XXXIII
In Sunrise Gulch
William Starbuck drew the surgeon aside after the first aid had been rendered, and Smith, still unconscious, had been carried from the makeshift operating-table in the commissary to Williams's cot in the office shack.
"How about it, Doc?" asked the mine owner bluntly.
The surgeon shook his head doubtfully.
"I can't say. The arm and the shoulder won't kill him, but that one in the lung is pretty bad; and he has lost a lot of blood."
"Still, he may pull through?"
"He may—with good care and nursing. But if you want my honest opinion, I'm afraid he won't make it. He'll be rather lucky if he doesn't make it, won't he?"
Starbuck remembered that the doctor had come out in the auto with the police captain and the two plain-clothes men.
"Hackerman has been talking?" he queried.