He smiled feebly and shook his head.
"It's all right, if it's you," he said faintly, after a moment. "You're all right—always!"
CHAPTER XXII
CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES
After his few words to Dorothy the wounded man lapsed again into coma, in which condition he was found by the physician, who returned with Santry from Crawling Water. During the long intervening time the girl had not moved from the bedside, though the strain of her own terrible experience with Moran was making itself felt in exhaustive fatigue.
"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."
"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out from town.
Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly impatience. The physician next made a thorough examination, for which he was better fitted than many a fashionable city practitioner, by reason of his familiarity with wounds of all kinds.