Various were the suggestions offered, to none of which did the sharpshooter pay any heed. The brass band accomplished what nothing else could. Blatantly it came around the corner, keeping time to its own noisy drums, and Stiffleg pricked up his ears. In his youth he had marched to battle and, at that moment, his youth was renewed. He reared his drooping head, a thrill ran through his languid veins, and, though still without advance motion, his hoofs began to beat a swift tattoo, till the towering plumes of the drum major came alongside his own now gleaming eyes. Then, he wheeled suddenly and–forward!
“Ho! the old war-horse! That’s a pretty sight,” shouted somebody.
Alas! for Ephraim. The unexpected movement of the balking animal did for him what was rare indeed–unseated him. By the time that it was “right front” for Stiffleg his master was on the ground, feeling that an untoward fate had overtaken him and that his leg, if not his heart, was broken. Music had charms, in truth, for the rejuvenated beast, and one of the sharpshooter’s pet theories was thereby proved false. Had anybody at Sobrante told him that anything could entice his “faithful” horse away from him he would have denied the statement angrily. He would have declared, with equal conviction, that, in case of accident like this, the intelligent creature would have stayed beside and tried to tend him.
Now, lying forsaken both by Jessica and Stiffleg, he uttered his shame and misery in a prolonged howl, as he attempted to rise and could not.
“O! Ough! Oh! My leg’s broke! My leg’s broke all to smash, I tell you. Somebody pick me up and carry me–yonder–to the Yankee Blade. If Tom Jefferts keeps it still, he’ll play my friend. Oh! Ah!”
Some in the now pitying throng exchanged glances, and one man bent over the prostrate Ephraim, saying, kindly:
“Why, Tom Jefferts hasn’t been in this town these three years. He went to ’Frisco and set up there. If there’s anybody else you’d like to notify I’ll telephone––”
“He gone, too! Then let me lie. What do I care what becomes of me now? Oh! my leg!”
The bravest men are cowards before physical suffering, sometimes. Ephraim would have faced death for Jessica without flinching, but that gathering agony of pain made him indifferent, for the moment, even to her welfare. This calamity had fallen upon him like lightning from a clear sky and benumbed him, so to speak. But it had not benumbed those about him. Within five minutes the clang of an ambulance gong was heard, and the aid which some thoughtful person had summoned arrived. Ephraim was tenderly lifted and placed within the conveyance, and away it dashed again, though almost without jar, and certainly without hindrance, since everything on the street gives place to suffering.
By the time the hospital was reached the patient had recovered something of his customary fortitude, but he was still too confused and distressed to think clearly about his escaped charge and what should be done to find her. As for Stiffleg: