Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife's inseparable
companion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could make
out, and "_affreusement_" something, but it was enough. The orderly
supplemented: "Leece, sir, says the lady is very bad--"
"Go to her, Plume," with startling promptitude cried the colonel.
"I'll look to everything here. It's all coming out right," for with a
tantara--tantara-ra-ra Sanders's troop, spreading far and wide, were
scrambling up the shaly slopes a thousand yards away. "Go to your wife
and tell her the danger's over," and, with hardly another glance at
the moaning agent, now being limply hoisted on a hospital stretcher,
thankfully the major went. "The lady's very bad, is she?" growled
Byrne, in fierce aside to Graham. "That French hag sometimes speaks
truth, in spite of herself. How d'you find him?" This with a toss of
the head toward the vanishing stretcher.
"Bad likewise. These Apache knives dig deep. There's Mullins now--"
"Think _that_ was Apache?" glared Byrne, with sudden light in his
eyes, for Wren had told his troubles--all.
"Apache _knife_--yes."
"What the devil do you mean, Graham?" and the veteran soldier, who
knew and liked the surgeon, whirled again on him with eyes that looked
not like at all.
The doctor turned, his somber gaze following the now distant figure of
the post commander, struggling painfully up the yielding sand of the
steep slope to the plateau.
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