Spurrier had taken no thought of physical strain. He had not known that he was wearied with nerve wrack and pell-mell dashing from firing point to firing point. He knew nothing of the picture he made with clothing torn from his scrambling rushes up-ladder and down-ladder and his crouching and shifting among the rough nail-studded spaces of the cockloft. Of the face, sweat-reeking and dust-smeared, he had no realization, but when that voice called out and he knew that rescuers were clamoring where assassins had laid siege, the stout knees under him buckled weakly, and the fingers that had fitted his rifle as steadily as part of its own metallic mechanism became so inert that they could scarcely maintain their grip upon the weapon.
John Spurrier, emotionally stirred and agitated as he had never been in battle, because of the limp figure that lay under that roof, stood gulping and struggling 191 for a lost voice with which to give back a reply. He rocked on his feet and then, like a drunken man went slowly and unsteadily forward to lift the bar of the door.
When he had thrown it wide the rush of anxious men halted, backing up instinctively, as their eyes were confused by the inner murk and their nostrils assailed by the acrid stench of nitrate, from the vapors of burnt powder that hung stiflingly between the walls and ceiling rafters. Old Cappeze was at their front and when he saw before him the battle begrimed and drawn visage of the man, he looked wildly beyond it for the other face that he did not see, and his voice broke and rose in a high, thin note that was almost falsetto as he demanded: “Where is she? Where’s Glory?”
John Spurrier sought to speak but the best he could do was to indicate with a gesture half appealing and half despairing to the door of the other room, where she lay on his army cot. The father crossed its threshold ahead of him and dropped to his knees there with agonized eyes, and Bud Hawkins, the preacher and physician, not sure yet in which capacity he must act, was bent at his shoulder, while Spurrier exhorted him with a recovered but tortured voice, “In God’s name, make haste. There’s only a spark of life left.”
From the crowd which had followed and stood massed about the door came a low but unmistakable smother of fury, as they saw the unmoving figure of the girl, and those at the edge wheeled and ran outward again with the summary resoluteness that one sees in hounds cast off at the start of the chase.
Upon those who remained Brother Hawkins 192 wheeled and swept out his hands in a gesture of imperative dismissal.
“Leave us alone, men,” he commanded. “I needs ter work alone hyar—with ther holp of Almighty God.”
But he worked kneeling, tearing away the clothing over the wounded breast, and while he did so he prayed with a fervor that was fiercely elemental, yet abating no whit of his doctor’s efficiency with his surprisingly deft hands, while his lips and heart were those of the religionist.
“Almighty Father in Heaven,” he pleaded, “spare this hyar child of Thine ef so be Thy wisdom suffers hit.”
There he broke off and as though a different man were speaking, shot over his shoulder the curt command: “Fotch me water speedily—Because Almighty Father, she’s done fell a victim of evil men thet fears Thee not in th’ar hearts!”