“No! Wait—I’ll go myself!” he called as the man was driving away, and flinging himself into the buggy, which Elizabeth had left at the fence, laid the whip on the back of the frightened Patsie.
It was not till John was halfway to Colebyville that Hugh Noland opened his eyes. Luther was stooping over him, bathing his face with water from the jug which Elizabeth had so unconsciously provided. The girl also knelt at his side rendering such assistance as was in her power, and when Hugh actually showed signs of being alive she buried her face in her hands and sobbed with an abandon which Luther Hansen could not mistake. The hired men had gone to get the leaders, which, being reliable horses, had got over their fright and were nibbling the fresh grass by the fence. The other team was completely out of sight. They covered Hugh from the scorching sun till the men could bring the wagon from the barn, and then the sad little cavalcade returned to the house with the injured man.
Doctor Morgan arrived with John in his own buggy two hours later, and then a strange thing was discovered. No bones were broken, and no internal injuries were in evidence which would necessarily give cause for alarm. The examination pointed to an excited heart chiefly, the weakest link in Hugh Noland’s system and the place where new troubles centred and aggravated old ones. That the man’s life had not been instantaneously crushed out was due to the fact that the long steel levers had stuck in the hard earth and held the machine up. But the trouble with the heart had been accentuated acutely before the binder had even capsized, for that horrible nightmare of galloping down upon the girl had evidently begun what the later catastrophe had carried to a farther and really dangerous stage.
Hugh was placed in the downstairs bedroom by the men, whose hearts were wrung at every step they carried him, and, as Luther remarked, because Elizabeth would have the care of him and stairs were deadly things in case of sickness.
Doctor Morgan came again before night, intending to stay with the patient till morning. John met him at the gate. With the feeling that he had been responsible for this terrible accident to Hugh, whom he loved as he had never loved any other human being, John had spent an afternoon of agony. The rest of the men could look for a neighbour to finish the grain with another machine, but for him, he spent the time at Hugh’s side.
“How is he?” Doctor Morgan asked almost before he was within speaking distance.
“Resting. We don’t trouble him, but he seems quiet.”
“That’s good!” the old man exclaimed. He had come with his heart in his mouth, as they say in that country. “I wish I had as good a report for you,” he added.
“Why—what’s happened to me?” John asked in surprise.
“The young mare you drove in died in the stable. It’s hot weather, and I guess you were pretty badly excited. I told the men in the livery to shut the colt up; it kept nosing around the carcass and it isn’t good for it. You’d better get in as early as you can and look after it yourself. Those stable men don’t care for anything that ain’t their own.”