“All right—Charley Jim,” replied Adam.
“Hahh!” Evidently this exclamation was Charley Jim’s expression for good. He arose and backed away to the opening that appeared blocked by dark-skinned, black-haired Indians. Then he pointed at one of them. Adam saw that he indicated the girl who had first come to him. She appeared very shy. Adam gathered the impression that she had been the one who had saved him.
“Charley Jim, who found me—who saved me from that rattlesnake?”
The old Indian understood Adam well enough. He grinned and pointed at the young girl, and pronounced a name that sounded to Adam like, “Oella.”
“When? How long ago? How many days?” asked Adam.
Charley Jim held up three fingers, and with that he waved the other Indians from the opening and went out himself.
Adam was left to the bewildered thoughts of a tired and hazy mind. He had no strength at all, and the brief interview, with its excitement, and exercise of voice, brought him near the verge of unconsciousness. He wavered amid dim shadows of ideas and thoughts. When that condition passed, he awoke to dull, leaden pain in his head. And his body felt like an empty sack the two sides of which were pasted together flat.
The sunlit gleams vanished and the shades of evening made gloom around him. He smelled fragrant wood smoke, and some other odor, long unfamiliar, that brought a watery flow to his mouth and a prickling as of many needles. Then in the semidarkness one of the Indians entered and knelt beside him. Adam distinguished the face of the girl, Oella. She covered him with a blanket. Very gently she lifted his head, and moved her body so that it would support him. The lifting hurt Adam; he seemed to reel and sway, and a blackness covered his sight. The girl held him and put something warm and wet between his lips. She was trying to feed him with a stick or a wooden spoon. The act of swallowing made his throat feel as if it was sore. What a slow process! Adam rather repelled than assisted his nurse, but his antagonism was purely physical and involuntary. Whatever the food was, it had no taste to him. The heat of it, however, and the soft, wet sensation, grew pleasant. He realized when hunger awakened again in him, for it was like a shot through his vitals.
Then the girl laid him back, spread the blanket high, and left him. The strange sensation of fullness, of movement inside Adam’s breast, occupied his mind until drowsiness overcame him.
* * * * *