“Everything’s all right,” Roy insisted. “Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of time to talk later. Just lie still now.”
“—get it?” The lips moved, then were quiet.
Roy thought the man had lapsed into unconsciousness again, but the nostrils were twitching.
“They didn’t get anything,” the boy said stoutly. “And we’ll get them, too, as soon as you’re fixed up!” A quick suspicion flashed through his mind. This was a robbery. The man had been carrying a sum of money and had been waylaid and robbed. Little as he knew about the case, Roy realized that the thing to do was to relieve the man’s mind as much as possible.
“It’s safe,” he said, talking as he would to a child. “They didn’t get it. Forget about that. It’s all right—all right.”
“I’m—I’m thankful!”
The whole body seemed to relax still more and the chest rose and fell with better regularity. Roy looked swiftly about him.
“Teddy ought to be back any minute,” he said to himself. “Maybe I’m lying to this fellow, but it’s for the best. He won’t have a show if he starts to fret about what he lost.”
The minutes passed. Roy’s leg stiffened and a painful cramp seized his thigh. But he moved it not an inch. The least motion might start the bleeding again, and the longer the flow of blood was arrested, the better chance the man had for recovery.
Finally, after what seemed weeks of waiting, Roy heard the exhaust of a car and a screeching of brakes as it came to a stop just outside the fringe of trees. A man came running toward him.