Peter the Brazen Part 59

"My clinic!" She smiled.

"You're not practising medicine out here--in this street!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Indeed I am," she replied. "Some of these people have been waiting their turns since daylight. I returned from Kialang an hour ago. And I'll work until I collapse. I must. I wish I could multiply myself by a thousand. There's not another doctor within miles. You can watch, if you'd like," she added, then called shrilly.

An old woman appeared, and went scurrying, returning immediately with a clean, wooden bucket filled with hot water.

Eileen removed from the hand-bag what appeared to be a wallet.

Stripping a rubber band from this she revealed a row of shining surgical knives. Then she produced from the black bag several bottles and a roll of absorbent cotton.

"Eyes," she told him as her hand was swallowed again by the black bag.

A child, a river boy, was pushed forward by a squinting mother.

Quaking fearfully, he sat down on the cask at the girl's feet.

She turned to Peter. "This child has been without sight for a month.

Without this operation he would remain blind forever. To-morrow he will see again."

"You're wonderful!" Peter exclaimed.

At the gentle touch the child's loud whining ceased. She lifted one of the swollen lids. The boy did not flinch.

"Filth caused this," she explained. "The Chinese are the dirtiest race on earth, anyway," she added, dipping a clump of cotton into an antiseptic wash and rinsing the patient's eyes. "Where there is too much dirt, there is blindness. One-fourth of the population in this section of China are blind. They go to 'fortune tellers,' and they remain blind. In nine cases out of ten the simplest of operations followed by care will cure this type of blindness."

"Good enough; but will they be careful afterward?" Peter was curious to know.

"Once their sight is given back to them, they follow directions to a T.

I'm leaving behind me a trail of the cleanest Chinamen you ever laid eyes on!"

She became silent, and so did Peter, who watched, hardly daring to breathe, the swift, sure dartings of the tiny knife in her white fingers. It was done in a jiffy; and there seemed to be on pain.

"Shouldn't you have an operating-room?" inquired Peter, as she bound up the child's eyes in gauze.

She gave him a bright, professional smile. "Peter, I've learned to operate with a thousand hooting infidels crowding closer than this. In Nanking I was nearly mobbed."

Peter looked concerned. "Did they harm you?"

"Oh, no! They wanted their children, their wives, and their virtuous mothers to see the light of day again."

"Eileen, you're an angel!"

"Be careful, Peter, or I'll kiss you in front of all these people."

She blushed and smiled. "I think I was very bold to come up here all alone. Don't you?"

Peter grumbled something which escaped her.

She sat down wearily on the cask and looked up at him forlornly. "I thought it would be a lark; but it isn't. It's the hardest kind of work. There seem to be so many blind people--and I get tired--furious!"

"Can't we break away from this mob and have a little chin-chin by ourselves?"

"You're not anxious, Peter?"

"This is not Shanghai," he rejoined sententiously. "Ching-Fu is not a healthy spot for me--or for you. I've been watched. Perhaps, this very minute----" He stopped and looked at the dour faces pressed about them.

She shrugged. "Are you going on to Len Yang this time, Peter?"

He nodded slightly. "Perhaps."

"With me?"

"Without you," he stated firmly, dimly conscious of a stir on the fringe of their audience.

"It isn't fair," she murmured; "I've come all this way----" She touched her lips with the tip of a pink tongue. What she might have added was forestalled by rising confusion on the edge of the crowd.

There were harsh voices, shrill voices; then these sounds were dwarfed by the thunder of furious hoofs.

White with the dust of the lower trail a troop of Mongolian hors.e.m.e.n, riding high in their jeweled saddles, swept into the square, shouting.

Lashing their horses, they drove into the gathering with the fury of Cossacks.

Peter was thrown to one side by a tall man whom he had taken for a peasant. He tugged at his pocket, but the coolie was fighting his way toward the hors.e.m.e.n.

Indifferent to her struggles and screams, this giant carried Eileen in naked, brawny arms.

Peter leaped after, shouting and cursing at those who stood in his way.

Some one tripped him. He regained his footing, shot his fist into the jaw of an argumentative youth, and struggled on.

The onlookers were scattering with loud and frightened squeals, running into one another, gathering in bewildered groups, darting for doorways, like sheep attacked by a wolf pack.

Then a black horse swept so close to Peter that the stirrup stripped the b.u.t.tons from his tunic. A heavy whip stung him across the shoulders.

When he recovered from this blow the struggling girl was yards away, still struggling, but no longer screaming. She had been transferred to the arms of a giant Mongol, who evidently was the leader of this pack.

Peter whipped out the automatic and let go a burst at the horseman who now blocked his way; and the Mongolian, in the act of lifting a knife from its holster-scabbard, dipped across the animal's flank, with his eyes rolling toward heaven, his foot caught in one stirrup.

The horse, frightened, leaped up and spun about, twisting the fallen rider about his heels. And Peter had clear way for another few feet.

Another horseman swept down upon him. Peter brought the gun up and brought it down with fury. Twice he shot, and then this interference was removed.

The troops were gathering into crude formation, evidently for another charge. Eileen had disappeared.

Peter, knowing that she was somewhere in that quadrangle of rearing horses, struck forward, stumbling over fallen bodies, slipping in mud.

His lungs burned, and he choked in a consuming rage. And suddenly he heard her scream his name.

The leader of the desert pack held her across his saddle, with his mighty arms pinioning her. He saw Peter, shouted, jabbed down with his spurs, and his mount fairly leaped. The others wheeled gracefully, and they vanished in thunder toward the plain.

Peter discovered the horse of one of the fallen warriors and leaped to capture him.

And in the next moment he was groping in blindness.