"Now!" he said. Gritting his teeth, he leaned backward and tugged with a strong, steady pull, and presently the fingers of his left hand told him that the fractured ends of bone were drawn back together. "The sticks!" he said faintly, sliding his hand forward to support his arm in its rigid position.
Under his directions the girl fixed the splints, and bound them securely in place with strips torn from the hem of a blanket. The job was finally accomplished to Dexter's satisfaction. For safety's sake the arm was swathed in outer wrappings and fastened securely against his chest.
"Ought to knit straight," he managed to say. He noticed the woe-begone expression of his companion's face, and attempted to laugh at her; but the effort was rather feeble, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears.
"Anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" she asked after a pause.
"No," he said. "You've been very fine about it all. Thank you." His glance strayed to the edge of the shadowy thicket. "I'll have to take it easy for a while—stay here. Those men—Crill and Stark and the rest—they might change their minds and come back. Find our trail, and come up here. Can't be helped if they do." His good hand made a fatalistic gesture. "Well, we'll have to take the chance."
Alison was watching from across the fire with shadowed eyes, and she suddenly noticed the stem of his pipe sticking from his jacket pocket. "You can't have smoked all day," she abruptly remarked. "Maybe you'd like to."
"Don't know but that I would," he said unsteadily.
She found his pouch, stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco, and thrust the stem between his teeth. Dexter smiled gratefully, his eyes following her movements as she bent over the fire and picked up a lighted brand. But as he watched her come back to him, a glowing ember in her hand, something all at once seemed to go wrong with his eyesight. The girl, the firelight, the ragged line of the thickets, all became hazy and unreal, fading before him. He tried to hold his head erect, but the effort was too great. His eyelids closed like leaden weights, the pipe dropped from his mouth, blackness flooded upon him, and he toppled with a sigh and fell forward upon his face.