“We’ll make him as comfortable as we can, and I’ll send for Uncle Peter,” she said, as they stopped before the door. She called to the oldest of the children, a boy, and spoke to him rapidly in Indian. It seemed to Rawley that she was purposely emphasizing her bizarre relationship.
A younger squaw—or so she looked to be—came from a shack, a fat, solemn-eyed baby riding her hip. Her hair was wound somehow on top of her head and held there insecurely with hairpins half falling out and cheap, glisteny side combs. A second glance convinced Rawley that she had white man’s blood in her veins, but her predominant traits were Indian, he judged; except that she lacked the Indian aloofness.
“Mr. King, this is my Aunt Gladys—Mrs. Cramer,” Nevada announced distinctly. “Aunt Gladys, Queo shot Mr. King’s partner, who had discovered him lying in wait for Grandmother and me and was trying to protect us. Mr. King ran down to the trail to warn us, while his partner crept up behind Queo. He fired, after Queo had shot at us, but he thinks he missed altogether. At any rate Queo shot him. So Grandmother and I brought him on home. He saved our lives, and we must try to save his.”
Aunt Gladys ducked her unkempt head, grinned awkwardly at Rawley, who lifted his hat to her—and thereby embarrassed her the more—and hitched the baby into a new position on her hip.
“Whadda yuh think ol’ Jess’ll say?” she asked, in an undertone. “My, ain’t it awful, the way that Queo is acting up? Is there anything I can do? It won’t take but a few minutes to start a fire and heat water.”
They had eased Johnny Buffalo from the burro’s back to the broad doorstep, which was shaded by the wide eaves of the porch. Now they were preparing to carry him in, feet first so that Nevada could lead the way. She turned her head and nodded approval of the suggestion. So Aunt Gladys, after lingering to watch the wounded man’s removal, departed to her own shack, shooing her progeny before her.
Rawley had never had much experience with wounds, but he went to work as carefully as possible, getting the old man to bed and ready for ministrations more expert than his. In a few minutes Nevada came with a basin of water that smelled of antiseptic. Very matter-of-factly she helped him wash the wound.
“I think that is as much as we can do until Uncle Peter comes,” she said when they had finished. “He’s the one who always looks after hurts in the family.” She left the room and did not return again.
With nothing to do but sit beside the bed, Rawley found himself dwelling rather intently upon the strangeness of the situation. From the name spoken by Nevada, he knew that he must be in the camp of the enemy. At least, Jess Cramer was the name of Grandfather’s rival who figured unfortunately in that Fourth of July fight away back in ’66, and there was furthermore the warning of the code, “Take heed now ... on the hillside ... which is upon the bank of the river ... in the wilderness ... ye shall find ... him that ... is mine enemy.” Rawley had certainly not expected that the enemy would be Jess Cramer, but it might be so.
He was repeating to himself that other warning, “He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life,” when Nevada’s voice outside brought his attention back to the immediate exigencies of the case. He had already told her his name—she had repeated it to that flat-faced, hopelessly uninteresting “Aunt Gladys.” Nevada had taken particular pains, he remembered, to tell her aunt all about the mishap and to stress the service which he and Johnny Buffalo had rendered her and her grandmother. Was it because she wished to have some one beside herself who was well-disposed toward them? Partly that, he guessed, and partly because the easiest way to forestall curiosity is to give a full explanation at once. In Nevada’s rapid-fire account of the shooting, Rawley fancied that he had unconsciously been given a key to the situation and to the disposition of Aunt Gladys. He grinned while he filled his pipe and waited.