Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/276

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them crowding closer, until there was only a slit in the throng the length of Dunham's body.

Blood was running along the railroad tie beneath Dunham's wounded leg, creeping sluggishly between the liveryman's feet. This fellow stood craning his long neck to watch the result of the women's compassionate labor. When Dunham began to gulp the water presently, his chest heaving between swallows, the liveryman turned to somebody behind him with an exclamation of satisfaction. There was a renewed stirring in the crowd, a surging forward to see.

Dunham opened his eyes when the cup was drained, and struggled to lift himself, shaking his head weakly to clear the obscuration of defeated death out of his vision. He felt as if he reposed on something luxuriously soft and lulling. There was a sensation of floating, an undulating, easy, restful motion of being carried along on water. He was so far over the border he had no recollection of the events which had brought him to that dusty bed where his blood was wasting away between the rails.

Zora spoke to him, bending over him, her hand on his forehead, her pleading eyes looking into his, where the image of friend and foe stood inseparable and alike. He felt that blissful sweep of water, that soft undulating motion of water, as a swimmer feels the lift of gentle surges when he lies on his back in lazy relaxation. He tried to smile, a glimmer in the dusty drawn lines of his grimy face.

"You run for the doctor, honey," Mrs. Hoy said. "I'll do what I can till he comes."