He brought water, placed
instruments, stood by to do what she told him. His nervousness had
grown into fear; he started now and then, jerking about guiltily, as
though he foresaw an interruption.
Together they got Norton's inert form upon the folded blankets.
Patten's hands shook a little; he asked for a sip of brandy from her
flask. She granted it, and while Patten drank she cut away the hair
from the unconscious man's scalp. Long ago her fingers had made their
examination, were assured that her diagnosis was correct. Her hands
were as untrembling as the steel of her knife. She made the first
incision, drawing back the flap of skin and flesh, revealing the bone
of the skull. . . .
For forty-five minutes she worked, her hands swift, sure, capable,
unerring. It was done. She was right. The under-table of the skull
had been fractured; there was the bone pressure upon the underlying
area of brain-tissue. She had removed the pressure and with it any
true pathological cause of the theft impulse.
She drew a bandage about the sleeping eyes. She made Patten bring his
own saddle-blanket; it was fixed across the entrance of the anteroom of
the King's Palace, darkening it. Then she went to the ledge just
outside and stood there, staring with wide eyes across the little
meadow with its flowers and birds and water, down the slope of the
mountain, to the miles of desert.
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