Finally Shad said, “It’s gonna take stitches.”
Old Keats, only half thinking about it, looked at Rostov, who nodded just once.
“Who’s got needle an’ thread handy?” Keats asked.
Mushy said, “I have. Been fixin’ my chaps.”
“Jesus Christ, no!” Crab groaned. “That leather-workin’ needle’s big as a railroad spike!”
Purse said, “I got one not so big right here, for shirt buttons and the like.”
“Heat it in the fire,” Shad said. Crab wet his lips and Shad went on. “Hit that bourbon hard as you want.” As the hurt man drank deeply, Purse heated the long, narrow needle until its end was glowing yellow. Then, threading the needle, Shad said, “As long as I’ve got t’ do all this work anyway, ya’ want me t’ sew a couple buttons on your arm?”
“Not particularly.” Crab took another long drink and put the bottle down.
“It’d be damned interesting and might even possibly make ya’ more attractive.”
But now in dead silence, Shad concentrating intently, the hot needle was already going quickly, efficiently and terribly painfully through Crab’s flesh, drawing the muscles and skin closer together. Crab was gritting his teeth and in a cold sweat, both from the pain and from the repulsive idea of his arm being sewed together. “Goddamn it!” he said weakly, and yet angry at the same time. “Somebody say somethin’ so I can listen to it!”
Sammy, grasping for something, said loudly, “What I want t’ know is why that herd didn’t stampede t’night!”
“They’d a’ stampeded except they couldn’t make up their mind which direction t’ go,” Slim answered equally loudly.
“Huh!” Chakko grunted abruptly. “Natcho! Old Fooler!”
“What he means,” Natcho said strongly, watching Crab’s pain-stricken face, “is that I rode by Old Fooler and was smart enough to jump off of Diablo onto him instead! My shirt was only halfway on anyway so I took it off and held it over Old Fooler’s eyes so he couldn’t see! Most of those cows are so used to followin’ him that when he went in circles they must have thought that was the right thing to do! It seemed like a lot better thing for me to do than go off and get my arm half chewed off by an unfriendly wolf!”
“And also,” Slim’s voice boomed, “without Old Fooler them cows didn’t know whether they was comin’ or goin’ anyhow! If they run off from one wolf, they was runnin’ right smack t’ward another one! Them dumb damn wolves is the only ones ever made a whole stampede take place all in the same place!”
“Which just goes to prove a simple fact!” I said loudly. “Those dumb wolves must be about the same level a’ cowhand as this here old fella Crab Smith! Equally dumb and grouchy! No wonder one of ’em tried t’ take over his horse an’ ride it! Probably wanted his job!”
Mushy picked it up and half yelled, “Hell, yes! That goddamn wolf no doubt rides better! And sure as hell’d be worth more salary at the end a’ the month!”
And now with his quick, powerful and yet at the moment very delicate hands, Shad had finished sewing the gaping flesh of Crab’s arm back into place. He knotted the thread in place and bit it off and leaned back to take a deep breath.
I’d thought Crab had passed out two or three times, but he managed to raise his head slightly, knowing that it was over. “That wolf might a’ killed me,” he said weakly. “But with you fellas, an’ the jokes ya’ come up with, I’ll damn well never have t’ worry about laughin’ m’self t’ death!” And then he laid his head back down and closed his eyes.
Shad looked at us with grim, hard approval. “He’s right about your humor not bein’ too vital of a danger.” Then he took the bottle of bourbon and poured it on the sewed-up wound, gently squeezing as much of it as possible into the places where the closed flesh had been torn open. “He’ll be okay now.”
“No he won’t.” Rostov’s voice was very quiet and dead on the level. “The arm has already been infected.”
Crab’s arm did seem a little bigger.
Old Keats stood up. “We’ve done all we can for him, Captain.”
Rostov shook his head and said very simply, “No.”
Shad turned slowly and faced him, and as always there was the feeling between them of an earthquake about to hit the whole area. “The sewin’ was good, and bourbon’s a good outside cure.”
None of us, except maybe Shad, could get mad at what Rostov said, and the way he said it. “Those wolves don’t have the cleanest fangs in the world. Infection has set in.”
Shad nodded. “That’s always possible.”
“Whatever poisons are in there must be drawn off.”
They both meant every word they said, and for the first time this was a quiet, thoughtful duel between the men, backed up by the things that each man knew.
“If his arm swells any more,” Shad said, “we’ll make a poultice outta cowshit. That’ll draw everything but a man’s bones out.”
“You need a simple, swift thing, now.” Rostov stepped to Crab, kneeled down and put his hand on his forehead, then his hurt arm. “Otherwise he’ll lose this arm, or die.”
I loved Shad for saying what he said then.
He said, “This man means more to me than any fifty men you’ll ever know.” Then as Rostov looked up at him with those damned, dark, piercing eyes, he said, “He’s only twenty-three years old, and he hasn’t had as much trouble and fun as he ought to, and if you got anything constructive, I’ll listen to it.”
“What medicines do you have?” Rostov asked.
“Just two. Quinine, for the fever, and whiskey.”
Rostov was already working with Crab, rubbing his wrists hard between his powerful hands, and then putting his right hand very softly and lightly over Crab’s heart and on his forehead. With all his obvious concern for Crab he suddenly said a thing that shocked and almost stunned me. He said bitterly, “I’d have expected more from the modern, up-to-date United States of America!”
Rostov was leaning down over Crab, and Shad now leaned down over him again, one of them on each side of the hurt man. “All right,” Shad said, his jaw hard, “I told you this man means somethin’ to me! You and your goddamn Russians come up with somethin’ that’ll help him more than me and cowshit and bourbon can help him!”
Rostov put his hand on Crab’s face and worked with it softly. “Come awake. Be aware. I need one thing from you. Saliva.”
Crab kind of woke up but didn’t quite understand what was going on. He mumbled something, but nobody knew what it was.
“I can use my own, or others’, but it’s best from you,” Rostov said.
“This dumb bastard says he needs your spit!” Shad told him.
Chakko, Indian-like, nodded and grinned at this.
“Hell, I ain’t got any left,” Crab whispered.
“Then make some!” Rostov lifted him, cradling him in his arm.
“You make some!” Old Keats leaned down near Crab. “It may have t’ do with havin’ one arm or two—or bein’ dead!”
In just a little while I was really proud I hadn’t fought with Crab last night, because with no spit left in him, and too tired to hardly breathe anyway, he spit a handful of spit into Rostov’s hand. Part of it was natural and part of it was choking, but it worked either way, I guess.
And Rostov just mixed that spit with a little dirt he picked up from the ground in his other hand. And finally Rostov had a little handful of sort of wet spit and earth, and he said in a very soft voice to Crab that it was okay for him to go to sleep again.
And that American spit and Russian ground was the poultice.
Shad didn’t complain and he didn’t cooperate either. He stood back while Rostov and Old Keats bound the poultice around Crab’s arm with a piece of fairly clean cloth.