THE KNIFE
They bore the patient as gently as possible to the camp, and placed
him in the bark shelter, close by the warmth. Lang built up the fire,
while Morrison hurried away for the needed utensils.
Eva came back with him, looking rather pale and excited. Both of them
were laden with blankets, towels, kettles of water and all the
extemporized instruments that Morrison could lay his hands on. Lang
knew what she was thinking of, but his professional breakdown seemed
to him now a far-away, unimportant thing. He was not concerned with
it. He knew exactly what he had to do; he had no doubt of being able
to do it.
While the kettles of water came to a boil, Lang sat and put a finer
edge on one of the keen pen-knives Morrison had brought. He put the
instruments into the boiling water, timing them for the required
twenty minutes’ sterilization. He scrubbed his hands assiduously,
sponged them with iodine, laid out the apparatus to his hand. He did
not say a word and looked utterly abstracted, but his mind was
thrilling with an elation that he had not known for a long time.
When sterilization was complete, he took out water in a basin to cool;
then folded a towel into cone shape, placed it over Carroll’s face,
and dropped on the ether. He kept one hand on the patient’s pulse;
from time to time he raised an eyelid and warily examined the pupil.
Carroll was weak with loss of blood; he needed careful treatment, but
his unconsciousness made anæthesia come more quickly.
Lang surrendered the ether bottle to Morrison, with instruction to
drop a little more at the word. He then turned Carroll’s head gently
to expose the spot where the bullet lay. With the razor he shaved away
a bare space; he cut a small slit, and, as he expected, the little
blackened lump of lead almost popped out. He cleansed the wound
carefully, applied a wad of absorbent gauze, and fastened it down.
So far all was easy and simple. The critical part was to come. Without
any hesitation, he turned the patient’s head again, and shaved and
cleaned a space of about three inches around the wound, which made a
purplish spot on the white scalp. A little more ether was given.
“Hand me the knife,” he ordered. “Be ready with the saw. Don’t touch
anything. Hand them with the forceps.”
With a quick, deft stroke he made a semicircular incision around the
bullet mark, and turned back the flap of skin. Reaching for the keen
little saw, he attacked the skull in the shortest cut he could
contrive.
At the rasp, and the first reddened particles of bone under the steel
teeth, Eva turned pale, but braced her nerve. Lang did not notice;
from that moment he was aware of nothing but his work. Impassive and
abstracted as he looked, jubilation sang in him. His hands obeyed his
will. He felt as if he had been restored to life; as if a familiar
spirit, long absent, had returned to serve him.
He had to handle the makeshift tools with the utmost delicacy.
Fortunately the wound was on the most convex part of the skull, where
it was possible to cut a hole with a straight saw. The first incision
once through the bone, he began another at right angles to it, and
then a third, completing the square with the fourth. With the forceps
he gently loosened the little block of bone.
It came out. Beneath it was, as he had expected, a large, dark blood
clot. Partly with the forceps, and partly with his fingers, he removed
this, and cleansed the surface with the utmost pains.
He was doubtful whether to reinsert the block of bone. In a hospital
he would probably have resorted to a silver plate. Replacement might
involve infection; it was best to take no chances. He drew the flap of
skin back, and fastened it down with four stitches. He laid down the
needle, washed his hands, and glanced at his audience with a
triumphant and nervous smile.
“Is it successful? Will he live?” asked Morrison, almost in a whisper.
Lang glanced again at the patient’s eyeballs, felt his pulse. It was
weak. The man breathed harshly; his hands were cold.
“Have you any stimulant? Brandy?”
Morrison had had the forethought to bring a bottle. Lang forced a few
spoonfuls between the locked teeth. The pulse fluttered, then
relapsed. Lang shrugged his shoulders.
“Will he live—become conscious?” Morrison asked again.
“No, he won’t,” Lang replied cheerfully. “I don’t think he’ll come out
of the ether. Maybe he had a little too much. He was in no condition
for an operation in this cold, outdoor spot. Shock was too much for
him.”
“But the emeralds?” Morrison cried. “How’ll we find them?”
