We cut the man's cords of thongs, we spread rugs on the grass and laid him gently down, then bathed his poor body with wine, and poured a little down his throat.
In about half an hour the wretched being we had thought dead slowly raised himself on his elbow and gazed at me as well as his swollen eyes would permit him. His lips moved as if to speak, but no intelligible sound escaped them. The recollection dawned on my mind all at once, and in that sadly-distorted face I discovered traces of the man who had wrought us so much sorrow and evil.
I took his hand in mine.
'Am I right?' I said. 'Are you Duncan M'Rae?'
He nodded drowsily, closed his eyes again, and lay back.
We cut branches from the ombu-tree, tied them together with the thongs that had bound the victim's limbs, and so made a litter. On this we placed rugs and laid the man; and between two mules he was borne by the Gauchos slowly homewards to the estancias. Poor wretch! he had expected to come here all but a conqueror, and in a position to dictate his own terms—he arrived a dying man.
Our estancia for many weeks was now turned almost into a hospital, for even those Indians who had crept 280 wounded into the bush, preferring to die at the sides of hedges to falling into our hands, we had brought in and treated with kindness, and many recovered.
All the dead we could find we buried in the humble little graveyard on the braeside. We buried them without respect of nationality, only a few feet of clay separating the white man's grave from that of his Indian foe.
'It matters little,' said Moncrieff. 'where one rests,
| "For still and peaceful is the grave, Where, life's vain tumults past, The appointed house, by Heaven's decree, Receives us all at last."' |