Together we managed to get Lessing back to the house and laid him on
the couch, and while Herrick held the lamp I did the best I could for
his injuries with the means at my disposal. It was an ugly job. One
arm and shoulder were badly mangled and the collar bone broken; he
had lost a great deal of blood and there was a nasty contused wound
above the temple. A flicker of consciousness came back while I was
working over him, but the loss of blood told, and he lapsed back
again almost immediately. There were stitches to be taken; nothing
much could be done except to check the bleeding with temporary
bandages and as soon as I could manage single-handed Herrick rode off
to Lennox for help.
In reality it was not long, though it seemed to me an eternity that I
kept that nightmare vigil, my ears strained for any sound from
without, bending all my will-power on my task to keep me from the one
thought that I dared not face, Mary. Where had she gone--what had
happened to her? I went over a thousand possibilities, trying to
find some reasonable explanation to which I might cling, though as
each moment went by the stillness became more and more a torture. If
she had merely missed her brother and gone down the road to call for
him we should have met her, or she would be back by now. If she had
been with him at the mill, or had followed there ... I thought of the
deep blackness of the water at the end of the dam, where we had
passed that evening, the sheer drop blow the sluice-gates, and
shuddered.
It was with infinite relief I caught the approaching noise of the
motor cycle and saw Herrick reappear, followed only a few moments
later by Lennox with the light spring-wagon. It was decided to take
Lessing straightway to the doctor's house, where he could be better
looked after than in the bungalow. We laid a mattress in the bottom
of the wagon and lifted him on to this, and Herrick and I on the
motor cycle accompanied Lennox beyond the hollow at the foot of the
hill. Before we started Herrick, his face grim and set in the
lamplight, pulled out the revolver I had lent him that morning and
handed it to me.
"Keep that, Austin. I bought another today. Lennox has his own."
"There was an extra box of cartridges," I said, "in the table-drawer."
"Lennox gave them to me."
When we had seen the wagon well along the road we turned, and rode
back to the bungalow.
"Now," said Herrick, when we stood once more in the lighted room,
"the first thing is to find Mary. And then ... there has got to be
an end to this. Are you ready to face it?"
He did not need to ask me. I looked round on the little room, gay
and friendly with its rugs and books and the great bowls of
wildflowers that Mary loved--the countless little signs of her
occupation, a sweater flung across a chair, her work-basket of Indian
grass on the table--the room in which I had spent so many happy
hours, now suddenly sinister in its desertion. And then my eye fell
on the couch where we had laid Lessing, and the hideous litter I had
left in my haste--stained wads of cotton and the torn strips from his
shirt with which we had striven to check the blood before we carried
him up from the mill.
"For God's sake," I exclaimed impulsively, "let's get that cleared
away before she gets back!"
Before Mary got back ... the words died in my throat. But I gathered
up the telltale evidence all the same--every last scrap and
fragment--and thrust them out of sight behind the kitchen woodbox,
before I turned to Herrick.
"We'll try Sliefers' first," he said. "There's just the possibility
she is there."
It was a slight chance, and as it proved, fruitless. The farmer was
still up, and opened the door to us in stockinged feet. No one there
had seen Mary since the afternoon. Sliefer heard our errand with a
grave face.
"There's no house she'd have come to but this," he said. "There's
only Scholl's and Nevill's at the Bend, and they were both asleep as
you passed? They're a-bed by ten. Besides, if there was anything
out of the way they'd either one of them have sent over here
straight. No. Unless the young lady's missed her way, or met with
some accident...."
He looked at us doubtfully. It was no time to mince matters. We
told him, as briefly as we could, what had happened that evening and
how we had found Lessing at the mill.
He heard us out, his jaw set grimly. When we had finished he rose
without a word, a tall, still stalwart figure in his stockinged feet,
and crossing the kitchen took down his gun that hung on a rack above
the door.
"I guess I'm coming with you," he said.