It was here that Key came in. Quiet and self-possessed, firm and kind, he cut away the burnt, torn clothing. He washed out the ragged, blackened wound; he tried the leg, and told us it was fractured—shattered—and would have to come off. And Soltké lay there, under the big tree, on a blanket spread on a heap of grass, as white as alabaster and as still, while we watched silently beside him, fanning him with small green boughs, and keeping off the flies.
Donald Mackay had started off at once for a doctor; but we knew that, with the best luck in finding him, and riding day and night, it must be over two days before we could get him down there. Bobbie went with his brother to the nearest waggons a few miles on ahead, where Donald raised a horse and went on alone on his long ride for help. Robbie came back with a few things that we hoped would help a little, and then we settled down to watch in silence the awful race between ebbing life and coming help.
Through the hot, long, quiet day we watched and tended him, and so on into the cool of the evening. We could do nothing, really; but it seemed to please him and us to whisk away the flies, and say a word of cheer to him, or now and then to shift the cotton sheet that covered him. When the stars came out, and the soft cool feel of night grew up around, and the ruddy flicker of the fire worked its magic on the encampment, changing and beautifying everything with sudden lights and weird shadows; when the cattle were tied up to the yokes, and one by one lay down to sleep with great restful, deep-drawn sighs; when there were no sounds but the steady chewing of the cud and the occasional distant howl of a hyena or the sharp, unreal laugh of the jackal—then did we really seem to settle down to the business of waiting.
Now and then, perhaps three or four times in the night, Soltké asked for water; once or twice towards morning he sighed a suppressed tired sigh; but not a word of complaint, not a sign of impatience, not one evidence of the torture he was enduring, escaped him. When morning came, cool and fragrant, and the blue smoke of the camp-fire curled up straight and clean into the pure air, he was as quiet and uncomplaining still, though not for one second had his eyes closed nor the deadly numbing pain ceased its ache.
Soltké seemed to me to look younger than ever, though terribly white and fagged. His eyes looked blue and brave and trustful—childishly trustful—as ever, and he alone, of all the party, did not keep looking towards the west for the return of Donald Mackay and his charge.
All that day we watched and waited, and on through another slow and silent night; but we could see then that Soltké could not last out much longer without a doctor’s help, and that his chance was becoming a poor one.
It must have been about three in the morning when, lying flat on my back, looking up into the wonderful maze of stars that spatters our southern sky, I heard or felt the tiniest tap, tap, tap under my head. I shot up with the cry of, “There’s Donald at last!”
We were all up and listening, but could hear nothing when standing, of course. However, there was no mistake, and after five minutes we could hear on the cool, clear, still air the footfall of a horse—one horse, as we all remarked with an awful heart-sinking.
Two of us—Key and I—went on to meet the horseman, and in a few minutes came upon Donald leading a horse, upon which, by the aid of a propping arm, was balanced a man whom we all knew—only too well.
In a breath Donald told us that he had sent on from the first camp for the district surgeon, but, chancing on Doc Monroe, had packed him on the horse and come back with him as a makeshift. Munroe was a quack chemist of morose and brutal character, and a drunkard with it. His moral status might be gauged by the fact that no patient among those who knew him personally or by repute ever approached him professionally except upon the contract system—so much the job, payment on delivery, cured. He had a certain repute for ability. God knows how it was earned, for he had killed more men than any other agency in the country; but I believe that his brutal and sardonic indifference to public opinion, his fiendish hints that there was no accident about the deaths of his patients, and that “those who want Doc Munroe can pay for him, by God!” inspired a weird dread which, irrationally, perhaps, yet not unnaturally, begot a sort of blind awed belief in the man’s ability.