Disarmed, Wambush seemed suddenly overcome with fear. He allowed the
sheriff to jerk him to his feet, and walked passively between the three
men across the street to the stone jail.
Westerfelt stood alone on the sidewalk. Everybody went to see Wambush
locked up except Harriet and her mother. They instantly came out to
Westerfelt. Harriet picked up a folded piece of letter paper.
"Did you drop this?" she asked.
He did not reply, but took the paper absently and thrust it into his
coat pocket. It had fallen from Wambush's pocket. He was very white
and leaned heavily against a sycamore-tree.
"Oh, he's cut your coat; look!" Harriet cried.
Still he did not speak. He looked down at the slit in the cloth and
raised his hand towards it, but his arm fell limply and he swayed from
side to side.
"Are you hurt?" asked Mrs. Floyd, anxiously.
"I think not," he said; "but maybe I am, a little."
Harriet opened his coat and screamed, "Oh, mother, he's cut! Look at
the blood!"
He tried to button his coat, but could not use his fingers. "Only a
scratch," he said.
"But your clothes are wet with blood," Harriet insisted, as she pointed
to his trousers.
He stooped and felt them. They were damp and heavy. Then he raised
his heel in his right boot, and let it down again.
"It's full," he said, with a sickly smile. "I reckon I _have_ lost
some blood. Why--why, I didn't feel it."
Martin Worthy, the storekeeper, ran across from the jail ahead of the
others. Hearing Westerfelt's remark, he cried:
"My Lord! you must go inside an' lie down; fix a place, Miss Harriet,
an' send fer a doctor, quick!"
Harriet ran into the house, and Mrs. Floyd and Worthy supported
Westerfelt between them into a room adjoining the parlor. They made
him lie on a bed, and Worthy opened his waistcoat and shirt.
"Good gracious, it's runnin' like a wet-weather spring," he said.
"Have you sent fer a doctor?" he asked as Harriet came in.
"Yes; Dr. Lash, but he may not be at his office."
"Send for Dr. Wells," he ordered a man at the door. "That's right," he
added to Harriet, who had knelt by the bed and was holding the lips of
the wound together, "keep the cut closed as well as you kin! I'll go
tell 'im to use my hoss."
As he went out there was a clatter of feet on the veranda. The people
were returning from the jail. Westerfelt opened his eyes and looked
towards the door.
"They'll crowd in here," said Harriet to her mother. "Shut the door;
don't let anybody in except Mr. Bradley."
Mrs. Floyd closed the door in the face of the crowd, asking them to go
outside, but they remained in the hall, silent and awed, waiting for
news of the wounded man. Mrs. Floyd admitted Luke Bradley.
"My heavens, John, I had no idea he got such a clean sweep at you!" he
said, as he approached the bed. "Ef I'd a-knowed this I'd 'a' killed
the dirty scamp!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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