Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/320

 "Get me a pan of hot water," he directed Mrs. Cowgill.

While waiting for the water the doctor leaned back, hands in his trousers pockets, legs extended, eyes fixed with studious contemplation on the wounded man's face.

"I can't last long now, can I, Doc?" Withers inquired, his voice scarcely carrying to the door.

"Um-m-m-m," said the doctor, in a soothing, noncommittal humming sound.

Mrs. Cowgill returned like the ewer bearer in a procession, the basin held in both hands. The doctor washed the wound, Cal Withers lying white and still, eyes closed, as good as dead already, everybody said. The doctor put something on the wound with a piece of gauze, and leaned back in that waiting, thoughtful way again, hands in his pockets, legs stretched out as if he might slip from the chair.

Presently the doctor woke to attivity from his apparent trance. He got an instrument out of his case, the favored ones in the door stretching to see; leaned over Withers and introduced the shining metal into the wound that should have led, by all true calculation, into the frontal chambers of the cowman's brain.

The doctor was only a few moments in his exploration, which seemed to satisfy him. He was busy again with the water, with more stuff on gauze. He got out his scissors and cut off some of the cowman's grizzly coarse forelock, and strapped a dressing over the