Sometimes I passed out and lay still against the wet grass. I wanted to stay and just rest … but always I started crawling again.
My wound opened and bled, and it hurt, too.
Once when I opened my eyes I found I wasn’t among pines any more, but among aspens, so that meant I was getting higher up. Grasping the slender trunk of the nearest tree, I tugged myself up and leaned against it.
The rain had stopped, but there was drifting mist around me.
Looking back, I could see nothing of the canyon, for now it was thick with cloud. But on one of the bare, rain-wet peaks above me I could see the reflection of might Using the trees to help, I pulled myself on, from one to the other.
Aspens are the foreses effort to recover itself, the first trees to spring up after there has been fire, and often they grow on the steep mountainsides below a ridge.
They give shelter to wild life, and to the young evergreens until they are strong enough to stand alone. As the evergreens grow tall, the aspens die out, for they need sunlight and open ground.
This idea worked its way through my fuzzy, wandering thoughts as I struggled along, but a spasm of pain went through me and I fell. I lay gasping, too weak to get up. After a long time I slowly pulled myself up again.
I did not want to go on … I wanted to quit just to lie down, close my eyes, and not try any more.
That was the way I felt, and that was what I thought I wanted, but something kept urging me on. And suddenly I was at the top. I came out of the trees into a mountain meadow. The far side of the meadow was in light, and when I reached it I stood still, soaking up the warmth.
My eyes had been on it for several minutes before the realization of what I saw reached me.
It was a chimney. A chimney of stone … of native stone.
Where there was a chimney there must be a house or cabin. A house or cabin sometimes meant people.
Walking very careful so that I would not fall, I went through the trees and brush toward the building, which was a cabin. From behind an aspen I studied the layout.
The cabin was small. There was no sign of life anywhere around, but there were some horse droppings in the yard that might not be old.
With the recent rain it was hard to tell. There was a corral and an open-faced shed.
Walking slowly, my rifle comready in my hands, I went around to the front. No tracks since the rain. A path led away from the cabin and down into the trees.
The door opened easily under my hand. Inside, the cabin was spotless.
There was a neatly made bed, a fireplace with the fire laid, and a floor that had been scrubbed .
something unusual in the mountains.
A blanket bung over a door to a room beyond.
Pushing it aside, I saw another bedroom, this one with curtains. In a crudely made wardrobe were some women’s things.
I put my gun dowm and laid my blanket roll on a bench, and then I lit the fire and put on a kettle. I knew that I was working against time.
That I was in bad shape, nobody needed to tell me, and it was time I bathed the wound in my hip and discovered what else had happened to me.
Weak as I was, I had no idea whether I’d get through the day or not.
Taking off my slicker, I unslung my gunbelt, blinking my eyes in dull amazement at what I saw.
The bullet had evidently hit my belt, exploding at least two cartridges and leaving that part of my belt mostly Mown away. The explosion had torn that hole in my side. Suddenly scared, I peeled down my pants and lifted my shirt tail free.
The folded flannel had stopped the blood, but where it didn’t cover the wound I could see the shine comofa fragment of metal from the exploded shell. If that stuff was all through the wound I was in mighty serious trouble.
I hunted around for coffee, but didn’t find any. There was some tea, and I put some in a pot and poured boiling water over it.
Then with a white cloth I found in the room I began to soak the edges of the wound and to sponge it off carefully. Twice the cloth caught on bits of metal, and each time I got them out with care. The wound had begun to fester a little, so they came free easy.
Finally I could lift the flannel pad out, and with hot water I cleaned out the wound. It was tough working on it, for I had to twist around to get at it. I found several pieces of cartridge casing and hoped I was getting them all. A couple of times I stopped to gulp down hot tea.
The room was warm and I felt dizzy, but I knew I had to get done what I’d started.
A time or two I got up and bobbled around, trying to find something to use on the wound. There was half a bottle of whiskey, but I hesitated to use that, although I taken a stiff jolt of it myself. It seemed a shameful waste of good whiskey to flush out the wound with it, but that was what had been done manys the time on the Plains, I knew. I was fixing to use it when I found some turpentine.
Mixing some of that with hot water, I bathed the wound out, and if I was sweating before I surely was then. I made another pad from some of the clean white cloth I’d found and put it into the wound and tied it there.
I gulped down more tea, and then, putting my rifle alongside the bed and my pistol handy, I just lay down and passed out.
The last thing I remembered was worrying about my muddy boots. Id not had a moment to get them off, and I feared to struggle with them, for it might start the bleeding again.
Those muddy boots, and the firelight flickering on the walls .
It seemed to me it was raining again, too.
The cold awakened me. I lay shivering, uncovered, on the bed.
The cabin was dark; rain fell on the roof. The fire was out.
lightning flashed, momentarily lighting the room.
Alone in a strange place, I knew I was sick sicker than I’d ever been.
Rolling over on the bed, I at g my muddy boots to the floor. My head was burning with fever, my mind searching through a fog of pain for the right thing to do.
Stumbling to the fireplace, I fumbled with a poker and stirred a few dying coals among the gray ashes and the charred ends of sticks.
With an effort, I clustered some of them near the coals and blew on them. Smoke rose, but there was no flame. I looked around for something for Idndling, and finally tore a few handfuls of straw from the broom.
A little tongue of fire fed on the straw, and made a quick, bright blaze, and I put on pieces of bark and slender sticks to keep it burning. I nudged the pot, and saw that steam still rose from it.
Again I drank tea, sipping it sIG-WIY.
Huddling near the fire, I shivered. One side of me was icy cold, the other burning. I fed more sticks into the fire, then wrestled a heavier piece and still another into the blaze.
Then for the first time I saw a bootjack, and Holding my boot into it, I managed to draw off one and then the other. After that I tumbled back to the bed and crawled under the covers. At first I still shivered, but at last I grew warm and slept again.
It was a restless sleep, with shifting scenes. In one I stood alone in an icy field and saw a line of men on horseback charging down upon me. Their knees were drawn up like jockies’, and they wore black leather shields and carried curved swords. I fought and struggled as one rushed at me, swinging a blade. I felt it bite deep, and I fell.
For a long time I lay there in the cold, and then my eyes opened.
I had fallen to the floor; the fire was down again, and the room was still dark. Crawling to the fireplace, I fed sticks into the coals and the flames leaped up.
I listened to the wind and rain . . . how long would this night last?
The wind lashed the trees outside, and rain whipped against the cabin.