The sergeant got the wounded man to his feet and threw one arm around
his waist. Then he all but carried him, stumbling along, with both hands
clasped across his eyes, down the ravine that looked at night like some
pit of hell. For along their path a thousand coke-ovens spat forth red
tongues that licked northward with the wind, shot red arrows into the
choking black smoke that surged up the mountainside, and lighted with
fire the bellies of the clouds rolling overhead.
"Whar you takin' me?"
"Hospital." The mountainer stopped suddenly.
"Why, I can't see them ovens!"
"You come on, Jim."
Next morning Jim lay on a cot with a sheet drawn to his chin and a
grayish, yellow bandage covering forehead and eyes down to the tip
of his nose. When the surgeon lifted that bandage the nurse turned
her face aside, and what was under it, or rather what was not under
it, shall not be told. Only out in the operating-room the smooth-faced
young assistant was curiously counting over some round leaden pellets,
and he gave one low whistle when he pushed into a pile a full fourscore.
"He said he was a-lookin' through a keyhole," the sergeant reported,
"an' somebody let him have it with both barrels--but that don't go.
Jim wouldn't be lookin' through no keyhole; he'd bust the door down."
Nor could the sergeant learn more. He had found the man stumbling down
Possum Hollow, and up that hollow the men and women of the mining camp
did not give one another away.
"It might 'a' been any one of a dozen fellers I know," the sergeant said,
for Jim was a feudsman and had his enemies by the score.
The man on the cot said nothing. Once, to be sure, when he was crossing
the border of Etherland, and once only, he muttered: "Yes, she come from
Happy Valley, but she was a cat, no doubt about that. Yes, sir, the old
girl was a cat." But when he was conscious that much even he never would
say again. He simply lay grim, quiet, uncomplaining, and not even the
surgeon, whose step he got quickly to know, could get him to tell who
had done the deed.
On the fourth day he showed some cheer.
"Look here, doc," he said, "when you goin' to take this rag off o' my
eyes? I hain't seen a wink since I come in here."
"Oh, pretty soon," said the surgeon, and the nurse turned away again
with drops in her eyes that would never be for the wounded man's eyes
to shed again.
On the sixth day his pulse was fast and his blood was high--and that night
the nurse knew precisely what meant the look in the surgeon's face when he
motioned her to leave the room. Then he bent to lift the bandage once more.
"Why don't you take 'em all off, doc? I'd like to see the old girl again.
Has she gone back to Happy Valley?"
"No--she's here."
"Won't she come to see me?"
"Yes, she'll come, but she can't now--she's sick abed." The man grinned.
"Yes, I know them spells."
"Jim," said the surgeon suddenly, "I'm going to be very busy to-morrow,
and if you've got any message to send to anybody or anything to say to me,
you'd better say it before I go." He spoke carelessly, but with a little
too much care.
The sheet moved over the hands clasped across Jim's breast. "Why, doc,
you don't mean to say--" He stopped and drew in one breath slowly.
"Oh, no, but you can't always tell, and I might not get back till late,
and I thought you might have something to tell me about--" He paused
helplessly, and the man on the cot began moving his lips. The surgeon
bent low.
"Why, doc," he said very slowly, "you--don't--really--mean--to--say--that
the old--" his voice dropped to a whisper, "has finished me this time?"
"Who finished you, Jim--who'd you say finished you?"
A curious smile flitted over the coarse lips and passed. Then the lips
tightened and the thought behind the bandage made its way to the surgeon's
quick brain, and there was a long silence.
At last:
"Doc, d'you ever hear tell of a woman bein' hung?"
"Yes, Jim."
And then:
"Doc, am I goin' shore?" This question the surgeon answered with another,
bending low.
"Jim, what message shall I give your wife?" The curious smile came back.
"Doc, this is Christmas, ain't it?"
"Yes, Jim."
"Doc, you're shore, air ye, that nobody knows who done it?"
"Nobody but you, Jim."
The man had been among men the terror of the hills for years, but
on the last words that passed his gray lips his soul must have swung
upward toward the soul of the Man who lived and died for the peace
of those hills.
"Doc," he said thickly, "you jus' tell the old girl Jim says:
'Happy Christmas!'"
The surgeon started back at the grim cheer of that message, but he took
it like a priest and carried it back through the little hell that flared
down the ravine on Jim now through the window. And like a priest he told
it to but one living soul.