The Luck of the Mounted Part 28

Abstractedly, the old soldier read and re-read the verse till his eyes ached, and he was forced to lower them and meet the tell-tale ones of Kilbride.

The Doctor, with a final satisfied scrutiny of his patient's wound, which he had laid bare, bade the nurse dress it afresh, then, beckoning to the others, he withdrew from the room, followed by the O.C. and his subordinates. The Doctor's first words rea.s.sured them in no little degree.

"Oh, I've good hopes of him," he said. "He seems to be doing all right.

He'll pull around--that is, unless any unforeseen complications set in.

It's that journey down here yesterday that's upset him. Absolutely necessary under the circ.u.mstances, of course, but--terribly hard on a man in his condition. I think it'll be best for n.o.body to visit him--for awhile anyway . . . must be kept as quiet as possible. Well! let's have a look at the others!"

The remaining wounded men occupied a large, semi-private ward lower down the corridor. Of these last Hardy's case was by far the most serious.

He had been shot through the body; the high-pressure Luger bullet luckily missing any vital organ. McCullough had been drilled through the calf of his left leg, Davis through the arm, and Belt had had the knuckles stripped from his right hand. All of them were resting quietly, though weak from loss of blood and the train journey,

The O.C. and Kilbride remained for a short time in the ward, manifesting much kindly sympathy for the injured men, then, deeming that perhaps the party was r.e.t.a.r.ding the nurses' ministrations, the O.C. withdrew, beckoning his subordinates to follow him.

Slavin and Yorke walked slowly down the hospital steps and climbed into the Police drag again. Sloan gathered up his lines and swung around on his high seat.

"Hullo!" he remarked sleepily. "Here you are again, eh? Begun to think you were both in there for keeps! Well, did you see him?"

"Yes!" answered Yorke tonelessly, avoiding the teamster's eyes, "We've seen him. Home, James!"

Firm, measured footsteps sounded in the hospital corridor and halted with a jingle of spurs outside the door of room Number Fifty-six.

"Come aboard!" came the clear, boyish voice of its occupant, in response to a knuckle-tattoo on the panel, and the visitors, Slavin and Yorke, entered.

Redmond, sitting up in bed, comfortably propped with pillows, threw aside the magazine he had been reading and greeted the new-comers jovially and with a light in his eyes which did the hearts of those worthies good to see.

A month's careful nursing and absolute quiet had transformed their wounded comrade into a somewhat different being from the delirious patient they had beheld when last they stood in that room. Allowing for a slight emaciation and the inevitable hospital pallor, he appeared to be well on the road to convalescence.

"Sit at ease!" he said, with a fair semblance of his old grin. "Smoke up if you want to, they don't kick about it here. I've tried it but it tastes rotten as yet. Well! What's doin' in L?" (He referred to the Division.)

"h.e.l.l, yu' mane," corrected Slavin grimly, as he and Yorke proceeded to divest themselves of their side-arms and unb.u.t.ton their tunics. "Not much doin' now, but--later, p'raps. . . ."

"Just got back from Supreme Court," explained Yorke. "Gully! . . . He's to be 'b.u.mped off' this day-month. . . ."

There came a long, tense silence.

"G---d!" broke out Yorke suddenly, arousing Redmond out of the deep reverie into which he had sunk on receipt of the news--"the look on that Eugene Aram face of his when the jury filed in and threw the book at him!

I can't forget it somehow."

"Well! yeh want tu thin!" remarked Slavin bluntly. "Quit ut! . . . d'ju hear? . . . 'Tis no sort av talk, that, for a sick room. . . ."

And hereafter they all avoided the sinister subject.

Presently McCullough came limping in on his crutches, and ere long that wily individual succeeded with his customary ingenuity in inveigling the company into a facetious barrack-room argument. Later they commenced relating racy stories.

Slavin's deep-set eyes began to twinkle and glow, as he unburdened himself of a lengthy narrative concerning a furlough he had spent in his native land many years back, in which Ballymeen Races, a disreputable "welshing" bookmaker, himself, a jug of whiskey and a blackthorn stick were all hopelessly mixed in one grand Hibernian tangle.

