“Turn him over on his face,” directed Boyle. “There’s blood in his throat.”
“Will you go for Smith?” she asked, kneeling beside the wounded man.
“He’s coming; I can hear the sauerkraut jolt in him while he’s half a mile away. If anybody comes looking for me on account of this–coroner or–oh, anybody–I’ll be down the river about a quarter below the stage-ford. I’ll wait there a day longer to hear from you, and this is my last word.”
With that Boyle left her. Smith came very shortly, having heard the shots; and the people from up the river came, and the young man from the bridal nest across on the other side. They made a wondering, awed ring around the wounded man, who was pronounced by Smith to be in deep waters. There was a bullet through his neck.
Smith believed there was life enough left in the sheep-herder to last until he could fetch a doctor from Meander.
“But that’s thirty miles,” said Agnes, “and Dr. Slavens is not more than twenty. You know where he’s located–down by Comanche?”
Smith knew, but he had forgotten for the minute, 254 so accustomed to turning as he was to the center of civilization in that section for all the gentle ministrants of woe, such as doctors, preachers, and undertakers.
“I’ll have him here before morning,” said Smith, posting off to get his horse.
The poor sheep-herder was too sorely hurt to last the night out. Before Smith had been two hours on his way the shepherd was in the land of shades, having it out face to face with Epictetus–if he carried the memory of his contention across with him, to be sure.
The neighbors arranged him respectably upon a board, and covered him over with a blanket, keeping watch beside him in the open, with the clear stars shining undisturbed by this thing which made such a turmoil in their breasts. There he lay, waiting the doctor and the coroner, and all who might come, his earthly troubles locked up forever in his cold heart, his earthly argument forever at an end.