“Say yes, ma,” she whispered. “Say yes! We’ll all die here like snakes in our holes, if you don’t.”
Mrs. Panther turned on her.
“What you talking to me for?” she demanded. “Didn’t you turn your back on me? Didn’t you make Jake leave? Didn’t you take Granny? Much you care!”
Then Haystack Thompson arose. He towered till he almost touched the roof of the cabin.
“Mrs. Panther, ma’am,” he said, “you ain’t seeing things right, but I don’t blame you none. I’m a mountain man and I know how you feel. You’re proud. But this ain’t a question of pride. This is a question of saving lives. Now, ma’am, does it hurt your husband to move him?”
“Oh, awful,” she said. “One side don’t feel, but to touch him hurts the other side awful.”
“Does it, now?” said the fiddler, his voice quivering with sympathy. “I wonder why? Ladies, if you’ll be so good as to step outside, I’ll see if I can find out. I’m something of a bone-setter in my way. O’Connor, will you lend a hand?”
Half an hour later Mr. Thompson came to consult with the ladies.
“I believe,” he said earnestly, “that the man can be cured. There’s a broken collar bone—broken in two places as I make out, and never set—and it’s pressing on nerves and muscles in such a way as to make him helpless. That’s the way it looks to me. Now, Miss Carin told me coming over, that she’d pay for his keep in a hospital at Asheville if only we could get him there. It would be the death of him to take him in a wagon; and he couldn’t sit on a nag. So O’Connor and I have fixed it up that we’ll carry him out.”
“But you can’t do that, Mr. Thompson,” objected Miss Zillah. “You’re not so vigorous as you used to be, sir—”