One woman acted as though on the verge of going crazy. She must have been the wife of the man they were now bearing in. Indeed, only for Hugh preventing it, she would have thrown herself upon the form of the badly injured striker. When she fought like a wildcat to break past Hugh, the latter appealed to the padrone, who had come bustling up.
“Keep her away, unless you want the man to die right here!” Hugh told him. “Don’t you see he’s so badly hurt that he mustn’t be touched?”
The padrone grasped the situation, and closing a hand on the woman’s arm he led her away, at the same time speaking to her sternly. After that she no longer tried to brush any of the scouts aside, for she had evidently been told that they were the best friends the strikers had, and were trying everything in their power to save lives and stop pain.
When Hugh looked around, he was really appalled at what he saw. There were some five who lay there on the ground, all of them groaning, and carrying on as ignorant people nearly always do when in great pain of body and distress of mind. Besides these there were a number sitting on the ground, surrounded by clusters of their people, all of them injured more or less severely.
The clatter of tongues was dreadful. It reminded Hugh of a certain windmill he had once seen in action, one of the real old-styled Dutch type, with the sails stretching nearly to the ground, and which made the most dolorous sounds when the mill was working rapidly in the freshening breeze.
Hugh had not forgotten what he had said to the two stretcher-bearers while on the way over with the last load.
“Ralph, step here a minute, will you?” he asked, and the other immediately complied, with a look of wonder on his face, for he could not imagine what was about to be sprung on him now.
Hugh was hastily writing something on a piece of paper torn from an old letter he had in his pocket.
“I am bothered about some of these wounded people, to tell you the truth, Ralph,” the scout master told him. “I’m going to pack you off to the nearest station on the railroad to send a message for me.”
“To the authorities, asking for help?” Ralph Kenyon queried.