“I won’t touch him! I won’t lay a hand on him!” Ten-Gallon refused, drawing back in alarm.
Boyle was not dead, though Shanklin’s bullet had struck him perilously near the heart and had passed through his body. With each feeble intake of breath blood bubbled from the blue mark, which looked like a little bruise, on his chest.
“Well, see if you can make a fire, then, and hurry 312 about it! Get some water on to boil as fast as you can!” Slavens directed the nerveless chief of police.
Ten-Gallon set about his employment with alacrity while Slavens went over to Shanklin, turning his face up to the sky. For a little while he stooped over Hun; then he took the gambler’s coat from the saddle and spread it over his face. Hun Shanklin was in need of no greater service that man could render him.
Dr. Slavens took off his coat and brought out his instrument-case. He gave Boyle such emergency treatment as was possible where the gun-fighter lay, and then called Ten-Gallon to help take him into the tent.
“Lord, he’s breathin’ through his back!” said Ten-Gallon. “He’ll never live till we git him to the tent–never in this world, Doc! I knew a feller that was knifed in the back one time till he breathed through his ribs that way, and he––”
“Never mind,” said Slavens. “Take hold of him.”
Ten-Gallon’s fire burned briskly, and the water boiled. Dr. Slavens sterilized his instruments in a pan of it, and set about to establish the drainage for the wound upon which the slender chance of Boyle’s life depended. Boyle was unconscious, as he had been from the moment he fell. They stretched him on the doctor’s cot. With the blankets spread underfoot to keep down the dust, the early sun shining in through the lifted flap, Slavens put aside whatever animosity he held against the man and went to work earnestly in an endeavor to save his life. 313
Ten-Gallon showed a nervous anxiety to get away. He wanted to go after his horse; he wanted to go to Boyle’s tent and get breakfast for himself; and then he pressed the necessity of his presence in Comanche to keep and preserve the peace. But Slavens would not permit him to quit the tent until he could no longer be of assistance.
It was not the wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave, charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle’s people at the earliest possible hour.