“He’s all right,” smiled Michael throwing an arm across Sam’s shoulder,
“He only came in to help me when he saw I was having a hard time of it.
The fellow made off in that direction.” Michael pointed after Carter
whose form had disappeared in the darkness.
“Any of the gang?” asked the officer as he hurried away.
“No!” said Michael. “He doesn’t belong here!”
One officer hurried away accompanied by a crowd, the other stayed to
look after the woman. He touched the woman with his foot as he might
have tapped a dying dog to see if there was still life there. A low
growl like a fierce animal came from Sam’s closed lips.
Michael put a warning hand upon, his arm.
“Steady, Sam, steady!” he murmured, and went himself and lifted the
poor pretty head of the girl from its stony pillow.
“I think you’d better send for the ambulance,” he said to the officer.
“She’s had a heavy blow on her head. I arrived just in time to see the
beginning of the trouble—”
“Ain’t she dead?” said the officer indifferently. “Best get her into
her house. Don’t reckon they want to mess up the hospital with such
cattle as this.”
Michael caught the fierce gleam in Sam’s eyes. A second more would have
seen the officer lying beside the girl in the road and a double tragedy
to the record of that night; for Sam was crouched and moving stealthily
like a cat toward the officer’s back, a look of almost insane fury upon
his small thin face. It was Michael’s steady voice that recalled him to
sanity once more, just as many a time in the midst of a game he had put
self-control and courage into the hearts of his team.
“Sam, could you come here and hold her head a minute, while I try to
get some water? Yes, officer, I think she is living, and she should be
got to the hospital as soon as possible. Please give the call at once.”
The officer sauntered off to do his bidding. Michael and Sam began
working over the unconscious girl, and the crowd stood idly round
waiting until the ambulance rattled up. They watched with awe as the
form of the woman was lifted in and Michael and Sam climbed up on the
front seat with the driver and rode away; then they drifted away to
their several beds and the street settled into its brief night respite.
The two young men waited at the hospital for an hour until a
white-capped nurse came to tell them that Lizzie had recovered
consciousness, and there was hope of her life. Then they went out into
the late night together.
“Sam, you’re coming home with me tonight!” Michael put his arm
affectionately around Sam’s shoulders, “You never would come before,
but you must come tonight.”
And Sam, looking into the other’s face for an instant, saw that in
Michael’s suffering eyes that made him yield.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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