"Why if you want to, of course you can. I won't be gone but a minute. I've let up on this pressure a little; we'll keep letting up on it gradual ... I've done this thing before. He's got to be watched, though, so he don't pull the bandages off and start her bleeding again."
The woman seated herself on the chair as he turned to go.
"It'll only be a minute," he assured her again, hesitating in the doorway. "I wouldn't go at all, only, when my horse is the kind of a pal he is, I can't let him go hungry. See?"
"I see," she said, but her tone implied that she did not, that such devotion between man and beast was quite incomprehensible ... or else that she had given his word no heed at all, had only waited impatiently for him to go.
He strode down the hallway and she marked his every footfall, heard him go stumping and ringing down the stairs two at a time, heard him leave the porch and held her breath to hear him say,
"Well, Old Timer, I didn't plan to be so long."
Then, the sound of shod hoofs crossing the street at a gallop.
She closed her eyes and let her head bow slowly and whispered,
"Oh, God ... there is manhood left!"
She sat so a long interval, suffering stamped on her fine forehead, indicated in the pink and white knots formed from her clenched hands. Then, her lips partly opened and she lifted her head and looked long at the covered face of the man on the bed. Her breath was swift and shallow and her attitude that of one who nerves herself for an ordeal. Once, she looked down at the hand on the bed near her and touched with her own the hardened, soiled fingers, then gave a shake to her head that was almost a shudder, straightened in her chair and muttered aloud,