Quesada cried out hoarsely in shocked and fearful astonishment. He sprung toward her. But a cramp seemed to bind her right arm; she let go her clutching hold on the side of the tick, and fell back. Tenderly the bandolero tucked a pillow under her rich-crowned head and pulled over her a wolfskin from the nearby couch.
They came out into the brisk clean air of the morning. Like a blow, dismay had struck dull the light in each man's eyes. Said Quesada simply:
"This is the first stage of autumnal cholera. God grant that she may recover!"
"What measures do you take to relieve the sufferers, to counteract the disease, to wipe out the plague?" the American wanted to know.
"There is little that we can do, Senor Carson. Up here in these hills only the simplest remedies are available to our use. When a man is burning up inside and calls for water, we give him water—"
"From that cesspool there?" And Carson indicated the open yellow rivulet coursing down the center of the uneven street.
"It is all we have. Our fathers built that stone channel, ages ago, in the days of the Moor. What would you, Senor Americano? The nearest stream, other than this, is far down the goat path in the lower gorge."
"Go on," said Carson with unintentional brusqueness. "When a man disgorges—"
"We tell him to put his finger down his throat and to keep straining so long as a particle of undigested food shows. When his stomach is sick and worn from bowel evacuations, and wretched with intestinal pains, we put a plaster of hot mustard over his abdomen as a counter-irritant, or we rub his abdomen with penetrating turpentine. There is turpentine in the few pines that remain in the dank hollows of these hills."
Carson nodded rather abstractedly. It was as if his mind were divided between listening to Quesada and developing along a certain line of reasoning. The others stood close about and heeded in perplexed wonder.