There Was Nothing We Could Do For The Human Victim.
Our guides,
having questioned the assembled natives, told us there was no
hospital to which he might be taken and that a neighborhood
physician had already been sent for.
So, having no desire to look
on the grief of his mother - if she was his mother - a young Austrian
and I turned our attention to the neglected mule. We felt that
we could at least render a little first aid there. We had our
pocket-knives out and were slashing away at the twisted maze of
ropes and straps that bound the brute down between the shafts,
when a particularly shrill chorus of shrieks checked us. We stood
up and faced about, figuring that the poor devil on the muck heap
had died and that his people were bemoaning his death. That was
not it at all. The entire group, including the fat old woman,
were screaming at us and shaking their clenched fists at us, warning
us not to damage that harness with our knives. Feeling ran high,
and threatened to run higher.
So, having no desire to be mobbed on the spot, we desisted and put
up our knives; and after a while we got back into our carriage and
drove on, leaving the capsized mule still belly-up in the debris,
lashing out carefully with her skinned legs at the trappings that
bound her; and the driver was still prone on the dunghill, with
his fingers twitching more feebly now, as though the life had
almost entirely fled out of him - a grim little tragedy set in the
edge of a wide and aching desolation!
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