"I don't care what you want, Jude," Peter was saying, "you aren't going to drag him another hour over the trail. We'll get him onto my bed and see how bad off he is."
"My shoulder!" grunted Douglas.
"All right, Doug! Now, Judith, one more heave onto the bed. Get off there, Sister. Jude, pass me that bottle of whiskey, then go lock the outside door so's no one can bother till I've finished. Then come back here."
Judith, her eyes wide and brilliant, her cheeks feverish, obeyed without a word. She drew off Doug's short leather rider's coat and cut off his blood-saturated shirt and undershirt. Douglas watched her with beads of sweat on his lips. Peter in the meantime had thrust his late supper back from the front of the stove and had put a couple of disreputable looking towels to boil in the dishpan. When Judith had finished and Doug's beautiful thin torso lay white against the dingy Indian blanket, Peter scoured his hands and examined the hole in the shoulder from which the blood pulsed slowly.
"It's gone clean through from front to back," said Peter cheerfully. "Guess I can fix him. Eight years in the regular service is useful sometimes. Come here and hold him, Jude. I'm going to clean this hole with peroxide and he'll try to climb the wall."
"No, I won't! Go to it!" whispered Douglas.
Nor did he, for as Peter, with a piece of stove-pipe wire he had boiled as a probe, began his very thorough process of sterilization, Douglas quietly fainted. When he came to his senses, his shoulder was bandaged and Judith was pulling an old shirt of Peter's over his head.
"Now, Judith, make a fresh pot of coffee and drink some of it," said
Peter. "You are as white as a sheet. How are you, Doug, my boy?"
"Fine! Peter, you get me drunk. I'm going after Scott to-night."
"Let's have the story." Peter's lips were grim, "You begin, Judith."