Arrived there, she stopped for breath for a while, and then sent forth a long "Coo-ie." No answer. "I was right," thought Billjim, "he is hurt. My God! he may be dead out here, while we were there chatting and laughing as usual. Oh, Jack, Jack!"
Up the gully she sped, from one abandoned working to another, over rocks and stones, into water-holes, with no thought for herself. At last, there, huddled up against the bank, with a huge boulder pinning one leg to the ground, lay poor Jack L'Estrange.
Billjim's first impression was that he was dead, he looked so limp and white out in the open there with the moon shining on his face, but when her accustomed courage returned she stooped over him and found him alive, but unconscious.
She bathed his temples with water, murmuring:
"Jack dear, wake up. Oh, my own lad, wake up and tell me what to do."
Jack opened his eyes at last, as if her soft crooning had reached his numbed senses.
"Halloa, Billjim," he said faintly. "Is that you or a dream?"
"It's me, Jack," replied Billjim, flinging school talk to the four winds. "It's me. What can I do? How can I help? Are you suffering much?"
"Well," said Jack, "you can't shift that boulder, that's certain, for I've tried until I went off. It's not paining now much, seems numbed. Do you think you could fetch the boys? Get Frenchy especially; he knows something about bandaging and that. It's a case with the leg, I think."
"All right, dear," said Billjim; and the "dear" slipped out unawares, but she went on hurriedly to cover the slip: "Yes, I'll get Frenchy and Travers, Tate and Micky the Rat; they all live close together. You won't faint again, Jack, will you? See, I'll leave this pannikin here with water. Keep up your pecker, we shan't be long," and she was gone to hide the tears in her eyes, and the choke in her voice. "It's a case with the leg" was too much for her.