there wa'n't no hope. We tuck him to the house, and sot there all night keeping the death-watch, and looking for every breath to be his last." [Illustration: "'Blant he rushed on 'em like a robbed she-bear, routing 'em in no time.'"] "Then he still does breathe?" I asked, fiercely. "Yes, a little-grain; but he don't know nothing, and of course there haint no possible chance, with his skull broke. I'm a-riding now to inform his maw's kin down Powderhorn." I laid the whip to Mandy, who, startled, sprang forward in a gallop. The twenty minutes before I reached the Marrs home seemed endless. I believed I had already suffered all that a woman could; but that was before I knew the love of a mother for her child. I ran into the house, pushing away the people gathered there, and laid my hand on the bosom of the small body lying there so limp and still. The heart was beating, feebly but steadily, "He is not dead!" I cried, "and he shall not die!" Blant, sitting crouched by the bed, head in hands, raised up and stared at me; Mr. Marrs lifted a bandage from Nucky's head, showing a wound from which a piece of bone protruded, and shook his head hopelessly. "But the bullet can't have gone in, or he would have died instantly," I said; "it must have broken the skull and glanced off, leaving the bone pressing against the brain." "Even so, nobody can't live with their skull broke," he replied. "But they can,--they do! A broken skull may be lifted, trephined, by a good surgeon,--many a life is saved thus nowadays." "Haint no surgeons in this country," said Mr. Marrs; "what few scattering doctors there is don't follow carving." "But the new telephone!" I cried. "There is a telephone now from our village to the railroad,--we can get word to a surgeon in the Blue Grass in a few hours; by hard riding he can be here inside of two days. If we can only keep the child alive until then, his life may be saved!" Blant sprang to his feet, hope transfiguring his haggard face. "Tell me what to do," he said. "Saddle your best nag for Philip, and let him ride to the school and tell the nurse to telephone for the best surgeon in the state, and that we shall bring Nucky to the hospital to-night on a stretcher." Philip dashed off, and the rest of us went to work to make a stretcher, with two poles and plenty of warm blankets. I know little about these matters, but I believed that the child could be taken easily and safely across the mountains, by relays of men, and that if I could once get him to the trained nurse she would manage to keep life in him. Then Blant fed us; and about two o'clock we set forth down Trigger, Blant, Rich and two others bearing the stretcher, and four more young men going along to relieve them every half-hour. As we went slowly down Trigger, we saw a crowd gathered at Israel Cheever's home, too. "Dalt is bad wounded by the little chap's rifle," said one of "Uncle Billy's boys", "I wisht it had been Todd."