Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page B

go now. They would hunt me down. Jim Pinder would want to kill the man who had shot his brother, and there was Bodie Miller, from Maclaren’s.
    Now…I must act now…fix my wounds, drink, find a place to hide, a place for a last stand. And it had to be close, for I could not go far.
    Nothing within me told me I could do it. My body was weak, and I seemed to have no will, but somehow, someway, I was going to try.
    Rolling over, I got my hands under me. Then I started to crawl.…
    Chapter 7
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    P ULLING MYSELF TO the edge of the waterhole, I drank deep of the clear, cold water. The coolness seemed to creep all through the tissues of my body and I lay there, breathing heavily.
    A sea of dull pain seemed to wash over me, yet I forced myself to think, to fight back the pain. I must bathe my wounds. That meant hot water, and hot water meant a fire.
    Yet there was such weakness in me that I could scarcely close my hand. I had lost much blood, I had not eaten, and I had ridden far with the strength draining from my body.
    With contempt I stared at my helpless hands, hating them for their weakness. And then I began to fight for strength in those fingers, willing them to be strong. My left hand reached out and pulled a stick to me. Then another.
    Some scraped-up leaves, some fragments of dried manzanita…soon I would have a fire.
    I was a creature fighting for survival, fighting the oldest battle known to man. Through waves of recurring delirium and weakness, I dragged myself to an aspen, where I peeled bark to make a pot in which to heat water.
    Patiently, my eyes blinking heavily, my fingers puzzling out the form, I shaped the bark into a crude pot, and into it I poured water.
    Almost crying with weakness, I got a fire started and watched the flames take hold. Then I put the bark vessel on top of two rocks and the flames rose around it. As long as the flames stayed below the water level the bark would not burn, for the water inside would absorb the heat. Trying to push more sticks into the fire, I blacked out again.
    When next my eyes opened the water was boiling. Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I unbuckled my gun belt and let the guns fall to the ground beside me. Then carefully I opened my shirt and, soaking a piece of the cloth in the hot water, began to bathe my wounds.
    The hot water felt good as I gingerly worked the cloth plugs free, but the sight of the wound in my side was frightening. It was red and inflamed, but the bullet had gone clear through and as near as I see, had touched nothing vital.
    A second slug had gone through the fleshy part of my thigh, and after bathing that wound also, I lay still for a long time, regaining strength and soaking up the heat.
    Near by was a patch of prickly pear. Crawling to it, I cut off a few big leaves and roasted them to get off the spines. Then I bound the pulp over the wounds. It was a method Indians used to fight inflammation, and I knew of no other than Indian remedies that would do me here.
    It was a slow thing, this working to patch my wounds, and I realized there was little time left to me. My enemies would be working out my trail, and I had no idea how far my horse had come in the darkness, nor over what sort of ground. My trail might be plain as day, or it might be confusing.
    There was a clump of amolillo near by and I dug up some roots, scraping them into boiling water. They foamed up when stirred and I drank some of the foamy liquid. Indians claimed bullet wounds healed better after a man drank amolillo water.
    Then I made a meal of squaw cabbage and breadroot, lacking the strength to get my saddlebags. Sick with weakness, I crawled under the brush and slept, awakening to drink deep of the cold water, then to sleep again.
    And through the red darkness of my tortured sleep men rode and fought and guns crashed. Men struggled in the shadows along the edge of my consciousness.
    Morgan Park…Pinder…Rud Maclaren, and the sharply feral face of