“Reckon thet settles my hash, all right,” he declared, as he surveyed the manner in which the stout cord was passed around his arms, so as to hold them behind his back when the guide wanted to complete the tying. “You’d do fur a sheriff, Eli Crookes. I s’pose this is jest what I ought to expect, after playin’ the kind o’ game I hev all these years; but I don’t give up the ship while there’s life. Mebbe so I kin git away yet.”
That was possibly the only thing that had kept Charlie from putting up a desperate resistance when he found himself cornered. So long as there was life there was hope; whereas, if he tried to fight, and was shot to death, that ended it.
Then Thad had a chance to pay attention to Kimball. He saw that there was not the slightest chance for the wounded man to try and escape. He was really too weak to go far; and besides, that open cut did seem to be bleeding seriously.
“Here, you just sit down and let me look at that leg,” Thad ordered, after he had searched the man, and taken from him an ugly looking bulldog revolver that was an exact contrast with the up-to-date automatic weapon they had found in Charlie’s pocket, but which he had not dared attempt to reach when faced by the seven foes.
“Are you a surgeon, boy?” demanded Kimball, a note of eagerness in his voice. “I hope you are, because I’m feeling in a desperate way. Unless something’s done to stop that flow of blood, why, I’ll be a goner before to-morrow morning.”
“Oh! I’ll fix that, all right,” said Thad, reassuringly. “No, I’m not a surgeon, or only a bungling one at that; but I do know how to stop a wound from bleeding. That’s one of the things a Boy Scout learns when he makes up his mind he wants to get a medal, and reach out for the first class rank. You watch me, and see.”
There was quite an interested audience, for Giraffe, Davy, Step Hen, Allan, and even the two guides hovered around, keeping tabs on all that the patrol leader did.
Thad first closely examined the mark where the bullet of Sebattis had cut across Kimball’s lower limb. Then he took a big red bandanna handkerchief and tied it tightly around the leg, just below the knee, making sure that the large knot came exactly on the artery which ran back of the joint.
After that Thad took a stick he had provided, and inserting this in the handkerchief, he began to calmly twist it around several times. Of course this immediately tightened the binding, and the knot being pressed in against the artery, prevented the blood from coming to any extent at all.
The man had shut his teeth hard together, but he groaned once or twice under the operation; though Thad believed this must be on account of the strain he was laboring under, rather than because of any particular bodily agony.