"Copperhead bit me as I was a-creepin' through a fence jest outside o' town," the mountaineer explained apologetically. "Got me afore I knowed it was anywhar nigh me. That's what I wanted with a big drink o' whisky, mis', it a-bein' good fo' snakebite."
"Oh, you must have Doctor Rice!" the little woman cried frightenedly. Already she was fairly pushing him toward a veranda chair that Wolfe had hurriedly provided; he sat down as obediently as a child would have done. "Arnold, phone Doctor Rice——"
"But there's no time to be lost in waiting for Rice, mother," said Wolfe. "Look at that arm! I can treat snakebite; I've got some potassium permanganate that I bought to take to the hills with me——"
He ran to his bedroom and returned with a small bottle. Alex Singleton rose angrily.
"I hain't a-goin' to let you do it!" he declared.
"You'll have to," replied Wolfe. "You don't want to die, do you?"
"But thar's whisky——"
"Whisky," old Buck Wolfe's son interrupted, "is as bad as it is good. It stimulates the heart action, but it spreads the poison through the system rapidly. This permanganate—we just cut right through the marks of the fangs with a knife; then we draw out as much poison as will come; then we fill the wounds with this stuff, and pretty soon you'll be as good as new. You see, you evidently got the tourniquet on quick, which is a big thing."
"Me, a Singleton, and you, a Wolfe?" The mountain man was suffering much. He was a stranger in a strange land, dazed and bewildered, and heart-broken because of his treatment of his only daughter. He weakened.
"You'd do that fo' me, a Singleton? Ef you would, I hain't a-goin' to be lowdown enough to keep ye from it. Yank out yore knife and cut the whole danged arm off, Little Buck, ef ye want to!"