ou go, immediately, for the
doctor."

"I'll go," Santry responded and hurried from the room, followed by
Barker, thoroughly wretched.

Dorothy went to the bedside and looked down into Wade's white face; then
she knelt there on the floor and said a little prayer to the God of all
men to be merciful to hers.

"Maybe if I made you a cup of tea?" Mrs. Purnell anxiously suggested,
but the girl shook her head listlessly. Tea was the elder woman's
panacea for all ills.

"Don't bother me, mother, please. I--I've just been through a good deal.
I can't talk--really, I can't."

Mrs. Purnell, subsiding at last, thereafter held her peace, and Dorothy
sat down by the bed to be instantly ready to do anything that could be
done. She had sat thus, almost without stirring, for nearly an hour,
when Wade moved slightly and opened his eyes.

"What is it?" She bent over him instantly, forgetting everything except
that he was awake and that he seemed to know her.

"Is it you, Dorothy?" He groped weakly for her fingers.

"Yes, dear," she answered, gulping back the sob in her throat. "Is there
anything you want? What can I do for you?"

He smiled feebly and shook his head.

"It's all right, if it's you," he said faintly, after a moment. "You're
all right--always!"

CHAPTER XXII

CHURCH-GOING CLOTHES

After his few words to Dorothy the wounded man lapsed again into coma,
in which condition he was found by the physician, who returned with
Santry from Crawling Water. During the long intervening time the girl
had not moved from the bedside, though the strain of her own terrible
experience with Moran was making itself felt in exhaustive fatigue.

"Go and rest yourself," Santry urged. "It's my turn now."

"I'm not tired," she declared, trying to smile into the keen eyes of the
doctor, who had heard the facts from the old plainsman as they rode out
from town.

Wade lay with his eyes closed, apparently in profound stupor, but gave
signs of consciousness when Dr. Catlin gently shook him. Dorothy felt
that he should not be disturbed, although she kept her own counsel, but
Catlin wanted to see if he could arouse his patient at all, for the
extent of the injury caused by the bullet, which had entered the back in
the vicinity of the spinal cord, could be gauged largely by the amount
of sensibility remaining. The wounded man was finally induced to answer
monosyllabically the questions put to him, but he did so with surly
impatie