They made sure that his back was not broken and that his heart action
was not dangerously weak. Doc bathed the streaked hair and sterilized
the cut which he thought was not necessarily mortal.

"Someone will have to get a doctor," he said. He seemed the calmest one
present. "Hustle to Dumont or Haworth, one of you, and get to a 'phone.
If you can find a doctor send him, but anyway call up Bridgeboro; call
up the hospital and tell them someone is hurt up here."

Roy was starting but Artie Van Arlen pulled him back. "It's all you can
do to limp," he said. "I'll go."

"If it's a hospital emergency call, the police will come," Westy warned.

"Never mind," said Doc, "get to a 'phone, that's all I care about. And
hustle."

Before he had finished speaking Artie was gone. Several of them watched
his fleeting form, moving with steady, easy speed down the smooth white
road. The patter of his shoes sounded farther and farther off until the
sound died altogether, and the hurrying figure grew smaller and smaller
as if it were going down the scale from patrol leader to tenderfoot.
They saw his hat blow off and that he did not pause to recover it. Then
he passed between the old gateposts where the sentinels had once stood,
and disappeared in a turn of the road. There were houses a little beyond
that point.

Under Doc's direction the scouts worked three boards under Blythe's own
balsam couch and carried this to where he lay. They got him onto it and
bore it gently into the camping shack, out of the glaring sunlight.
There, in Blythe's Bunk, the only home he knew, they laid him gently
down and at Doc's request those who were not needed went out. The victim
lay quite unconscious, his face ghastly pale and with a look of being
polished caused perhaps by the water which Doc Carson kept applying.

The wet, matted hair, too, gave him a ghastly, unhuman look. But Doc
said that his pulse was fair and that the blood was not flowing too
profusely. That was all he would say. With the true spirit of one who
ministers he seemed to have forgotten all else except that Blythe was
stricken.

Outside the air seemed tense, the scouts standing about in little
groups, waiting. Their suspense was shown in the occasional glances
which they gave up the road. They spoke in undertones, their talk was
forced and charged with nervous tension. A kind of foreboding dwelt
among them.

"They'll find out everything now," one said. "Should we maybe hide his