第121章

"Trouble? There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day. Some of these contractors are slow in their pay. They expect men to wait a month or two. That makes them mad and the tinhorn bunch keep stirring up trouble. Might be a strike any time, and then look out. But our Chief will be ready for them. He won't stand any nonsense, you bet."

At this point in the Sergeant's rambling yarn the door was flung open and a man called breathlessly, "Man killed!"

"How is that?" cried the Sergeant, springing to buckle on his belt.

"An accident--car ran away--down the dump."

"They are altogether too flip with those cars," growled the Sergeant. "Come on!"

They ran down the road and toward the railroad dump where they saw a crowd of men. The Sergeant, followed by Cameron, pushed his way through and found a number of navvies frantically tearing at a pile of jagged blocks of rock under which could be seen a human body.

It took only a few minutes to remove the rocks and to discover lying there a young man, a mere lad, from whose mangled and bleeding body the life appeared to have fled.

As they stood about him, a huge giant of a man came tearing his way through the crowd, pushing men to right and left.

"Let me see him," he cried, dropping on his knees. "Oh Jack, lad, they have done for you this time."

As he spoke the boy opened his eyes, looked upon the face of his friend, smiled and lay still. Then the Sergeant took command.

"Is the doctor back, does anyone know?"

"No, he's up the line yet. He is coming in on number seven."

"Well, we must get this man to the hospital. Here, you," he said, touching a man on the arm, "run and tell the nurse we are bringing a wounded man."

They improvised a stretcher and laid the mangled form upon it the blood streaming from wounds in his legs and trickling from his pallid lips.

"Here, two men are better than four. Cameron, you take the head, and you," pointing to Jack's friend, "take his feet. Steady now!

I'll just go before. This is a ghastly sight."

At the door of the hospital tent the little nurse met them, pale, but ready for service.

"Oh, my poor boy!" she cried, as she saw the white face. "This way, Sergeant," she added, passing into a smaller tent at one side of the hospital. "Oh, Mr. Cameron, is that you? I am glad you are here."

"Has Nurse Haley come?" enquired the Sergeant.

"Yes, she came in last night, thank goodness. Here, on this table, Sergeant. Oh I wish the doctor were here! Now we must lift him on to this stretcher. Ah, here's Nurse Haley," she added in a relieved voice, and before Cameron was aware, a girl in a nurse's uniform stood by him and appeared quietly to take command.

"Here Sergeant," she said, "two men take his feet." She put her arms under the boy's shoulder and gently and with apparent ease, assisted by the others, lifted him to the table. "A little further--there. Now you are easier, aren't you?" she said, smiling down into the lad's face. Her voice was low and soft and full toned.

"Yes, thank you," said the boy, biting back his groans and with a pitiful attempt at a smile.

"You're fine now, Jack. You'll soon be fixed up now," said his friend.

"Yes Pete, I'm all right, I know."

"Oh, I wish the doctor were here!" groaned the little nurse.

"What about a hypo?" enquired Nurse Haley quietly.

"Yes, yes, give him one."

Cameron's eyes followed the firm, swift-moving fingers as they deftly gave the hypodermic.

"Now we must get this bleeding stopped," she said.

"Get them all out, Sergeant, please," said the little nurse. "One or two will do to help us. You stay, Mr. Cameron."

At the mention of his name Nurse Haley, who had been busy preparing bandages, dropped them, turned, and for the first time looked Cameron in the face.

"Is it you?" she said softly, and gave him her hand, and, as more than once before, Cameron found himself suddenly forgetting all the world. He was looking into her eyes, blue, deep, wonderful.

It was only for a single moment that his eyes held hers, but to him it seemed as if he had been in some far away land. Without a single word of greeting he allowed her to withdraw her hand.

Wonder, and something he could not understand, held him dumb.

For the next half hour he obeyed orders, moving as in a dream, assisting the nurses in their work; and in a dream he went away to his own quarters and thence out and over the dump and along the tote road that led through the straggling shacks and across the river into the forest beyond. But of neither river nor forest was he aware. Before his eyes there floated an illusive vision of masses of fluffy golden hair above a face of radiant purity, of deft fingers moving in swift and sure precision as they wound the white rolls of bandages round bloody and broken flesh, of two round capable arms whose lines suggested strength and beauty, of a firm knit, pliant body that moved with easy sinuous grace, of eyes--but ever at the eyes he paused, forgetting all else, till, recalling himself, he began again, striving to catch and hold that radiant, bewildering, illusive vision. That was a sufficiently maddening process, but to relate that vision of radiant efficient strength and grace to the one he carried of the farmer's daughter with her dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy complexion, her stupid face, her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her sloppy figure, was quite impossible. After long and strenuous attempts he gave up the struggle.

"Mandy!" he exclaimed aloud to the forest trees. "That Mandy!

What's gone wrong with my eyes, or am I clean off my head? I will go back," he said with sudden resolution, "and take another look."

Straight back he walked to the hospital, but at the door he paused.