As they hoisted that collapsible stretcher between its poles over the last bleak hurdle of rock, one, the youngest, dropped his end of it, which the doctor, shifting his bag, took up.
Jack at a Pinch rushed forward.
And ever afterwards Pem liked that churlish nickum because he ignored her then; because he had no more consciousness of her presence, or of Una’s, or of the June woman’s, than if they had been rocks–blank rocks–by the trail, as he flung himself on his knees beside his father.
“Dad! Dad!” he cried, his face as gray-blue with hurry as his baseball flannels. “Oh-h! Dad, what have you been doing to yourself–now?”
“The biter bitten–Treff! Joker pinched!” came the answer in tones almost jocular, for the love in that boyish voice was a cordial. “Well! I guess I haven’t got my death-blow now you’ve come. And–and the murder is out, boy: these little girls know all-ll: who you are–who I am!”
Then, indeed, Jack at a Pinch raised his head and looked straight across into the blue eyes of Pemrose Lorry.
“You must have thought me an awful ‘chuff’,” he said.
“I’m sorry about the oars,” was the mute reply of the girl’s eyes, but the least little tincture of a smile trickling down from her lip-corners, said: “But I’m glad I got even with you, somehow!”
However, there was too much “getting even” just now in this wild spot–Life grimly settling accounts with the dragon who had so often “hazed” others–for the boy and girl to spend any more conscious thoughts upon each other.
There was the terrible trip–the worst mile ever traveled–down the Man Killer trail, for him, strapped to the stretcher, after the doctor had examined the injury and found the delicate kneecap both slipped and broken.