“I’ll throw some soup into you, Cotton Eye. And coffee. Now roll over on your back and cuss me while I git this boot cut off. I’ll be as gentle as a cow with her first calf, pardner.”
Those men of the frontier were steady of hand and ingenious of brain. Broken bones and gunshot wounds were not uncommon. A man needed to know the rudiments of crude surgery in those days when doctors were few and far between.
There was no sleep for either man that night. Buck fashioned a sling to hold the suffering man while he pulled the fractured bone into place. The erstwhile nighthawk groaned. Buck swore softly as he labored. He splinted the leg with stout willow sticks and strips of tanned rawhide saddle strings. Beads of sweat covered the drawn face of Cotton Eye. He lay back, whimpering a little through clenched teeth, sick and faint, but game enough. Buck held a cup of black coffee to his mouth.
“She’s all over but the knittin’, pard. Here’s a cigaroot. She’ll hurt like hell fer a spell, but it’s a clean break and orter heal fast. I’ll run the show till you git well.”
“I’d ’a’ died if you hadn’t come along, Buck.”
“Mebbe.”
Buck built up the fire. His chaps with their precious store of money hung on a wooden peg with his bridle. Now and then he glanced that way, his lips smiling without humor.
“You saved my life, Buck. I ain’t fergittin’.”
“You better try to sleep, feller,” grunted Buck.
Cotton Eye lay there, a little flushed with fever, his eyes brighter than they should have been.