“Over yonder!” Alagwa gestured with her head. “But wait. Let me wash and bind up your head. Sit still.”
Much against his will Cato waited while the girl’s deft fingers washed away the caked blood and bound a poultice of healing leaves across the gaping cut. Then he took the hand that she offered and scrambled to his feet and tried to make his way to Jack’s recumbent form.
But at the first step he limped and groaned. “Lord!” he muttered. “I done bust my feet mighty bad somehow. But I gwine to git to Mars’ Jack. Yes, suh, I certainly am.”
With many groans he made his way across the ground to Jack’s side. “Mars’ Jack! Mars’ Jack!” he cried. “You ain’t dead, is you?”
The sound of his voice roused Jack and he opened his eyes. Thankfully Alagwa saw that he made no attempt to rise. “Hello, Cato!” he mumbled. “Is that you? No, I’m not dead. I’m all right. How about you, Cato?”
“I’se all right, Mars’ Jack, ’cep’n that my feet hurts mighty bad. Dat Injun hit me a whack over the head, and that hurts. But seems like my feet hurts wusser.”
Jack’s eyes twinkled. “You must have been standing on a stone when that Indian hit you over the head,” he said. “I reckon he drove your feet down on the stone mighty hard.”
Jack laughed weakly. Then suddenly an expression of terror came into his face and his whole form seemed to shrink and crumble. When Alagwa reached his side he was unconscious.
Long but vainly the girl worked over him. He did not revive and an icy cold hand seemed to close about her heart.
From her childhood she had been familiar with wounds. With the Shawnees, as with most other Indians, it was a point of honor to leave no wounded friend upon the battlefield. At whatever cost, for whatever distance, they brought home all who survived the sharp deadly struggles of the day. Not once but many times Alagwa had bound up wounds and had cared for injured warriors. Jack’s condition had not at first seemed strange to her. She had supposed him only dazed from the blow he had received and needing only a brief rest to regain his strength. But now, abruptly, there flashed into her mind the memory of two warriors, brought home from a foray, who bore no visible wounds but who were yet wrecked in body and in mind. Like Jack they had been struck upon the head. Like him they had revived and had seemed to be gathering strength. Then abruptly they had collapsed and had lain feebly quiescent, dazed, with wandering lips and eyes, for weeks and months before they died. She did not know what the white men called this, but she knew the thing itself.