Almost immediately Sam Davis and two other men came running.
"What's up?" the engineer called as they passed on a dog trot.
"Block broke," Davis answered over his shoulder. "Piece of it near took a leg off Jim Renfrew."
Stella stood a moment, hesitating.
"I may be able to do something. I'll go and see," she said.
"Better not," the engineer warned. "Liable to run into something that'll about turn your stomach. What was I tellin' about a broken block? Them ragged pieces of flyin' iron sure mess a man up. They'll bring a bed spring, an' pack him down to the boat, an' get him to a doctor quick as they can. That's all. You couldn't do nothin'."
Nevertheless she went. Renfrew was the rigging slinger working with Charlie, a big, blond man who blushed like a schoolboy when Benton introduced him to her. Twenty minutes before he had gone trotting after the haul-back, sound and hearty, laughing at some sally of her brother's. It seemed a trifle incredible that he should lie mangled and bleeding among the green forest growth, while his fellows hurried for a stretcher.
Two hundred yards at right angles from where Charlie had stood giving signals she found a little group under a branchy cedar. Renfrew lay on his back, mercifully unconscious. Benton squatted beside him, twisting a silk handkerchief with a stick tightly above the wound. His hands and Renfrew's clothing and the mossy ground was smeared with blood. Stella looked over his shoulder. The overalls were cut away. In the thick of the man's thigh stood a ragged gash she could have laid both hands in. She drew back.
Benton looked up.
"Better keep away," he advised shortly. "We've done all that can be done."