“And did he look like my brother does now?”
“Not a bit, my lad; and I fancy that if there was any poison on the arrow that went through your brother’s arm, you pretty well sucked it out and washed it away.”
“Then you don’t think there is any danger?” asked Brace.
“That’s right, squire. I don’t think there’s any danger. Mind, I say think, for I’m not a proper qualified man.”
“But you can tell me your candid opinion about my brother’s wound,” said Brace.
“Well,” replied the captain, “I’ll go so far as to say that if I’d got that hole through my arm I should be very savage, I should make use of some language, and I should say I’d shoot every Indian I saw with a bow and arrows, and of course I shouldn’t do it; but I don’t think I should make myself uncomfortable about it any more, but just leave it to Nature to cure.”
“You think that he will recover, then?” said Brace eagerly.
“I do,” said the captain. “What have you got to say about it, mister?”
He turned to the American as he spoke, and Briscoe, who had been keenly watching the half-insensible patient all the time Brace and the captain had been speaking, rose up slowly.
“I’m not a doctor, skipper,” he said, “and the only experience I have had in this way has been with rattlesnake bites.”