“Thanks,” David gasped, leaning heavily on the showman. “I was scared sick—the police—had found—Sally. Knew there was—bound to be—an awful row.”
He fainted then, his splendid young body crumpling suddenly to the cinders of the railroad track. Somehow the three of them managed to get him to the show train and into the Bybees’ stateroom, where Gus, the barker, who had graduated from a medical school before the germ of wanderlust had infected him, dressed the wounded shoulder.
“The bullet went clear through the fleshy part of the arm at the shoulder,” Gus told them, as he washed his hands in the stateroom’s basin. “No bones touched at all. Just a flesh wound. Of course he’s lost a lot of blood and he’ll be pretty shaky for a few days, but no real harm done. You can turn off the faucet, Sally. Save them tears for a big tragedy—like ground glass in your cold cream, or something like that. Want a real doctor to give that shoulder the once-over, Pop?” he asked, turning to Bybee, who had not left David’s side.
It was David, opening his eyes dazedly just then, who answered: “No other doctor, please. I’m a fugitive from justice, remember. If I could have some coffee now I think I could tell you what happened, Mr. Bybee.”
A dozen eager voices outside the stateroom door offered to get the coffee from the privilege car, and within a few minutes Sally was kneeling before David, holding a cup of steaming black coffee to his lips.
As many of the carnival family as could crowd into the small space of the car aisle pressed against the open door of the stateroom to hear his story. Jan the Holland giant, who was too tall to stand upright in the car, was invited into the stateroom, where he sat between Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee, “Pitty Sing” in the crook of one of his arms, Noko, the Hawaiian midget, in the other. Sally still knelt beside David, holding his right hand tightly in both of hers and laying her lips upon it when his story moved her unbearably.
“I suppose Mrs. Bybee has told you that I was leaving the show train to go to the carnival grounds to see if anything had happened to Sally. I’d have gone sooner, but the storm was so violent that I knew I’d not have a chance to get there. Mrs. Bybee said she was going to the lot and would look after Sally for me, but she wanted me to stay on the train, or near it, to patrol it. She didn’t tell me there was a lot of money in her stateroom, or I’d have stationed myself in there.”
“You see,” Sally interrupted eagerly. “I told you I hadn’t said a word to him about the safe.”
“Safe?” David glanced down at her, puzzled. “So this Steve crook cracked a safe to get the money, did he? I didn’t know—didn’t have time to find out.”
“And I told you it was a man named Steve!” Sally reminded them joyously, raising David’s cold hand to her lips. “They thought I was making it all up, Dave, but they believed me after a while.”