I awoke, I knew not how much later, into a world which at first had a certain warm comfort and languid luxury about it. Then I felt a sharp wrenching and a great pain in my neck, to which it seemed my departed head had, after all, returned. Stimulated by this pain, I turned and looked up into the face of Auberry. He stood frowning, holding in his hand a feathered arrow shaft of willow, grooved along its sides to let the blood run free, sinew-wrapped to hold its feathers tight--a typical arrow of the buffalo tribes. But, as I joined Auberry's gaze, I saw the arrow was headless! Dully I argued that, therefore, this head must be somewhere in my neck. I also saw that the sun was bright. I realized that there must have been a fight of some sort, but did not trouble to know whence the arrow had come to me, for my mind could grasp nothing more than simple things.

Thus I felt that my head was not uncomfortable, after all. I looked again, and saw that it rested on Ellen Meriwether's knees. She sat on the sand, gently stroking my forehead, pushing back the hair. She had turned my head so that the wound would not be pressed. It seemed to me that her voice sounded very far away and quiet.

"We are thinking," said she to me. I nodded as best I could. "Has anything happened?" I asked.

"They have gone," said she. "We whipped them." Her hand again lightly pressed my forehead.

I heard some one else say, behind me, "But we have nothing in the world--not even opium."

"True," said another voice, which I recognized as that of Orme; "but that's his one chance."

"What do you know about surgery?" asked the first voice, which I knew now was Belknap's.

"More than most doctors," was the answer, with a laugh. Their voices grew less distinguishable, but presently I heard Orme say, "Yes, I'm game to do it, if the man says so." Then he came and stooped down beside me.

"Mr. Cowles," said he, "you're rather badly off. That arrow head ought to come out, but the risk of going after it is very great. I am willing to do what you say. If you decide that you would like me to operate for it, I will do so. It's only right for me to tell you that it lies very close to the carotid artery, and that it will be an extraordinarily nice operation to get it out without--well, you know--"

I looked up into his face, that strange face which I was now beginning so well to know--the face of my enemy. I knew it was the face of a murderer, a man who would have no compunction at taking a human life.

My mind then was strangely clear. I saw his glance at the girl. I saw, as clearly as though he had told me, that this man was as deeply in love with Ellen Meriwether as I myself; that he would win her if he could; that his chance was as good as mine, even if we were both at our best. I knew there was nothing at which he would hesitate, unless some strange freak in his nature might influence him, such freaks as come to the lightning, to the wild beast slaying, changes for no reason ever known.

Remorse, mercy, pity, I knew did not exist for him. But with a flash it came to my mind that this was all the better, if he must now serve as my surgeon.

He looked into my eye, and I returned his gaze, scorning to ask him not to take advantage of me, now that I was fallen. His own eye changed. It asked of me, as though he spoke: "Are you, then, game to the core? Shall I admire you and give you another chance, or shall I kill you now?" I say that I saw, felt, read all this in his mind. I looked up into his face, and said:

"You cannot kill me. I am not going to die. Go on. Soon, then."

A sort of sigh broke from his lips, as though he felt content. I do not think it was because he found his foe a worthy one. I do not think he considered me either as his foe or his friend or his patient. He was simply about to do something which would test his own nerve, his own resources, something which, if successful, would allow him to approve his own belief in himself. I say that this was merely sport for him. I knew he would not turn his hand to save my life; but also I knew that he would not cost it if that could be avoided, for that would mean disappointment to himself. What he did he did well. I said then to myself that I would pay him if he brought me through--pay him in some way.

Presently I heard them on the sand again, and I saw him come again and bend over me. All the instruments they could find had been a razor and a keen penknife; and all they could secure to staunch the blood was some water, nearly boiling. For forceps Orme had a pair of bullet molds, and these he cleansed as best he could by dipping them into the hot water.

"Cowles," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice, "I'm going after it. But now I tell you one thing frankly, it's life or death, and if you move your head it may mean death at once. That iron's lying against the big carotid artery. If it hasn't broken the artery wall, there's a ghost of a chance we can get it out safely, in which case you would probably pull through. I've got to open the neck and reach in. I'll do it as fast as I can. Now, I'm not going to think of you, and, gad!--if you can help it--please don't think of me."

Ellen Meriwether had not spoken. She still held my head in her lap.

"Are you game--can you do this, Miss Meriwether?" I heard Orme ask. She made no answer that I could hear, but must have nodded. I felt her hands press my head more tightly. I turned my face down and kissed her hand.

"I will not move," I said.

I saw Orme's slender, naked wrist pa.s.s to my face and gently turn me into the position desired, with my face down and a little at one side, resting in her lap above her knees. Her skirt was already wet with the blood of the wound, and where my head lay it was damp with blood.

Belknap took my hands and pulled them above my head, squatting beyond me. Between Orme's legs as he stooped I could see the dead body of a mule, I remember, and back of that the blue sky I and the sand dunes.

Unknown to her, I kissed the hem of her garment; and then I said a short appeal to the Mystery.

