"That's what he is—good joke, Nell. Where'd it happen?" She seated herself in a chair and slid until her head rested on the back, her sprawling legs outstretched.
"Gun fight at the dance hall. Look here," she took her roughly by the arm, "I tell you he's bad off. You gotta git in there and do somethin'."
"Shut up! Lemme be!" She pulled loose from the nurse's grasp, but arose, nevertheless, and staggered down the long hallway into the room where the new patient lay moaning softly upon the narrow iron cot.
"Hullo, Bill Duncan!"
His moaning ceased and he said faintly in relief—
"Oh, I'm glad! I thought you'd never come, Doc."
"Say," her voice was quarrelsome, "do you think I've nothin' to do but wait at the beck and call of you wops?"
The boy, for he was only that, looked surprise and resentment at the epithet, but he was too weak to waste his strength in useless words.
She raised his arm bound in its blood-soaked rags roughly and he groaned.
"Keep still, you calf!"