“I would it had been me he shot. If he has killed you—” Hugh gulped out.
“Nonsense!” Strangwayes answered testily. “Ride on, and trouble me with no more such talk.”
For another long space they rode in silence, Strangwayes with his head sunk on his chest and his left arm motionless. Hugh pressed close to him, lest he fall from his saddle, but he did not venture to trouble him with further speech. Thus the breaking day came upon them, as they trotted through a bit of wet woodland, and Hugh at last could see his comrade’s white face, that looked gray in the uncertain light, and thought to make out a dark splotch upon the back of his coat. At the farther verge of the wood, where a small brook, flowing across the road, broadened into a pool on the right, Strangwayes reined in his horse with two or three one-handed jerks at the bridle. “You’ll have to try your ’prentice hand at surgery,” he said, as Hugh sprang down from the bay; “adventures do often entail such postscripts.”
“Do not make a jest of it,” Hugh answered chokedly, and putting his arm about Strangwayes helped him to climb from the saddle and to seat himself on the brink of the pool. He still kept his arm about his friend, and now, feeling something damp against his sleeve, he looked closer and found the back of Strangwayes’ coat was all wet and warm. “’Tis here you’re wounded?” he cried.
“Yes, in the back,” the other replied, with a half-suppressed groan. “A brave place for a gentleman to take his first hurt! Draw my coat off, gently. Now take my knife and rip off my shirt. ’Twill serve for bandages.”
Somehow Hugh mastered the nervous trembling in his fingers sufficiently to cut away the shirt, upon which the broad stain of red showed with sickening clearness. Beneath, Strangwayes’ back was slimy with blood, and the dark drops were oozing from a jagged wound in the fleshy part of the left shoulder. Strangwayes, who was sitting with his full weight thrown upon his right arm, never uttered sound nor winced, but Hugh sank down on his knees, and for a moment felt too faint to do more than support his friend with his arm.
“‘O dinna ye see the red heart’s blood
Run trickling down my knee,’”
Strangwayes half hummed, and turned his head to look at Hugh. His brows were puckered with pain, but there was the ghost of a smile on his lips as he drawled, “Why, Hughie, man, methinks I be the one to feel sick, not you.”
Thereat Hugh set his teeth, and, shamed into strength by the other’s courage, dipped half the cut shirt into the brook and washed the wound, tenderly as he was able, then made shift to bandage it, as Strangwayes directed. “Well, I’m still wearing a shirt,” the latter said, as Hugh carefully helped him into his coat, “but ’tis not in the usual way. You must fasten my coat up to my chin, Hugh, and pray none note my lack of linen, nor the bullet-hole in the back. What a place to be wounded!”