“Yes, mebbe so. But come along, come along. We’ll tend to you.”
The world had grown curiously darkened, so that we moved as through an obscuring veil; and I dumbly wondered whether this was night (had it been morning or evening when I started for the pond?) or whether I was dying myself. I peered and again made out the sober, stern faces hedging me, but they gave me no answer to my mutely anxious query. Across a great distance we stumbled by the wagons (the same wagons of a time agone), and halted at a fire.
“Set down. Fetch a blanket, somebody. Whar’s the water? Set down till we look you over.”
I let them sit me down.
“Wash your mouth out.”
That was done, pinkish; and a second time, clearer.
“You’re all right.” Jenks apparently was ministering to me. “Swaller this.” 254
The odor of whiskey fumed into my nostrils. I obediently swallowed, and gasped and choked. Jenks wiped my face with a sopping cloth. Hands were rummaging at my left arm; a bandage being wound about.
“Nothin’ much,” was the report. “Creased him, is all. Lucky he dodged. It was comin’ straight for his heart.”
“He’s all right,” Jenks again asserted.