“The fellows who carried me off must have been pretty badly rattled, not to have found out that I wasn’t even scratched,” he commented.
“’Tis no wonder. When Mike brought me here, the doctor himself would have said you were dead. There was no breath in you at all, and your heart had stopped entirely.”
“What became of Lushing?”
“’Tis little I know, or care—the black dog! Mike says they told him you’d half killed him.”
“I think I meant to,” said David soberly. “And after this, I suppose I’ll have to kill him—or let him kill me. But that’s a future. He knows what he’s got to do if he wants to keep on living. Where are my boots?”
She found the boots with the help of the lantern and gave them to him. He put them on, though the effort, and the lacing of them, made him grit his teeth and swear.
“What did they want to take my boots off for?” he growled.
“Don’t you know?” she asked. “’Tis that way in the camps. They wouldn’t be letting anybody die with his boots on, if they could help it.”
“Rotten superstition!” he complained, and swore again.
The woman heard wonderingly.