I felt the entrance of the knife or razor blade, felt keenly the pain when the edge lifted and stretched the skin tight before the tough hide of my neck parted smoothly in a long line. Then I felt something warm settle under my cheek as I lay, and I felt a low shiver, whether of my body or that of the girl who held me I could not tell; but her hands were steady. I felt about me an infinite kindness and carefulness and pitying--oh, then I learned that life, after all, is not wholly war--that there is such a thing as fellow-suffering and loving kindness and a wish to aid others to survive in this hard fight of living; I knew that very well. But I did not gain it from the touch of my surgeon's hands.

The immediate pain of this long cutting which laid open my neck for some inches through the side muscles was less after the point of the blade went through and ceased to push forward. Deeper down I did not feel so much, until finally a gentle searching movement produced a jar strangely large, something which grated, and nearly sent all the world black again. I knew then that the knife was on the base of the arrow head; then I could feel it move softly and gently along the side of the arrow head--I could almost see it creep along in this delicate part of the work.

Then, all at once, I felt one hand removed from my neck. Orme, half rising from his stooping posture, but with the fingers of his left hand still at the wound, said: "Belknap, let go one of his hands. Just put your hand on this knife-blade, and feel that artery throb! Isn't it curious?"

I heard some muttered answer, but the grasp at my wrists did not relax.

"Oh, it's all right now," calmly went on Orme, again stooping. "I thought you might be interested. It's all over now but pulling out the head."

I felt again a shiver run through the limbs of the girl. Perhaps she turned away her head, I do not know. I felt Orme's fingers spreading widely the sides of the wound along the neck, and the boring of the big headed bullet molds as they went down after a grip, their impact softened by the finger extended along the blade knife.

The throbbing artery whose location this man knew so well was protected.

Gently feeling down, the tips of the mold got their grip at last, and an instant later I felt release from a certain stiff pressure which I had experienced in my neck. Relief came, then a dizziness and much pain. A hand patted me twice on the back of the neck.

"All right, my man," said Orme. "All over; and jolly well done, too, if I do say it myself!"

Belknap put his arm about me and helped me to sit up. I saw Orme holding out the stained arrow head, long and thin, in his fingers.

"Would you like it?" he said.

"Yes," said I, grinning. And I confess I have it now somewhere about my house. I doubt if few souvenirs exist to remind one of a scene exactly similar.

The girl now kept cloths wrung from the hot water on my neck. I thanked them all as best I could. "I say, you men," remarked Mandy McGovern, coming up with a cob-stoppered flask in her hand, half filled with a pale yellow-white fluid, "ain't it about time for some of that thar anarthestic I heerd you all talking about a while ago?"

"I shouldn't wonder," said Orme. "The st.i.tching hurts about as much as anything. Auberry, can't you find me a bit of sinew somewhere, and perhaps a needle of some sort?"

CHAPTER XIX

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

A vast dizziness and a throbbing of the head remained after they were quite done with me, but something of this left me when finally I sat leaning back against the wagon body and looked about me. There were straight, motionless figures lying under the blankets in the shade, and under other blankets were men who writhed and moaned. Belknap pa.s.sed about the place, graver and apparently years older than at the beginning of this, his first experience in the field. He put out burial parties at once. A few of the Sioux, including the one on whom Andrew Jackson McGovern had vented his new-found spleen, were covered scantily where they lay. Our own dead were removed to the edge of the bluff; and so more headstones, simple and rude, went to line the great pathway into the West.

Again Ellen Meriwether came and sat by me. She had now removed the gray traveling gown, for reasons which I could guess, and her costume might have been taken from a collector's chest rather than a woman's wardrobe.

All at once we seemed, all of us, to be blending with these surroundings, becoming savage as these other savages. It might almost have been a savage woman who came to me.

Her skirt was short; made of white tanned antelope leather. Above it fell the ragged edges of a native tunic or shirt of yellow buck, ornamented with elk teeth, embroidered in stained quills. Her feet still wore a white woman's shoes, although the short skirt was enforced by native leggins, beaded and becylindered in metals so that she tinkled as the walked. Her hair, now becoming yellower and more sunburned at the ends, was piled under her felt hat, and the modishness of long cylindrical curls was quite forgot. The brown of her cheeks, already strongly sunburned, showed in strange contrast to the snowy white of her neck, now exposed by the low neck aperture of the Indian tunic. Her gloves, still fairly fresh, she wore tucked through her belt, army fashion. I could see the red heart still, embroidered on the cuff!

She came and sat down beside me on the ground, I say, and spoke to me. I could not help reflecting how she was reverting, becoming savage. I thought this--but in my heart I knew she was not savage as myself.

"How are you coming on?" she said. "You sit up nicely--"

"Yes, and can stand, or walk, or ride," I added.

Her brown eyes were turned full on me. In the sunlight I could see the dark specks in their depths. I could see every shade of tan on her face.

"You are not to be foolish," she said.

"You stand all this n.o.bly," I commented presently.

"Ah, you men--I love you, you men!" She said it suddenly and with perfect sincerity. "I love you all--you are so strong, so full of the desire to live, to win. It is wonderful, wonderful! Just look at those poor boys there--some of them are dying, almost, but they won't whimper.

It is wonderful."

"It is the Plains," I said. "They have simply learned how little a thing is life."