Pop had fished up a man--he'd been throwed in
the river! Pop didn't know if he was dead or not--he was all cut
and bloody
"I declare, I've a mind to skin you if you don't keep still!
Miss Constance," Polly addressed her eldest child, "I'm surprised
at you! You might be a heathen savage for all you got on your
back--get into some duds this instant!" Cavendish was on his
knees again beside Yancy, and Polly, by a determined effort, rid
herself of the children. "Why, he's a grand-looking man, ain't
he?" she cried. "La, what a pity!"
"You can feel his heart beat, and he's bleeding some," said
Cavendish.
"Let me see--just barely flutters, don't it? Henry, go mind the
sweep and see we don't get aground! Keppel, you start a fire and
warm some water! Connie, you tear up my other petticoat for
bandagesnow, stir around, all of you!" And then began a period
of breathless activity. They first lifted Yancy into the circle
of illumination cast by the fire Keppel had started on the hearth
of flat stones before the shanties. Then, with Constance to hold
a pan of warm water, Mrs. Cavendish deftly bathed the gaping
wound in Yancy's shoulder where Murrell had driven his knife.
This she bandaged with strips torn from her petticoat. Next she
began on the ragged cut left by Slosson's club.
"He's got a right to be dead!" said Cavendish.
"Get the shears, Dick--I must snip away some of his hair."
All this while the four half-naked youngest Cavendishes, very
still now, stood about the stone hearth in the chill dawn and
watched their mother's surgery with a breathless interest.
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