After a time Fair Day came back with the older woman. The former carried a vessel of brown clay, such as the Pueblo Indians use, filled with fresh water. She thought me still too weak to drink without assistance, and held it to my lips herself. It was dreadfully painful to me to swallow, but it must be done. I drank in little mouthfuls and with long rests between, until the vessel was quite empty. How it refreshed me! Nscho-Tschi saw it, and said: “That has done you good. By and by I will bring you something else, for you must be hungry, too. Now will you bathe?”
The old woman brought me a gourd of water, and set it before me, with a towel of fine white flax. I tried to use them, but was too weak. My fair young nurse dipped the cloth in the water and bathed the face and hands of the supposed enemy of her father and brother.
When she had finished, she asked me with a soft little pitying laugh: “Were you always so thin?”
I felt my cheeks, and said: “I was never thin.”
“Look at yourself in the water.”
I looked into the gourd, and shrank back shocked, for the head of a skeleton seemed to look up at me.
“What a miracle that I am alive!” I cried.
“So Winnetou says. You have even borne the long ride here. The Great Spirit has given you an extraordinarily strong body, for few others thus wounded could have endured a journey of five days.”
“Five days! Where are we?”
“In our pueblo, at Rio Pecos.”