r a good while
before I recovered consciousness fully, I understood a little of what
was going on around me by sounds which, no doubt, were loud and ringing,
yet which seemed to me to come faintly from a long way off. They plainly
were the sounds of fighting--of weapons rattling together, of shouts and
yells and death-cries--but I did not associate them with our present
battling, but thought that we still were in the canon, and were still
fighting those wild Indians by whom poor Dennis was slain. And I knew
that I had been hurt badly; for in my head was a throbbing pain so keen
that it seemed like to split my skull open, and my stomach was stirred
by most distressing qualms, and my weakness was such that I could not
ease the sore muscles of my body by moving by so much as a
hair's-breadth from the cramped position in which I lay.

It seemed to me a vastly long while that I remained in this dreary
condition of half-consciousness, with no certain knowledge of anything
save the pain that I suffered; and then I felt some one touch me, and a
hand laid upon my heart; and this touch so far roused me that I heaved a
long sigh and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment I did not know the
face that I saw bending over me; nor was this wonderful, for in place of
its usual ruddiness was a death-like pallor, that was the more marked by
contrast with the blood that trickled down over it from a great gash
across the brow whereby the bone was laid bare. But there was no
mistaking the voice that called out: "He's alive, Rayburn!" and added,
"I don't see what right he's got t' be alive, either, after a crack like
that. I guess studyin' antiquities must everlastin'ly harden an' thicken
a man's skull!"

"Studying engineering doesn't harden a man's leg, anyway," I heard
Rayburn answer. "That cut pretty near took mine off. But now that we've
stopped the bleeding I guess I'm all right. I think I can work over to
you on my hands and knees and help you with the Professor. Now that I
know he's alive I seem to be a lot more alive myself."

"Just you stay where you are," Young called back, sharply. "If you move
you'll start that bandage an' I'll have t' tie you up all over again.
I'll attend t' th' Professor." And then Young bent over me, and, with a
tenderness that I never would have thought his rough hands capable of,
set himself to bandaging my wounded head. But the best thing that he did
for me was to give me a draught of water from a gourd that