CHAPTER II
A Secret in Three Parts
THERE was no doctor at Skyfields. The camp had not yet attained to that dignity. A good many of the miners had done rough surgery, could set a limb, tie an artery, and attend to superficial wounds, but a bullet through the lungs, with internal hemorrhage, was beyond their skill. Lyman himself knew as much of such practice as any of them and he was convinced that his case was hopeless.
When they laid him on his built-in bunk in the corner of the little cabin and stripped him for an examination, he shook his head and protested that they were only wasting time. The bullet could be felt lodged in the muscles of the back but he would not allow them to attempt to remove it.
"I've seen men shot this way," he said, "and doctors working over 'em. They didn't get well, not when they were as old as I am."
The wound, half hidden in the matted gray hair of his chest, seemed almost a trifling thing, blue at its contracting edges, with only a smear of blood from the piercing of the scanty outer tissues.
"Let me lie down," said Lyman. "I'll live longer. Give me a sup of the whisky once in a while when I
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