"But you're hurt, David!" she moaned. "I knew you were hurt! I told them so! I was looking for you. I knew you hadn't run away."
"And she made us believe you hadn't, too," Pop Bybee panted, having reached them on a run, dragging his wife behind him. "What happened, Dave boy? Had a mix-up with the dirty crooks, did you?"
"Winfield Bybee, you _are_ a fool!" Mrs. Bybee gasped, breathless from running. "Let the poor boy get his breath first. Here! Put your arm about him and let him lean on you. Sally, you run back to the train and get help. This boy's all done up and he's going to have that shoulder dressed before he's pestered to death with questions."
"I can walk," David panted, his breath whistling across his ashen lips. "I don't want Sally out of my sight. I--would--give up--then. Nothing much--the matter. Just a--bullet--in my shoulder. Be all right--in a--day or two."
"Please don't try to talk, darling," Sally begged, rubbing her cheek against his right hand and wetting it with tears.
"Lean on me and take it easy," Pop Bybee urged, his voice husky with unashamed emotion. "And don't talk any more till we get you into a berth. God! But I'm glad to see you, Dave boy! I'd made up my mind I'd never trust another man if you'd thrown me down. But Sally didn't doubt you a minute. Kept me from telling the police that you had disappeared with the crooks."
"Thanks," David gasped, leaning heavily on the showman. "I was scared sick--the police--had found--Sally. Knew there was--bound to be--an awful row."
He fainted then, his splendid young body crumpling suddenly to the cinders of the railroad track. Somehow the three of them managed to get him to the show train and into the Bybees' stateroom, where Gus, the barker, who had graduated from a medical school before the germ of wanderlust had infected him, dressed the wounded shoulder.
"The bullet went clear through the fleshy part of the arm at the shoulder," Gus told them, as he washed his hands in the stateroom's basin. "No bones touched at all. Just a flesh wound. Of course he's lost a lot of blood and he'll be pretty shaky for a few days, but no real harm done. You can turn off the faucet, Sally. Save them tears for a big tragedy--like ground glass in your cold cream, or something like that. Want a real doctor to give that shoulder the once-over, Pop?" he asked, turning to Bybee, who had not left David's side.