By the time the transfer was completed, the boys were exceedingly weary, having been disturbed all the preceding night, and engaged in vigorous and incessant effort ever since they arose from their short sleep. They sat for half an hour revelling in the luxury of rest. Sam appeared to suffer so much and to be so weak, that they discouraged him from talking, and took their own seats outside the tent, that he might be able to sleep.
"What have you done with the fawn, sister?" inquired Robert, willing to divert their minds from the painful thoughts that were beginning to follow the excitement of hearing from home.
"O, we fed it with sassafras leaves and grass," said she, "and gave it water. After that we sewed the torn skin to its place upon the neck, and it appears to be doing very well."
"You are quite a surgeon, cousin Mary," Harold remarked. "I think we shall have to call you our 'Sister of Mercy.' If, however, our handkerchiefs are still tied to it, I will suggest that it may be best for it, as well as for us, that you make a soft pad for its neck, and put on the dog's collar."
"We have done that already," she replied. "I thought of it as soon as we returned to the tent and saw the dog's chain. But as for my being a surgeon, it requires very little skill to know that the sooner a fresh wound is attended to, and the parts brought to the right place for healing the better."
"That is a fact," said Robert, starting, as a deep groan from the tent reached his ears; "and that reminds me that perhaps Sam is suffering at this moment for the want of having his bones set. We must attend to them at once."
"Set a broken arm and leg!" exclaimed Harold in surprise. "Why, Robert, do you know how to do it?"
"Certainly," he replied. "There is no mystery about it; and father, you know, teaches us children everything of the kind, as soon as we are able to learn it. I have never set the bones of a person, but I did once of a dog, and succeeded very well."
Harold asked him to describe the process. Robert replied, "If the bones appear to have moved from their proper place, all that you have to do is to pull them apart lengthways by main strength so that they will naturally slide together, or else can be made to do so by the pressure of your hand. Then you must bandage the limb with strips of cloth, beginning at its extremity, so as to keep the parts in place; and over this you must bind a splint, to keep the bone from being bent or jostled out of place. That is all."
They went into the tent, and made inquiry of Sam whether his bones did not need attention. He replied that maybe his leg was in need of setting, but that as for his arm he had sot that himself, and that it was in need only of splintering.