“It’s only a little way to the house—’twouldn’t pay to try to load him in here. I’ll go ahead, and have things ready to take care of him. Get him to the door, and there I’ll take him off your hands.”
Step tightened his grip on the stretcher pole. He looked to Sam for orders.
“Give us the word, Sam,” he said. “You’re captain of this team.”
Sam felt his pulse quicken. Circumstances had done for him what he would have been puzzled to do for himself. Once more he and his chums of the club were on the good old terms of fellowship.
CHAPTER VI
A LITTLE LUNCH
“Well! I’m mighty glad that’s over. But now what are we going to do?”
It was Step who spoke thus, addressing Poke and Sam and Varley, as they stood grouped in the road before the house in which they had left the injured man. Nearly an hour had passed since they brought him home on the extemporized stretcher, and it had been a busy hour at that. Dr. Emery had not hesitated to press the boys into service. They had gone on errands to neighbors’ houses; they had assisted in the transfer of the victim of the accident from the stretcher to his bed; they had brought in a supply of fire-wood for the woman of the house; Poke had driven away in the doctor’s sleigh and returned with a nurse of much experience in caring for the sick of the countryside. At last, though, all that could be done had been done. The doctor had resumed his interrupted round; the nurse of experience had taken charge of the distracted household; the sufferer was resting as comfortably as one might hope to rest with fractured ribs and bruised body and limbs.
“Boys, you’ve behaved like trumps,” had been Dr. Emery’s parting words. “It has been a good morning’s work for all of you. Guess I’ll have to enroll you as my first-aid detachment.”
With that he clucked to his horse, and rode off, leaving the four in the road. There followed a long silence, which Step ended. The boys looked at each other. Step had uttered the thought of all of them. What were they to do next?
The strain and the excitement were over. Not one of them but felt the reaction. Varley gave a queer little laugh.