“Get up, and go to the rest of your people,” said Hugh, making gestures with his hands, and ending up with pointing in the direction where he knew the settlement lay.
The man must have understood him for he hastened to scramble to his feet. There were a few loud jeering remarks from the stockade as the guards discovered that, after all, the one man considered dead had come to life in a wonderfully miraculous fashion, after the scout had done something or other.
There were even some threats made which Hugh hardly imagined could be seriously meant. At the same time the boy had the nerve to walk behind the striker when he was hurrying off, in this way actually interposing his body between him and the men who carried guns, and who were just then looking upon all of these foreigners as enemies to be harshly treated.
When Hugh had thus seen the frightened fellow safely out of range of the stockade, a friendly patch of trees interposing, he discovered Alec and Bud coming back with the empty stretcher.
He was at the side of the badly injured man when they arrived, and assisted in getting him on the stretcher. Bud meantime must have taken a nervous look around, for he hurriedly asked:
“Where’s the other, Hugh, the dead man?”
“Oh, that was him you saw hurrying off,” replied the scout master, with a faint smile. “It turned out that he had been only knocked senseless by a fall or something in the shape of a clipping bullet that struck him on the head. I brought him to his senses by using a little water, and started him off.”
Bud gave a chuckle at hearing this.
“Say, they’ll get your name in the papers yet if you don’t watch out,” he told Hugh. “‘First aid to the injured,’ eh; seems to me that when a scout can bring the dead to life, he’s got a heap beyond that point. But I’m just as well pleased; it’s a whole lot better to have him step out for the camp than it is for us to lug him there on this old stretcher. I’m getting blisters on my hands already; but all the same I’m game to keep on to the finish.”
Nor would he let Hugh even “spell” him at the poles when the other offered to do so; it was one of Bud Morgan’s oddities that he never wanted to give anything up on which he had started, no matter how unpleasant a task it may have turned out to be.