“I’ll get ’em,” Vince said, happy that there was something he could do to help. He pulled a hatchet from the supply container, made sure his knife was in his pocket, and went out of the cave.
In a moment Max and Tony both returned with water and Slade bathed Scotti’s face and his wounds. Opening a first-aid kit, he put a little sulfa powder in the deep wounds and then dressed them.
“He’s completely unconscious as a result of these,” he said to Dick. “Can’t tell if there’s any concussion of the brain or not, of course. If there is, it’s bad, and he may not come to. But if not he’ll come around. We mustn’t try to force him back to consciousness, though. Just make him comfortable and let him rest.”
Dick nodded in agreement and the little demolition expert, who now turned out to be also a first-aid expert, went quickly over the rest of Scotti’s body to see if there were any more wounds. He found nothing but some torn flesh on one hand, where he had probably tried to clutch at the rock when he landed on it. Slade quickly cleaned and dressed this wound, too, felt the lieutenant’s pulse, and stepped back.
“Can’t do anything else except set the leg,” he said.
Max and Tony had gone to help Vince find the straight pieces of wood needed for this task. In a few minutes they returned with straight sapling trunks about an inch and a half in diameter, but Slade said the wood was too pliable.
“That could never hold a broken leg in position,” he said. “It would bend with the leg. You’ve got to find old wood, hard and stiff.”
The three men went off into the woods again, and soon Dick could hear the sound of a hatchet chopping wood. He hoped that the sound did not carry to the town below, or to any German garrison which might be near by. The town was about two miles away, and the main German gun emplacements on the hills were a good way to the south of them, but still Dick did not rest easy until the sound was ended.
In ten minutes the three men returned with wood that Slade declared perfect. It was straight and true, with all tiny branches cleaned off smoothly, and there was no give in it at all. Slade set the others to tearing one of the parachutes into strips, and these strips he tied around the two long pieces of wood which were placed on either side of Scotti’s broken leg.
In twenty minutes the job was done.