Lost!
We were not kept in doubt long about the proceedings of the enemy. I was in the strangers’ quarters next day, talking in a whisper to Mrs John, while taking her turn at nursing poor Gunson, who still lay perfectly insensible, and so still that I gazed at him with feelings akin to terror, when Mr Raydon came in and walked straight to the bedside. We watched him as he made a short examination, and then in answer to Mrs John’s inquiring look—
“I can do nothing,” he said. “He is no worse. There is no fracture; all this is the result of concussion of the brain, I should say, and we can only hope that nature is slowly and surely repairing the injury.”
“But a doctor, Daniel?” said Mrs John.
“My dear sister, how are we to get a surgeon to come up here? It is a terrible journey up from the coast, and I believe I have done and am doing all that a regular medical man would do.”
“But—”
“Yes,” he said, smiling gravely, “I know you look upon me as being very ignorant, but you forget that I have had a good deal of experience since I have been out here. I learned all I could before I came, and I have studied a good deal from books since. Why, I have attended scores of cases amongst my own people—sickness, wounds, injuries from wild beasts, falls and fractures, bites from rattlesnakes, and I might say hundreds of cases among the Indians, who call me the great medicine man.”
“I know how clever you are, dear,” said Mrs John.
“Thank you,” he said, kissing her affectionately. “I wish I were; but I am proud of one achievement.”
“What was that, dear?”