“Jim Lushing—the black curse be upon him!—he shot you; didn’t you know that?”
“I don’t remember. Whereabouts am I hit?”
“I wouldn’t be knowing that at all, Davie; I’m just this minute here. The shed watchman came and told me that Lushing had killed you in Jack’s place down the street. ’Twas scared they were to have you found dead in that place, so they carried you here.”
“Scared?” said David.
“For what your men might do; there’s a many of them in town, and they’d have wrecked the place. Where is it hurting you, Davie, dear?”
“I feel as if somebody had given me the heart punch—I believe that’s what the ring-fighters call it. But it’s letting up a bit now. Where am I?”
“In the Murtrie ore shed. They’d be putting it up to Mike Drogheen, the watchman, to say he’d shot you—taking you for an ore thief.”
“And paying him well for it, I suppose.” He was groping carefully for the wound and found only a rip in the left breast of the brown duck shooting-coat. There was no blood; only a tremendous soreness. He raised himself and sat up. “If we only had a light of some sort,” he muttered.
“Wait,” she said, and ran away to come back within the minute with the watchman’s lantern. “Poor old Mike’s hiding beyond in the blacksmith shop, scared trembling at the lie he’s thinking he’s got to tell. Don’t sit up, Davie; you might be bleeding to death.”
David was groping again, and this time, out of the ripped pocket of the brown coat he fished an engineer’s field-note book. Then he knew why there was no blood, and why the body area behind the pocket was as painful as if it had been beaten with a hammer. Lushing’s shot had been a glancing one, and the thick note-book had turned it aside. There was little left of the book save the perforated leather cover and a mass of torn leaves.