This camping-place was a bed of clean, dry sand deposited on the inside of one of the river-bends, and exposed by the falling water. Stonor chose it because it promised a soft bed, and his bones were weary. The bank above was about ten feet high and covered with a dense undergrowth of bushes, which they did not try to penetrate, since a dead tree stranded on the beach provided an ample store of fuel. Clare’s tent was pitched at one end of the little beach, while Imbrie, securely bound, and Stonor slept one on each side of the fire a few paces distant.
In the morning Stonor was the first astir. A delicate grey haze hung over the river, out of which the tops of the willow-bushes rose like islands. He chopped and split a length of the stranded trunk, and made up the fire. Imbrie awoke, and lay watching him with a lazy sneer. Stonor had no warning of the catastrophe. He was stooping over sorting out the contents of Imbrie’s grub-bag, his back to the bushes, when there came a crashing sound that seemed within him—yet outside. That was all he knew.
CHAPTER XVI THE LAST STAGE ON SWAN RIVER.
When Stonor’s sense returned the first thing of which he was conscious was Clare’s soft hand on his head. He opened his eyes and saw her face bending over him, the nurse’s face, serious, compassionate and self-forgetful. No one knows what reserves may be contained in a woman until another’s wound draws on them. He found himself lying where he had fallen; but there was a bag under his neck to hold his head up. Putting up his hand he found that his head was tightly bandaged. There seemed to be a mechanical hammer inside his skull.
“What happened?” he whispered.
She scarcely breathed her reply. “The woman shot you. She was hidden in the bush.”
Looking beyond her, Stonor saw Imbrie and the breed woman eating by the fire in high good humour. He observed that the woman was wearing the revolver he had given Clare.
“She disarmed me before I could fire,” Clare went on. “Your wound is not serious. The bullet only ploughed the scalp above your ear.”
“Who bandaged me?”
“I did. They didn’t want to let me, but I made them. I sewed the wound first. I don’t know how I did it, but I did.”