CHAPTER X

DOC LEE

Arlie knew nothing of wounds or their treatment. All she could do was
to wash the shoulder in cold water and bind it with strips torn from
her white underskirt. When his face and hands grew hot with the fever,
she bathed them with a wet towel. How badly he was hurt-- whether he
might not even die before Dick's return-- she had no way of telling.
His inconsequent babble at first frightened her, for she had never
before seen a person in delirium, nor heard of the insistence with
which one harps upon some fantasy seized upon by a diseased mind.

"She thinks you're a skunk, Steve. So you are. She's dead right-- dead
right-- dead right. You lied to her, you coyote! Stand up in the
corner, you liar, while she whangs at you with a six-gun! You're a
skunk-- dead right."

So he would run on in a variation of monotony, the strong, supple,
masterful man as helpless as a child, all the splendid virility
stricken from him by the pressure of an enemy's finger. The eyes that
she had known so full of expression, now like half-scabbarded steel,
and now again bubbling from the inner mirth of him, were glazed and
unmeaning. The girl had felt in him a capacity for silent
self-containment; and here he was, picking at the coverlet with
restless fingers, prattling foolishly, like an infant.

She was a child of impulse, sensitive and plastic. Because she had
been hard on him before he was struck down, her spirit ran open-armed
to make amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what