And then:
“Doc, am I goin' shore?” This question the surgeon answered with another, bending low.
“Jim, what message shall I give your wife?” The curious smile came back.
“Doc, this is Christmas, ain't it?”
“Yes, Jim.”
“Doc, you're shore, air ye, that nobody knows who done it?”
“Nobody but you, Jim.”
The man had been among men the terror of the hills for years, but on the last words that passed his gray lips his soul must have swung upward toward the soul of the Man who lived and died for the peace of those hills.
“Doc,” he said thickly, “you jus' tell the old girl Jim says: ‘'Happy Christmas!’”
The surgeon started back at the grim cheer of that message, but he took it like a priest and carried it back through the little hell that flared down the ravine on Jim now through the window. And like a priest he told it to but one living soul.