Claim Number One Part 40

Boyle moved one foot slightly, as if to steady himself for a supreme effort. A little stone which he dislodged tumbled down the side of a four-inch gully with a noise that seemed the sound of an avalanche. With that alarm Shanklin's arm moved swiftly. Like a reflection in a gla.s.s, Boyle's arm moved with it.

Two shots; such a bare margin between them that the ear scarcely could mark the line. Then one.

Shanklin, his hands half lifted, his arms crooked at the elbow and extended from his sides, dropped his pistol, his mouth open, as if to utter the surprise which was pictured in his features. He doubled limply at the knees, collapsed forward, fell upon his face.

Boyle put his hand to his breast above his heart, pressing it hard; took it away, turned about in his tracks as if bewildered; swayed sickly, sank to his knees, and fell over to his side with the silent, hopeless, huddling movement of a wild creature that has been shot in the woods.

Ten-Gallon came from behind the tent, where he had been compressing himself into a crevice between two boulders. His face was white, and down it sweat was pouring, drawn from the agony of his base soul. He went to the place where Dr. Slavens knelt beside Boyle.

"Cra-zy Christmas!" gasped he, his mouth falling open. Then again:

"Cra-zy Christmas!"

Slavens had gone to Boyle first, because there was something in the utter collapse of Shanklin which told him the man was dead. As he stripped Boyle's clothing off to bare the wound, Slavens ordered Ten-Gallon to go and see whether the old gambler had paid his last loss.

"I won't touch him! I won't lay a hand on him!" Ten-Gallon refused, drawing back in alarm.

Boyle was not dead, though Shanklin's bullet had struck him perilously near the heart and had pa.s.sed through his body. With each feeble intake of breath blood bubbled from the blue mark, which looked like a little bruise, on his chest.

"Well, see if you can make a fire, then, and hurry about it! Get some water on to boil as fast as you can!" Slavens directed the nerveless chief of police.

Ten-Gallon set about his employment with alacrity while Slavens went over to Shanklin, turning his face up to the sky. For a little while he stooped over Hun; then he took the gambler's coat from the saddle and spread it over his face. Hun Shanklin was in need of no greater service that man could render him.

Dr. Slavens took off his coat and brought out his instrument-case. He gave Boyle such emergency treatment as was possible where the gun-fighter lay, and then called Ten-Gallon to help take him into the tent.

"Lord, he's breathin' through his back!" said Ten-Gallon. "He'll never live till we git him to the tent--never in this world, Doc! I knew a feller that was knifed in the back one time till he breathed through his ribs that way, and he----"

"Never mind," said Slavens. "Take hold of him."

Ten-Gallon's fire burned briskly, and the water boiled. Dr. Slavens sterilized his instruments in a pan of it, and set about to establish the drainage for the wound upon which the slender chance of Boyle's life depended. Boyle was unconscious, as he had been from the moment he fell.

They stretched him on the doctor's cot. With the blankets spread underfoot to keep down the dust, the early sun shining in through the lifted flap, Slavens put aside whatever animosity he held against the man and went to work earnestly in an endeavor to save his life.

Ten-Gallon showed a nervous anxiety to get away. He wanted to go after his horse; he wanted to go to Boyle's tent and get breakfast for himself; and then he pressed the necessity of his presence in Comanche to keep and preserve the peace. But Slavens would not permit him to quit the tent until he could no longer be of a.s.sistance.

It was not the wounded body of Jerry Boyle that the pot-bellied peace officer feared, but the stiffening frame of Hun Shanklin, lying out there in the bright sun. Every time he looked that way he drew up on himself, like a snail. At length Slavens gave him permission to leave, charging him to telephone to Meander for the coroner the moment that he arrived in Comanche, and to get word to Boyle's people at the earliest possible hour.

There seemed to be nothing for Slavens to do but to forego his trip in quest of Agnes, and sit there in the hope that she would come. Boyle could not be left alone, and Shanklin's body must be brought up out of the gully and covered.

