"I'll have to set on him, Miss," Bayard said.
He did so, straddling the man's thighs and leaning to the right, close against the woman's stooping body. He grasped the cold wrist with one hand and washed the jagged hurt quickly, thoroughly. The man he held protested inarticulately and struggled to move about. Once, the towel that hid his face was thrown off and Bayard replaced it, glad that the girl's back had been turned so she did not see.
It was the crude, cruel surgery of the frontier and once, towards the end, the tortured man lifted his thick, scarcely human voice in a cursing phrase and Bayard, glancing sharply at the woman, murmured,
"I beg your pardon, Miss ... for him."
"That's not necessary," she answered, and her whisper was thin, weak.
"You ain't goin' to faint, are you?" he asked, in quick apprehension, ceasing his work to peer anxiously at her.
"No.... No, but hurry, please; it is very unpleasant."
He nodded his head in assent and began the bandaging, hurriedly. He made the strips of cloth secure with deft movements and then said,
"There, Miss, it's all over!"
She straightened and turned from him and put a hand quickly to her forehead, drew a deep breath as of exasperation and moved an uncertain step or two toward the door.