Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery Part 20

It was about mid-afternoon when Rayton altered his course for home. He studied the sky and his compa.s.s, and then turned his back to the brown brook. He calculated that this line would take him out to Samson's Mill Settlement shortly after sunset.

An hour later Rayton was still far from home, and among tall timber and heavy underbrush. Red rays of sun flooded from the west, low and level, and became tangled and lost among the black screens of the forest.

Rayton moved slowly, pushing his way through moosewood saplings. He halted, drew his compa.s.s from an inner pocket, and rea.s.sured himself as to his position.

And then, on the left, a rifle shot rang out, sharp and vicious. Rayton jumped, spun round on his heels, then dashed forward, shouting strongly and angrily. He heard the swishing and crackling of flight ahead of him.

He halted, raised his fowling piece, and let fly both barrels. He bellowed murderous threats after the retreating, unseen sniper.

Then, quick as lightning, the strength went out of him. Voice and knees failed together, and he sank silently to the forest loam. So he lay for a minute, dizzy and faint, and stunned with wonder. In a dazed way he set all his senses on a vague inquiry, searching for pain. But he felt no pain--only a quick, strong pulsing in his left shoulder. He took note of this cloudily. Then, of a sudden, his brain cleared, and anxiety sprang alive in his heart.

He sat up, and put his right hand across his body. His shoulder--the thick blanket stuff that covered it--was wet and hot. He held his hand close to his eyes in the waning light, and saw that it was reeking red from finger tips to wrist. A gasp of dismay escaped him. Again he felt all about the wet place with his right hand. Now the blood was streaming down his arm. He discovered the wound--a tender spot, high up.

"I must stop it," he muttered. "It's working like a pump. If I don't plug it up, or tie it up, mighty quick, I'll be drained dry."

A vision of his bloodless corpse p.r.o.ne on the forest moss flashed across his mind. Then he set swiftly and cleverly to work to check the flow of blood. First, he made a thick pad of dry moss and a handkerchief, and bound it tightly over the wound with a silk scarf from his neck. Then he removed his elastic suspenders, and twisted them over his shoulder and under his armpit four times. The pulsing became fainter and fainter, and at last could not be felt at all.

"Thank G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "I do believe I've done the trick. Fine thing, these patent Yankee suspenders."

He got to his feet, swayed, and sat down again.

"I must have lost a quart or two," he muttered. "No head--no knees--no insides."

He sat very stiff for a little while in deep but meaningless thought.

His mind felt like a feather--a puff of smoke--drifting dust. An impish wind was blowing it, and would not allow it to settle.

"This is queer," he said. "Is it loss of blood--or shock? Must do something."

He scrambled to his feet again, picked up his gun, and pressed forward a distance of about twenty yards. He felt a tickling in his shoulder again. It strengthened to a faint throbbing. The horror of bleeding to death returned to him with a grip on his heart. Pain he could struggle against, and perhaps dominate; but this was not pain. This was tender and warm--this flowing out of life.

He sat down again, and again the pulsing quieted and ceased. He saw that he must make a night of it in the woods, unless help came to him. He could not go forward in search of help. He must keep still--or bleed to death. He saw this very clearly, as if written in great white letters on a wall of blackness. And, more dimly, he saw the danger of freezing during the long, cold night. Though warmly clothed, he had no blanket or wrap of any kind.

Fire was the only thing at his command that could keep the frost away.

Reaching about with his right hand, he pulled up a great quant.i.ty of dry moss. Then he shifted his position a little, and repeated the operation.

His arm was feeling numb now, and he could not detect any hint of the pulsing sensation.

Twilight had deepened to night in the forest, and a still cold was creeping in from the vast overhead and the wide, empty portals of the north. Rayton felt about in the underbrush, and discovered plenty of dry fuel, some of it even lying detached upon the ground. He piled his brush and moss to one side of the irregular circle which he had cleared down to the rock and soil, working with the least possible effort. With his sheath knife he cut some living brush, some young spruces, and a few small saplings.

By this time, his left arm and side were aching dully, but his head felt steadier. He placed a bunch of moss, twigs, and larger sticks in the cleared s.p.a.ce, and struck a match. The flame curled up, grew, crowned the dry heap, and painted the crowding walls of the forest with red, dancing shadows. There was no wind--nothing astir in the air but the drifting frost. The smoke of the fire went straight up toward the high, aching stars, and the heat spread around in a narrow circle. Rayton squatted close to the fire, and fed it with more dry sticks, and soon with some of the green wood.

A sudden drowsiness came to him with the soothing glow of the fire. He fought against it for a few minutes, and even nerved himself to crawl away and drag in a large half-rotted stump. He placed this valuable addition to his store of fuel fairly on the top of the fire, banked more dry stuff beneath and around it, and then lay down on his couch of moss.

He felt comfortably warm, deliciously sleepy, and absolutely care free.

The pain in his arm was almost as numb as the arm itself. He scarcely noticed it.

"This isn't so very bad, after all," he murmured. "So long as that pumping doesn't begin again, I really don't care."