"Beat ut, he did, over hedge an' bog an' ditch, wid all our money, th'

dhirrty dog. But I cud run tu, in thim days, an' whin I caught up I shure did play a tchune on th' n.o.b av um!" concluded the sergeant thoughtfully. In pursuance of his daily round of the wards, Dr. Sampson presently came swinging in amongst them and saluted the party with his usual breezy bonhomie. A universal favourite with the members of the Force his entry was acclaimed with delight. They promptly bade him sit down and contribute--a la Boccaccio--to their impromptu Decameron, which request he (sad to relate) complied with.

Amid the roar of laughter that greeted the Doctor's last bon mot, that gentleman looked ruefully at his watch and prepared to depart.

"Twenty past twelve!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "and I've got four more patients to see yet. . . ! Behold the r.e.t.a.r.ding influences of bad company!"

"Say, Doctor," enquired Yorke, "how's Hardy doing? Is he bucking up at all? He was pretty down in the mouth last time I saw him."

The Doctor's genial countenance clouded slightly. "Well, no!" he said, gravely, "he's not doing well at all. I've been rather worried over him lately. The man's relapsed into a curious state of inertia--seems incapable of being roused. Organically he's nothing to fear now; I'll stake my professional reputation on that. But when a man gets down like he is now, why, the mind often reacts on the body with serious results.

If he was in a tropical climate he'd snuff out like a candle. That's all that's r.e.t.a.r.ding his otherwise certain recovery now--if we could only----"

Here, McCullough, who had been an interested listener broke in. "Rouse him, Doctor?" he queried, "you say he wants rousing? . . . Is that all? . . . All right then! . . . I know him better than you do--I'll bet you I'll rouse him!" he concluded a trifle brutally.

And he swung off on his crutches and presently levered himself into the ward where Hardy lay.

In actual bodily recovery the latter's physical condition fully equalled Redmond's, but the brooding, listless demeanor of the patient confirmed only too well the Doctor's diagnosis. Now, sunk in the coma of utter dejection, Hardy was lying back on his pillows like a man weary of life.

Sometime earlier, in response to his earnest solicitations, he had been allowed to have his beloved parrot in hospital with him. All day long the disreputable-looking bird gabbled away contentedly as it climbed around in its cage, which had been placed on a small table alongside the cot.

McCullough's first move was to resort to the never-failing expedient of arousing the parrot's ire by puffing tobacco-smoke into its cage.

Mechanically the outraged bird responded with a shocking blast of invective, winking rapidly its white parchment-lidded eyes and swinging excitedly to and fro on its perch.

Hardy admonished the joker--lethargically, but with a certain degree of malevolence in his weary tones.

"Aw, chack it, Mac!" he drawled. "W'y carn't yer let th' bleedin' bird alone? Yer know 'e don't like that bein' done t'im. Jes' 'awk t'im tellin' yer as much!"

McCullough turned on his crutches and leered awhile upon the speaker with a sort of mournful triumph, than he lifted up his voice in a very fair imitation of Hardy's own unmusical wail----

"Old soldiers never die, never die, never die, Old soldiers never die--they simply fade aw-ay."

"I don't think!" he concluded _sotto voce_ to Davis, as that individual, sitting down on the next cot began preparing his wounded arm for the ministrations of Sister Marthe who had just entered the ward.

"No use!" McCullough rambled on. "I tell yu' th' man's as good as 'gone up.' Harry. . . . Well! I'll have old Kissiwasti when he pegs out anyway. I won't half smoke-dry th' old beggar then! I'll teach him to swear. . . !"

"Eh! . . . 'Ere, wot abaht it?"

The c.o.c.kney's voice held no trace of lethargy now. The sharply-uttered, vindictive query was matched by the blazing eyes which were regarding the farrier-corporal with undisguised hostility.

"Wot abaht wot?" mimicked McCullough, though his heart smote him for the cold-blooded evasion.

"Wot abaht wot you sed abaht me. . . ?"

"Well, wot abaht it. . . ?"

Speechless with rage, for a moment Hardy gazed into the other's nonchalant mask-like visage, then, with a gesture of maniacal impotence, he raised his clenched fists high above his head.

Sister Marthe now judged it high time to intervene. During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment.

Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had pa.s.sed between the two men.

Seizing McCullough by the arm, despite his protestations of injured innocence, she gently, but firmly, escorted him out of the ward.

"Vas! vas!--Now you go, M'sieu McCullough! . . . out of ze ward right-away! . . . Vat you say--vat you do--I do not know, but you 'ave excite 'im 'orrible! . . . Oh, _pardonnez-moi_, Docteur!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as she b.u.mped into that gentleman in the corridor.