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Updated: June 23, 2025
David shook hands with him in silence; then Nepapinas put on the fresh bandage, and after that went out, chuckling again in his weird way, as though he had played a great joke on the white man whom his wizardry had snatched out of the jaws of death. For some time there had been a subdued activity outside.
Its touch was as light as the touch of his lips had been against her shining hair, but he felt it in every nerve of his body. "Nepapinas is making a special lotion for your hurt. I will send him in, and then you may come." The wild chant of the rivermen was near as she turned to the door. From it she looked back at him swiftly. "They are happy, M'sieu David," she repeated softly.
A strange dawning was coming to him, thrilling him to his finger-tips. He listened. A new sound was approaching from the hall. His door was opened, and a wheel-chair was rolled in by old Nepapinas. In the chair was St. Pierre Audemard. Feet and hands and arms were wrapped in bandages, but his face was uncovered and wreathed in smiling happiness when he saw David propped up against his pillows.
He was conscious of no pain when Nepapinas took off his bandage and bathed his head in the lotion he had brought. Before a fresh bandage was put on, he looked at himself for a moment in the mirror. It was the first time he had seen his wound, and he expected to find himself marked with a disfiguring scar.
And Nepapinas, like a machine that had looked upon death a thousand times, gave no rest to his claw-like fingers until the work was done and it was then that something came to drive the arrow-shooting devils out of the darkness that was smothering Carrigan.
"I have brought you something to eat, M'sieu David," broke in a soft voice behind him. Nepapinas slipped away, and Jeanne Marie-Anne stood in his place. David stared up at her, speechless. He heard the door close behind the old Indian. Then Jeanne Marie-Anne drew up a chair, so that for the first time he could see her clear eyes with the light of day full upon her.
Nepapinas rolled him close to the bed and then shuffled out, and as he closed the door, David was sure he heard the subdued whispering of feminine voices down the hall. "How are you, David?" asked St. Pierre. "Fine," nodded Carrigan. "And you?" "A bit scorched, and a broken leg." He held up his padded hands. "Would be dead if you hadn't carried me to the river.
Pierre's wife was gone, and Nepapinas was gone, and at the tail of the big sweep sat only Joe Clamart, guarding watchfully. The two canoes were drawing near, and in one of them were two men, and in the other three, and David knew that like Joe Clamart they were watchers set over him by St. Pierre.
He stared at the closed door, beginning to cry out against himself, and over him there swept slowly and terribly another thing the shame of his weakness, the hopelessness of the thing that for a space had eaten into him and consumed him. And as he stared, the door opened, and Nepapinas came in. During the next quarter of an hour David was as silent as the old Indian doctor.
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