He lay on his right side, deep in the dry moss, and gazed into the fire.

He saw the red and yellow flames crawl up the flanks of the shattered and hollow stump.

"It will catch," he murmured. "It will be all right. That's--a good--fire. I'll just lie--here--and watch it--burn. Don't think I'd--better--go to sleep. Not sleepy--any--way."

And then his lids slid down; and in his dreams he continued to watch the red and yellow flames rise and fall, creep up, bring down, and mount again. He dreamed that he did not sleep, but lay and watched the fire crown the shattered stump and gnaw a dozen pa.s.sages into its hollow heart. That was all of his dream. It was no more than a picture, as far as progress and action were concerned. It seemed to him that he lay deep in the dry moss, on his right side, with his eyes wide open. So, for a few minutes--and then the fire died down suddenly to blackness--so suddenly that he sat bolt upright, and uttered a cry of dismay.

It had been a dream. Rayton had dreamed the long night away, thinking himself awake; and now the cheerless gray of a November dawn was sifting through the forest. The fire was a patch of dead ashes. The air was bitterly cold. Rayton felt stiff and sore. His hands and feet were like ice. As he sank back upon his right elbow, a sharp pain stabbed him in the side. He groaned pitifully.

"This is worse than the bullet wound," he muttered. "And this is all my own fault for going to sleep."

His shoulder, fortunately, neither bled nor pained him. The blood in the pad of moss was dry. The arm was stiff, owing largely to the grip of the elastic suspenders and the bandages; but that was only to be expected.

This hot pain in the side, however, leaping inward with every breath and movement, told him of a serious danger.

"I'll just warm myself a bit, and then get out," he said. "I _must_ get out, this time!"

He managed to heap up an armful of moss and twigs, and set it alight. He crawled close to the quick flames, almost embracing the mound of smoke and fire. Little sparks flew out, and fell upon his heavy, frosted clothing, scorched for a little while, and then blinked to nothingness, unheeded. He piled on more fuel, and fairly breathed the heat into his lungs.

A shout rang strongly and hopefully through the silent forest. Rayton sat up weakly, and gazed around him. The light was dim, and he saw nothing but the soaring trees and crowding underbrush. He tried to shout--but his voice was no more than a whisper. He tried again, with desperate effort, and groaned with the hot agony that stabbed his lungs.

He put more dry fuel on the fire, for here was a signal more sure to guide help to him than any outcry. Not content with this, however, he crawled to his gun, inserted a loaded cartridge, and discharged it into the ground; then crawled close to the fire again, lay p.r.o.ne, and made no struggle against waves of flashing color and gigantic sound that flowed over him, trampling him down, down fathoms deep.

When Rayton returned to the surface of that mighty tide, he discovered his head to be supported by a human shoulder and arm. A flask, gripped by a big, familiar hand, was against his lips. On the other side of the fire stood d.i.c.k Goodine, gazing across at him with haggard eyes. Among the trees, the daylight was stronger, and held a hint of sunshine. He sighed, and parted his lips, and the potent liquor from the tilting flask trickled down his throat and glowed within him.

"Thanks, you chaps," he muttered. "I'm mighty glad you found me."

"Drink some more," said Banks tenderly. "You feel like a block of ice.

Swig away, there's a good fellow. Better be drunk than dead!"

Rayton took another big swallow of the stinging brandy. Then, reviving swiftly, he pushed the flask away.

"That's better," he said. "But I'm afraid I've caught a whacker of a cold. Let my fire go out, you know. Got shot--and built a fire--and went to sleep. Very foolish. How'd you happen to find me so soon? Good thing.

My side feels like the devil!"

"You just keep quiet for a while longer," said Banks. "We're going to roll you up in this blanket, now, and feed you with hot beef tea."

d.i.c.k Goodine, who had not moved or spoken before, now pa.s.sed around the fire, stooped, and took the Englishman's right hand in both of his.

"I'm almighty glad you--you are awake, Reginald," he said huskily.

Then he straightened himself quickly, and turned away.

They rolled Rayton in two blankets, and placed him on a deep couch of moss, close to the fire. They bared his feet, and rubbed them to a glow.

They filled him to the neck with scalding beef tea, strongly laced with brandy. They built up the fire, until it roared like a burning hay barn. Banks cut away the left sleeve of the blanket jumper, removed some of the dry blood, and examined the wound.

"Clean as a whistle!" he exclaimed. "In here and out there. That is nothing to worry about, I guess--now that it has stopped bleeding."

Goodine examined the shoulder in silence, and looked tremendously relieved to see so clean a wound. Banks loosened the pinch of the elastic suspenders over and under the shoulder. Then he put on fresh bandages.

"How is the side feeling now?" he asked.

The Englishman smiled and nodded, mumbled some ghosts of words, and then, under the spell of the beef tea and brandy inside him, and the heat of the fire on his body, sank again to sleep. For a few minutes his two friends sat and watched him in silence. d.i.c.k Goodine was the first to speak.

"D'ye think he'll pull 'round all right?" he whispered.