“Exactly,” said Dane very dryly. “Well, we have got to discover it, and the more quickly we do it the better. I fancy, however, that the question who started it is what we have to consider.”
The men looked at one another, and the third of them nodded.
“I fancy it comes to that—though it is horribly unpleasant to admit it,” he said.
[CHAPTER XVI—MAUD BARRINGTON IS MERCILESS]
Dane overtook the wagon close by the birch bluff at Silverdale Grange. It was late then, but there were lights in the windows that blinked beyond the trees, and, when the wagon stopped, Barrington stood in the doorway with one or two of his hired men. Accidents are not infrequent on the prairie, where surgical assistance is not always available, and there was a shutter ready on the ground beside him, for the Colonel had seen the field hospital in operation.
“Unhook the tailboard,” he said sharply. “Two of you pick up the shutter. Four more here. Now, arms about his shoulders, hips, and knees. Lift and lower—step off with right foot leading bearer, with your left in the rear!”
It was done in a few moments, and when the bearers passed into the big hall that rang with their shuffling steps, Maud Barrington shivered as she waited with her aunt in an inner room. That tramping was horribly suggestive, and she had seen but little of sickness and grievous wounds. Still, the fact scarcely accounted for the painful throbbing of her heart, and the dizziness that came upon her. Then the bearers came in, panting, with Barrington and Dane behind them, and the girl was grateful to her aunt, who laid a hand upon her arm when she saw the singed head, and blackened face that was smeared with a ruddier tint, upon the shutter.
“Lower!” said Colonel Barrington. “Lift, as I told you,” and the huddled object was laid upon the bed. Then there was silence until the impassive voice rose again.
“We shall not want you, Maud. Dane, you and I will get these burnt things off him.”
The girl went out, and while she stood, feeling curiously chilly in an adjoining room, Barrington bent over his patient.