I helped the girl to her feet. “You will have to walk now. It’s too far to carry you. Can you walk if I help?”
“I will try,” she said.
Then I took off my puttees and made slings for her arms, so that the blood flowing down should not hurt too much as she walked. The last thing I did was to knot up some of the cut leather rope, twist it into the chain fastened to her ankle, and tie it up in a loop to the skirt of Payindah’s poshtin which came down to her knees.
As I was doing this last, Payindah looked down. “The mem cannot walk over the stones with bare feet,” and he loosed his chaplis and dropped them down to me.
They were a bit large, but most Easterns have smaller hands and feet than we have, and I managed to knot them on to the girl’s feet fairly well with the aid of the lanyard of my knife. Then I put my arm about her, and we started slowly down the valley.
When we came to the stream, I made her sit down, and bathed her hands and arms, washed the cut on her shoulder, and tied it up again. Then I washed as much of the blood off my face and neck as I could—I was still bleeding a bit—and made a crude bandage with a second handkerchief I had in my pocket.
The girl tried to help me with this last, but her swollen hands still refused to do anything, and with a gesture of despair she gave it up. “I cannot use my hands,” she said piteously. Then, looking at my face, “Are you much hurt?”
“Nothing really,” I said; “keep your arms still now for a while.”
We went fairly slowly, and it took us an hour to get to the tent. I didn’t try to talk to her much, for I could see that her arms hurt a lot as we walked over the rough stones.
“My God!” said Forsyth, whom we ran into just at the tangi mouth examining plants. “What on earth have you been doing? And who have you got here?”