build another house for women.

Obstetrical cases," he explained, rather absently. While he spoke he was removing Channing's bandage. "Hum! The shot has fortunately missed the patella, but it must come out." He rose and began to build a fire in a small cook-stove at one end of the room. "When I have sterilized these instruments, young lady, we shall have a try for that bullet."

Jacqueline paled. "You mean you are going to--to cut him? Are you sure you know how?"

He smiled at her, "Quite sure. We mountain teachers have opportunity to learn many things."

"Including cooking," she said, with a wan attempt at raillery, remembering Brother Bates' gossip.

"Including cooking," he admitted gravely. "Wait until this coffee has boiled, and you shall see that I know one branch, at least, of my profession thoroughly."

He brought her a steaming cup in a moment, which she drained gratefully.

"It's heavenly! May I have some more? Where did you learn to cook--from books?"

"From necessity. When I first came to the mountains, it seemed safer to cook than to be cooked for."