With brown head against his
heart, she listened--listened and would not believe that her to-morrow
might come too late. And then she caught the slack pound of his pulse.
From there on she was less panic-stricken; she gained control of
faculties shocked for a time into uselessness. Method marked her
acts--deliberation mechanical but sure. She was horribly afraid of Big
Louie, but she finally disentangled the handle of the pail from those
loose fingers, and ran to the brook which babbled near at hand.
Returning, she drenched Steve's face with icy water; she lifted his
head and propped it, as comfortably as she might, upon one thigh, and
opened his flannel shirt. The ball had passed through, for back and
front the shirt became immediately wetter with fresh blood. Blood
sickened her, but she whipped off the coat of her boyish riding-habit
and wrenched the sleeves from her linen blouse. They were desperately
scant, yet they provided pads with which to check that dreadful oozing.
And when they were in place she turned again to bathing his forehead.
A folded sheet of paper came to view when she tried once to ease his
heavy body from the position which was numbing her leg, and she seized
upon it fiercely. It was only a brief line, bidding him come to her,
but it bore her name. With instant, bodiless clarity which had marked
all her mental processes so far, its purport was hers.
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