Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/275

 "Ca'm yourself, sister," the whiskered man soothed her. He passed her gun to somebody behind him, and it disappeared.

Zora tore loose in a white fury, only to be hemmed in by the men who pressed around her and pushed her back from the edge of the platform.

"This ain't no place for women," somebody said.

The harsher their restraint the more furious her passion rose. She cleared a way and struggled to the edge again, vengeance now out of mind as it was out of the possibility. She only thought of Dunham, stretched bloody and limp as if the last ember of life had turned to ash.

"Is he dead?" she asked, kneeling to help Mrs. Hoy in her merciful ministrations.

"He's breathing faintly," Mrs. Hoy replied. "Here—take the cup—see if you can get some water in his mouth. He was hours and hours over there without a drop, standing them all off, the cowards!"

Zora moistened his lips with her fingers, washing away the blood that welled on his breath from his congested lung, Mrs. Hoy supporting his head on her arm. The crowd pushed around, hemming them in a blazing pit of noonday sun.

"If he ain't dead he damn soon will be!" somebody said.

At the touch of water on his tongue Dunham gulped and swallowed. Palpitating in a fearful suspense, Zora pressed the cup to his lips and tilted a little stream into his mouth. Patiently, scarcely breathing, the two women worked and watched, the shuffling feet around