But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he sank as he had been. “I guess I don't amount to much,” said he. “I feel like I was nothing.”
“Well, I'm something,” said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of breath. “And I know what she weighs.” He stared admiringly through his spectacles at the seated man.
The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought Barker's face. “Doc,” said he, “ain't I young to have my nerve quit me this way?”
His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
“I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?” pursued McLean, wistfully.
“You six-foot infant!” said Barker. “Look at your hand.”
Lin stared at it—the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound, not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
“She is strong,” he said. “Her system will fight to the end. Two hours yet, maybe. Queer world!” he moralized. “People half killing themselves to keep one in it who wanted to go—and one that nobody wanted to stay!”
McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of him. “I would not want,” he said, with hesitating utterance—“I'd not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do to-night.”
Barker touched him on the arm. “If there had been another man I could trust—”