Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories

								

side.
"Sal!" he said fiercely, bending over her, "air ye wuss?"
Her dazed eyes cleared slightly.
"I dunno, Pop," she murmured feebly.
"Ye ain't fixin' to die, air ye?" he persisted.
"I dunno, Pop."
"Don't you let 'em skeer you," he commanded sternly. "You keep on
a-fightin'. Don't you dare give up. Sal, do you hear me?"
The girl's wavering consciousness steadied, and for a moment the
challenge that the old man flung at death was valiantly answered in her
pain-racked eyes.
For an hour and a half the surgeons worked. The case, critical enough at
best, was greatly complicated by the long delay. Twice further effort
seemed useless, and it was only by the prompt administration of oxygen
that the end was averted. During the nerve-racking suspense Pop not only
refused to leave the room, he even refused to stand back from the table.
With keen, suspicious eyes he followed every movement of the surgeons'
hands. Only once did he speak out, and that was in the beginning, to an
interne who was administering the anæsthetic:
"Lift that funnel, you squash-headed fool!" he thundered; "don't you see
hit's marking of her cheek?"
When the work was finished and the unconscious patient had been taken
down to her ward, Pop still kept his place beside her. With his hand on
her pulse he watched her breathing, watched the first faint quivering of
her lids, the restlessness that grew into pain and later into agony.
Hour after hour he sat there and passed with her through that
crucifixion that follows some capital operations.
On his refusal at luncheon time to leave the bedside Miss Fletcher
ignored the rules and sent him a tray; but when night came and he still
refused to go, she became impatient.
"You can't stay in here to-night, Mr. Hawkins," she said firmly. "I have
asked one of the orderlies, who lives nearby, to take you home with him.
We can send for you if there is any change. I must insist that you go
now."
"Ain't I made it cl'ar from the start," cried Pop angrily, "thet I ain't
a-goin' to be druv out? You-uns kin call me muley-headed or whatever
you've a mind to. Sal's always stood by me, and by golly, I'm a-goin' to
stand by Sal!"
His raised voice roused the patient, and a feeble summons brought Miss
Fletcher to the bedside.
"Say," plead the girl faintly, "don't rile Pop. He's the--fightenest
man--in--Breathitt--when his blood's--up."
"All right, dear," said Miss Fletcher, with a soothing hand on the hot
brow; "he shall do as he likes."
During that long night the girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to
another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep. During the quiet
moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins
stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never
relaxing the vigilance of his watch. For Pop was doing sentry duty, much
as he had done it in the old days of the Civil War, when he had answered