Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of the Healer, stood for an instant like one with all his senses arrested. Then he gasped and exclaimed, “Well, I’m eternally—!” and broke off with a low laugh, which was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard.
“Oh, magnificent!—magnificent!—jerickety!” he said into the sky above him.
His friends who were not “saved” closed in on him to find the meaning of his words, but he pulled himself together, looked blankly at them, and asked them questions. They told him so much more than he cared to hear that his face flushed a deep red—the bronze of it most like the color of Laura Sloly’s hair; then he turned pale. Men saw that he was roused beyond any feeling in themselves.
“’Sh!” he said. “Let’s see what he can do.” With the many who were silently praying, as they had been bidden to do, the invincible ones leaned forward, watching the little room where healing—or tragedy—was afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they saw the kneeling figures, the Healer standing with outstretched arms. They heard his voice, sonorous and appealing, then commanding—and yet Mary Jewell did not rise from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again, the voice rang out, and still the woman lay motionless. Then he laid his hands upon her, and again he commanded her to rise.
There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to obey, but Nature and Time and Disease had their way.
Yet again there was the call. An agony stirred the bed. Then another great Healer came between and mercifully dealt the sufferer a blow—Death has a gentle hand sometimes. Mary Jewell was bedridden still—and forever.
Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through the window and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people before her silently for a moment, her eyes all huge and staring. Presently she turned to Ingles and spoke to him quickly in a low voice; then, descending the steps, passed out through the lane made for her by the crowd, he following with shaking limbs and bowed head.
Warning words had passed among the few invincible ones who waited where the Healer must pass into the open, and there was absolute stillness as Laura advanced. Their work was to come—quiet and swift and sure; but not yet.
Only one face Laura saw as she led the way to the moment’s safety—Tim Denton’s; and it was as stricken as her own. She passed, then turned and looked at him again. He understood; she wanted him.
He waited till she sprang into her wagon, after the Healer had mounted his mule and ridden away with ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then he turned to the set, fierce men beside him.