“We’ll never find them,” said Lang, without concern. Emeralds were
nothing to him just then. He had recovered what was more to him than
any emeralds, and he glanced at Eva and met her fascinated, astonished
gaze with an almost delighted smile. He knew that she knew.
But Morrison, groaning and raging, had fished out the shapeless bullet
from the basin, and was examining it.
“Look here? How’s this?” he exclaimed. “You shot him with your rifle—a
.44 soft bullet, I know. This bullet never came from that gun. This is
a revolver bullet, a small bullet, an automatic.”
Startled out of his dizzy elation, Lang took the bullet and looked at
it. Indeed it was, as he recognized, too small for his rifle.
“Who fired that bullet?” Morrison was demanding hoarsely. “Who killed
him? You didn’t. Suicide? Nonsense!”
Suddenly Lang remembered the shot that Morrison had heard in the
night.
“Louie was ashore all night!” he exclaimed.
“By gad, he was!” cried Morrison. “It was his shot. The young
rattlesnake met Carroll, got his gun, shot him, got the stones. It
can’t be anything else. Louie’s cached them somewhere. Thank Heaven
we’ve got him under our hands.”
He snatched up the rifle and dashed toward the beach, intending to
close the business at last. Lang glanced at his patient; he would be
back in a minute, and, with a hasty word to Eva, he ran after
Morrison, overtaking him on the bluff over the bay.
The _Chita_ was below them, thirty yards away. Her cabin windows were
wide open, and Lang caught a vague stir of movement within.
“It’s Louie,” Morrison whispered. “I thought he was too sick to move.
I’ll bet he was putting it all on. What’s he doing? I could hit him
from here.”
“Don’t shoot,” said Lang. “Keep your eye on him, though, and don’t let
him get near the engines.”
He slipped down the side of the valley and out to the beach. He had a
vague idea that Louie was perhaps delirious with incipient pneumonia.
He silently crossed in the dinghy, swung over the _Chita’s_ rail, and
peeped in the cabin door.
The young gunman had the trap of the fuel hold up, and the cap off one
of the big gasoline tanks. He jerked his head up instantly.
“Stop there, doc!” he yelled shrilly. “Hands up—up high. Come another
step nearer and I’ll shoot into this gas tank and blow us all to
hell.”
Lang now perceived that Louie had a pistol—Carroll’s black automatic,
he was sure—not pointing toward him, but with the muzzle directed into
the tank below. He put his hands up instantly. He did not remember
whether he had a gun in his pocket or not. He realized that Louie had
the undeniable drop this time. That gun flash would explode the
_Chita_ like a load of dynamite.
“Don’t be a fool, Louie!” he tried to expostulate. “I’ve no gun. You
don’t want to blow yourself up, too, do you?”
“Want to make a deal, then?” the boy cried back. “I’ve got the stones.
I’ve put them where you’d never find them, not in a thousand years.
What do you say? A fifty-fifty split. Kick in now, or up we go!”
At that instant Morrison, misunderstanding the situation, fired from
the bluff. Like an echo of the shot, Louie’s pistol exploded into the
fuel tank. For one instant Lang saw death. His heart absolutely stood
still.
But there was no burst of fire. Louie sprang up, his shirt front
suddenly streaming red, wheeled round and fell, and as a dying snake
strikes, his pistol exploded—twice—three times—the bullets crashing
into the floor, and the flashes setting fire to a matting rug.
Morrison’s feet trampled on the deck. He plunged into the cabin, and
bent over the gangster.
“What have you done with the emeralds?” he demanded fiercely.
Louie looked up at him with a twisted smile.
“Hell!” he muttered, and his eyes closed, twitching.
The cabin was filling with smoke from, the burning matting. Lang
sprang to close the gas tank. He glanced down and saw no gleam of
reflecting liquid.
“Why, it’s empty,” he said, in surprise, and probed it with his arm.
“But not altogether,” he added, withdrawing his arm. He brought up a
roughly wrapped little sack of red-striped silk, that burst open as he
threw it down, letting out a stream of twinkling green stones on the
crimson-spotted floor.