At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady smiled.
"Don't scalp me," Wade continued, in the same tone. "Squaws never scalp."
He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead.
She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone and the new class he had placed her in.
Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade fully to himself. She perceived that his look was transferring her from the order of scalping squaws to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion, but blushing celestial rosy.
"Thank you," said Wade. "I can sit up now without assistance." And he regretted profoundly that good breeding obliged him to say so.
She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice,—posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an effort to be cool and distant as usual; but it would not do. This weak mighty man still interested her. It was still her business to be strength to him.
He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Let me be your surgeon!" said she.
She produced her own folded handkerchief,—M. D. were the initials in the corner,—and neatly and tenderly turbaned him.