Someway, together, we dragged the last of the Morans into his home, and closed the door between him and his mountain world. His great body seemed to fill the cabin as it lay upon the floor, the arms and legs sprawling in incredible helplessness, the boots and trousers covered with mud, the blue shirt torn and blood-stained. Seizing one of her bottles, the old woman forced some of its contents between the boy's teeth, and as she did so he opened his eyes. For a moment he stared at her, at me, and around the cabin, dim in the flickering light of logs and candle. Then a gleam lit up his black eyes. His lips drew back over his teeth in a hideous, wolflike grin.
"He's done daid, gran," he choked out. "I got 'im!"
The old woman, who had been bending above him, dropped the bottle and sat back suddenly, flinging her lean arms above her head in a movement of wild exultation. A high cackle of joy broke from her. Then, remembering his need, she bent over him again and tried to force him to take more of the liquor; but he frowned it away, his stiff tongue seeking to form words.
"I—watched—him—die," he finally articulated, "'fo'—ever—I—tho't—o'—home!"
He closed his eyes and lapsed into unconsciousness. The old woman rocked above him.
"He's daid," she crooned. "He's daid, daid, daid!"
For a moment I thought it was her grandson she meant, but I saw that she was continuing her ministrations, accompanying them with this reassurance to those deaf ears. For a long time the hideous lullaby went on, while she washed the wound in the boy's breast and checked its flow of blood, bandaging it as skilfully as any surgeon could have done the work. She let me help her now—keeping cold compresses on his hot head, for he was moaning with pain and fever, and giving him from time to time the medicine she had brewed. We could not move his great body, but we made him as comfortable as we could on the floor, and worked over him there while the night wore on, and the cries of prowling animals came to us from the mountainside.
Toward dawn the fever subsided. The boy's high color faded, and he hardly seemed to breathe. In my inexperience I was not sure whether these were good or bad signs, and I had no indication from Betsy Moran, whose face never changed as she hung above him. At sunrise she rose and went to the door, motioning to me to accompany her. There, following the direction indicated by her pointing, shaking old finger, I saw on the side of the hill, at the left of the cabin, six low mounds marked by six great boulders. For a long time the mountain woman looked at them in silence. Then she turned to me.
"He's daid," she whispered, with a kind of fierce delight. "Tyrrell's daid. Here's the e-end."
She leaned against the jamb of the door, staring up at the row of mounds defined against the desolate mountain by the first clear rays of the sun. A light breeze lifted the loose locks of her white hair and blew them about her face. In her eyes shone the wild exultation that had burned there the night before, when her boy had gasped out his message.