This ran through his mind in erratic starts and blanks as he bent over the wounded man, listening to his respiration with more of a humane than professional fear that the next breath might tell him of the hemorrhage which would make a sudden end of Boyle's wavering and uncertain life.

Ten-Gallon had been gone but a little while when Slavens heard him clattering back in his heel-dragging walk over the rocks. He appeared before the doctor with a lively relief in his face.

"Some people headin' in here," he announced. "Maybe they'll be of some help to you. I hated to go and leave you here alone with that feller"--jerking his head toward Shanklin's body--"for I wouldn't trust him dead no more than I would alive!"

"All right," said Slavens, scarcely looking up.

Ten-Gallon appeared to be over his anxiety to leave. He waited in front of the tent as the sound of horses came nearer.

"Stop them off there a little way," ordered the doctor. "We don't want any more dust around here than we can help."

He looked around for his hat, put it on, and went out, sleeves up, to see that his order was enforced. Agnes was alighting from a horse as he stepped out. A tall, slight man with a gray beard was demanding of Ten-Gallon what had happened there.

Relief warmed the terror out of her eyes as Agnes ran forward and caught Dr. Slavens' hand.

"You're safe!" she cried. "I feared--oh, I feared!"

A shudder told him what words faltered to name.

"It wasn't my fight," he told her.

"This is Governor Boyle," said Agnes, presenting the stranger, who had stood looking at them with ill-contained impatience, seeing himself quite forgotten by both of them in that moment of meeting.

"I am sorry to tell you, sir, that your son is gravely wounded," said Dr. Slavens, driving at once to the point.

"Where is he?" asked the Governor, his face pale, his throat working as if he struggled with anguish which fought to relieve itself in a cry.

Dr. Slavens motioned to the tent. The old man went forward, stopping when he saw his unconscious son and the b.l.o.o.d.y clothing beside the cot.

He put his hand to his forehead and stood a moment, his eyes closed.

Then he went in and bent over the wounded man.

A sob of pity rose in Agnes' throat as she watched him and saw the pain and affection upon his face. Presently Governor Boyle turned and walked to the spot where Hun Shanklin's body lay. Without a word, he lifted the coat from the gambler's face, covered it again, and turned away.

"Bad company! Bad company!" said he, sadly shaking his head. "How did it happen, Doctor? You were here? First"--he held up his hand, as if to check the doctor's speech--"will he live?"

"Men have recovered from worse wounds," responded the doctor. "There's a chance for him, at least."

He related, then, the circ.u.mstance of the meeting, the brief quarrel, and the fight, Ten-Gallon putting in a word here and there, although his testimony was neither asked nor welcomed.

"I don't know what the cause of the quarrel was," concluded the doctor.

"Two days ago I relinquished this claim to your son. He came here immediately and took possession."

"You--you relinquished!" exclaimed Agnes, disappointment in her voice, reproach in her eyes.

"I am sorry that you relinquished it," said the Governor. "This brave young woman rode all the way to my ranch--almost a hundred miles--to save it to you. I was absent when she arrived, but I set out with her at the earliest possible moment upon my return. We rode all night last night, sir, changing horses in Comanche this morning."

"I am grateful to you, both of you, for the trouble and fatigue you have undergone in my behalf. But the case, as your son urged it, sir, was beyond temporizing. Perhaps Miss Gates has told you?"

The Governor nodded curtly, a look of displeasure on his face.

"I can't believe that Jerry meant it," he protested. "It must have been one of his jokes."

"I am sorry, then, that my idea of humor is so widely divergent from his!" said Dr. Slavens with deep feeling.

"Well, he's paid for it. The poor boy has paid for his indiscretion,"

said the old man sadly.

He turned away and went a little s.p.a.ce, where he stood as if in meditation.

"You promised me that you'd do nothing until you returned and saw me,"