The woman stood in the centre of the kitchen with her arms akimbo--a huge raw-boned creature of a rough, frontier type. She spoke at last. "Well, you're a sight!" "Been celebratin', Nell," she chuckled gleefully, "been celebratin' my S'preme Moment." "You'd better git in there and fix that feller's arm or we'll be celebratin' a funeral," the woman answered curtly. "He's bleedin' like a stuck pig." "That's what he is--good joke, Nell. Where'd it happen?" She seated herself in a chair and slid until her head rested on the back, her sprawling legs outstretched. "Gun fight at the dance hall. Look here," she took her roughly by the arm, "I tell you he's bad off. You gotta git in there and do somethin'." "Shut up! Lemme be!" She pulled loose from the nurse's grasp, but arose, nevertheless, and staggered down the long hallway into the room where the new patient lay moaning softly upon the narrow iron cot. "Hullo, Bill Duncan!" His moaning ceased and he said faintly in relief-- "Oh, I'm glad! I thought you'd never come, Doc." "Say," her voice was quarrelsome, "do you think I've nothin' to do but wait at the beck and call of you wops?" The boy, for he was only that, looked surprise and resentment at the epithet, but he was too weak to waste his strength in useless words. She raised his arm bound in its blood-soaked rags roughly and he groaned. "Keep still, you calf!" He shut his teeth hard and the sweat of agony stood out on his pallid face as she twisted and pulled and probed with clumsy, drunken fingers. "Nell!" she called thickly. The woman was watching from the doorway. "Get the hypodermic and I'll give him a shot of hop, then I'm goin' to bed. Lamb can look after him when he comes. I'm not goin' to monkey with him now." "But, Doc," the boy protested, "don't leave me like this. The bullet's in there yet, and a piece of my shirt. The boys pulled out some, but they couldn't reach the rest. Ain't you goin' to clean out the hole or something? I'm scart of blood-poisonin', Doc, for I've seen how it works," he pleaded. His protest angered her. "God! but you're wise with your talk of blood-poisonin'! You bums from the Ditch give me more trouble and do more kickin' than all my private patients put together. What do you want for a dollar a month"--she sneered--"a special nurse? A shot in the arm will shut your mouth till morning anyhow." She shoved up the sleeve of his night clothes on the good arm and gripped his wrist; then she jabbed the needle viciously.