"You, by God, drilled the cowardly hole; and you doctor it!"
"And if I won't?"
"Then, as I live, I'll make you! One way or another, girl, I'll make you. That's Bruce Standing's word for you. Now hurry!"
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder; she was on the verge of breaking into wild, headlong flight.... But certain knowledge restrained her; she knew that he would overtake her, that he would drag her back and ... that he was in no mood for gentleness. Therefore, while her whole soul rebelled, she came closer, as he commanded.
... She had never dreamed that any man born could have a chest like that; nor such shoulders, massive and yet beautiful as the pure-lined expression of power; nor such skin, soft and smooth and white as a girl's, the outward sign of another beauty, that of clean health. Clean, hard, triumphant physical manhood.... It struck her at the time, so that she marvelled at herself and wondered dully if she were taking leave of her sober senses, that there was truer, finer beauty in the body of such a man than in any girl's; that here was a true artist's true triumph.... Physically he was splendid, superb.... In his own image did God make man....
With his right hand he was working with the bandage where it was taped about the bulge of his left breast; on the white cloth were fresh gouts of blood. Impatiently he tore at his shirt collar; on the bandage, where it passed about his left shoulder-blade, were red stains.
"Wait a minute," he commanded. "In my pocket I've got some sort of salve; some idiotic mess that Billy Winch cooked up; the Lord knows what it is or what he made it of; iodine and soap and flaxseed and cobwebs, most likely! But it will chink up the leak ... and it feels good and hasn't poisoned me so far! Here, smear it on."
... She felt as though she were dreaming all this! That wild, uncontrollable laughter of hers which swept over her at times of taut nerves and absurd situations, threatened to master her. She fought it down. She touched his back. She, Lynette, administering to Timber-Wolf ... it would be better for her, far better for her, if his wound were poisoned and he died!... Yet, as she touched his back, it was with wondrously gentle fingers. There was a wound there; the ugly wound made by a bullet, half healed, broken open anew under heavy blows. A little shiver, a strange, new sort of shiver, ran through her; here she was down to elementals, she, who with just cause and leaping instinct hated this man, ministering to him....
"Smear the stuff on, I tell you. Over the wound. Enough of it to shut out any infernal infection.... What in the devil's name is holding you? Waiting for the sun to go down and come up again?"
She bit her lips; he looked suddenly into her face, and could have no clew to her thought or emotion; he could not guess whether she bit her lip to keep from laughing or crying!... She spread over the gaping wound a thin film of Billy Winch's pungent salve. As she touched the wound she looked for a muscular contraction, for the flinching from pain. He did not move; there was not so much as the involuntary quiver of a muscle. She wondered if the man felt as other human beings did?