“Look a’ that, Jinny,” he cried, triumphantly. It was a joy to hear himself speaking to something alive.
“Look a’ that!” he repeated, “Ain’t you glad you found the doctor in?”
He dipped warm water from an earthen pot in the ashes, and washed the wound carefully, talking all the while to the still trembling patient, silently regarding him. When the place was quite clean he made a poultice of prickly pear and bound it on with a strip of deer-skin.
“Lucky I shot another buck, Jinny,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have that nice bandage.”
The little burro expressed no thanks; only stared solemnly at the fire. Gard strode out into the darkness and pulled, recklessly, an armful of his precious, growing oats. He threw the green stuff down before her and she sniffed it curiously before she began, ravenously, to eat it.
“Hungry, weren’t you?” the man said, sympathetically. “Been too sick to eat. Well, well, make yourself at home.”
He threw a big stick upon the fire and went back to his bed, leaving the burro chewing, meditatively, before the blaze.
He was just falling asleep when he felt something warm fumbling about him, and he awoke with a start, and an exclamation that quickly turned to something very like a laugh. The grateful little burro was licking his hands.
“Why, Jinny!” he cried, sitting up. “Well, well, Jinny! Well, I’ll be jiggered!”
He slipped an arm over the rough little neck and the two watched the fire till dawn.