Reluctantly the onlookers withdrew, some two or three of them to pause in the shadows when once out of eye-shot, and look back. But from now on Winch disregarded them. He helped the wounded man off with his coat, yanked his shirts out from his belted waist, tore cloth freely when it was in his way, and thus uncovered the wound.
"_She_ did that for you? That kid of a girl?"
"Yes, damn her," muttered Timber-Wolf angrily, as Billy Winch's fingers, already scarlet, touched the wound. "Turned my back a second ... she ought to have shot me dead ... either a rotten shot or in an awful hurry...."
"Or scared to death!" Winch's contempt was enormous. "That's the kind that does the most harm, the scared-stiffs that's always shooting the wrong time and the wrong man."
By now he had the shirts torn from top to bottom, and stood back, looking appraisingly at the broad, naked back and the small hole which a bullet had drilled. Against the great area of flesh, as white as a girl's and smooth and clean with vigorous health, the smear of blood, itself red with that same perfection of health, gave the wound an appearance of ten times its real gravity. But Winch was accustomed to blood, and knew that Bruce Standing could lose more of it than could most men and be little the worse for the loss. He diagnosed the case aloud, muttering thoughtfully:
"Thirty-two caliber, to begin with; a thirty-two ain't nothing, Timber. Now, if it had been a forty-five, at that close-up range.... Well, you see you was standing half-way slanting; it took you under that big shoulder muscle and drilled in and hit a rib, one of the high-up ones, and kept on going, sort of skirting round, skating on a rib, and popped out under your arm. Lift it a bit? That's it. A clean hole. I tell you, either you sort of slipped and fell, or it was the impack that knocked you over.... The boys will be here any minute, and will scare up a bar of castile soap for me and something to make a regular poultice, what we calls a comprest, you know; I can make one out of most anything; remember Sam True's thoroughbred stallion that got all cut to hell last fall, and I made him a comprest out of sawdust! You remind me," added Winch thoughtfully, drawing off one of his hopping paces, to take in with an admiring and practised eye the now virtually nude torso, a white, smooth-running engine of power and endurance, "of a wild stallion mostly as much as a man, anyhow. A good smear of mustang liniment on that shoulder, a application, you know; and a dose of physic and a couple days' rest and careful diet, and you'll be as good as new...."