by Zane Grey
“Yes.”
“Then comes Mary.”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t coax her down to Phoenix with you?”
“No. She ought to be here in case Wilbur comes back.”
“Sure enough.... Can you beat that for law? She’d be the one who deserted if she were to be gone when he comes back. Looks like she can’t leave if she wants to.”
“She can’t. But she’s never thought of it that way. And you’re right about divorce. I doubt if she’d ever consider it.”
“Newton’s likely got that figured. What a yellow dog he is! ... Come to think of it, I don’t know what made me suggest Phoenix. He may be there. Hanley’s on his way.”
Katharine nodded assent.
“I’ve made up my mind to one thing,” John confided. “I’ll lay off Newton’s dirty work on the reservation provided he doesn’t come back and mistreat her. That would be my cue. I’d land him behind bars, and she’d be safe. Safe to get away. And she’d go, too, if I had to kidnap her to show her the sense of it.”
He carried this thought away with him. He honestly wished Newton would recover from his present deterioration, if from that Mary could glean some happiness, but if the fool was headed for complete destruction, he would save Mary from being dragged along with the man to whom she was married.
As soon as he reached his room he wrote a letter to his aunt in Texas, asking her to deposit so many dollars — he left a space for the amount — in some bank in San Antonio, to take out a draft for a Mrs. Wilbur Newton for the amount deposited, and to send the draft to her address — Taho, via Flaggerston, Arizona.
CHAPTER XIII
MARY FOUND WINTER days busy times, but she found winter evenings lonely. No one applied for the room she advertised at the trading post and post office, so she communed with a silent house whenever she was home. Anywhere else Mary could not have endured such complete isolation. But Taho held her. She was bound. She could not leave. Sometimes alone in the silent rooms she felt she must flee from her loneliness, but whenever the suggestion came, it passed as quickly as it had appeared. There would come a sudden whiff of sage and snow, the low, barking cry of a coyote, or the restless whistle of wind that whipped along the ground, and the idea of leaving the desert would be forgotten.
The memory of what had happened in September was with her always. Wilbur’s chair never ceased to remind her. She never sat there. She wanted to destroy it. She examined with an open mind her reticence to obey the desire and discovered that as long as she let the chair remain in its place, she had objective proof that John and she, there in her home, had justified their friendship.
Snows had come early. Yet between the frequent storms were days like spring, unseasonably warm. At the school grounds the Indian children wallowed through rivulets of sluggish water whenever they moved from building to building. They loved such places, looked for them rather than avoided them. Then they would become a fretful lot, cheeks swollen, eyes inflamed, and faces screwed time and again for violent sneezes. Headaches were reported. The infirmary would become a busy place.
Then word came that Mrs. MacDonald had been taken violently ill with influenza, and by the next week the disease was a matter of such grave concern that Mrs. Gordon’s baby had died of it. The school doctor looked with alarm at the copper-hued youngsters who came to him labeled “Infirmary Cases.” Day after day cards were filled with such notations as: “Watch for Influenza Symptoms, Mild Case Influenza, Malignant Case Influenza.” And the nurse told one of her schoolteacher friends that the doctor was worried, and soon all Taho knew.
By Christmas the town was under a virtual quarantine. Not that one had been ordered from headquarters. But people were driven by fear to confine their immediate families and shut out the malady if they could. The register of nine at the white children’s school had a blank placed beside it for attendance, and the teacher substituted for a sick teacher in the Indian school. The church Christmas party was canceled, likewise the Indian school holiday festival.
On Christmas Eve fresh snow covered the mud wash of the last storm and fell steadily for a night and a day. Not a soul ventured on the broad avenue that was Taho. Not even an Indian or a stray dog tracked the covering of snow. All Christmas day Mary kept logs burning in the open grate of the living room. She was indebted to Billy Horton for the wood and for killing the chickens she had set to simmer on the kitchen stove preparing a broth to be sent tomorrow to the infirmary. She thought of Billy’s kindness as she sewed small woolen nightgowns which she had cut from a light blanket. They, too, were for the infirmary. Each time she rose to stir the broth or feed the fire she cleared a place on the frosted window and looked out on the cold and shrouded town which lay empty and desolate. It was the loneliest Christmas day she ever had passed.
Late in the afternoon she began to look for lights from the houses down the avenue. Evening would be cheerier, she hoped. To give a feeling of comfort to other lonely souls, she lit her lamps early and scoured the frost from the windows so the light would shine brightly through. Snow was heaped everywhere. It burdened the cottonwood trees and every fence and post bore its load of white. Presently between the laden branches Mary saw yellow patches gleam. They were the infirmary lights. One after another they appeared. Mary imagined the nurse making the rounds with her electric torch. There were lights from every window; rooms never before occupied were in use now. She was reminded that yesterday she had dug up several cots from the school storeroom for the doctor who was loudly deploring their lack of equipment.
Mary was preparing her evening meal when a knock on the front door startled her. She was expecting no one, for the night already was completely dark.
“Who is it?” she called against the wind which howled through the keyhole.
“Dr. Kellogg.”
Assured by the familiar voice, she opened the door, and the doctor entered, tracking snow with him. Normally he appeared a thin wiry man, but in the big bearskin coat he seemed almost rotund. Mary wished the worried look he wore could be removed with the coat.
“Merry Christmas,” he said with not the slightest change in expression, and added immediately, “Are you busy?”
“Not very. Preparing a meal. Perhaps you’ll join me.”
“No, no! Thank you! Wondered if you’d help me out at the hospital. The nurse is down with the flu now. It was bad enough to have only one nurse for forty kids. No nurse at all is terrible.”
“Certainly I’ll help,” said Mary.
The doctor eyed her critically for a minute. “You’ve not got the sniffles, backache, headache, pain in your limbs or sore eyes, have you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then don’t get them, and you’ll do. I’ll trot along. Come when you can. I mean, come as quickly as you can.”
He let in more snow and a great gust of wind before he closed the door behind him.
“Poor fellow,” thought Mary. “He’s hardly equal to it.”
She shortened her preparations for supper and poured the savory chicken soup into jars to cool. Then she donned rubber boots and a close-fitting cap and brought her very familiar but somewhat threadbare coat from the closet. Turning down the lamp, she sallied forth into the storm. Barring the friendly gleam of lights across the snow, Taho seemed even colder now that the blue shadow of night had descended. Remote houses became spectral things, seeming to sway beyond the intercepting fall of whirling snowflakes. A mass of snow slipped from the slanted roof of the new government building and struck a drift below with a soft thud. The wind shook the curtain of snow and tore at Mary’s cheek. She followed the deep footprints Dr. Kellogg had made. She saw where his coat had dragged, building piles of snow along the way.
Mary reached the infirmary and entered without knocking. It was a frame building, as drear and drab within as the schoolhouses. An odor of coal oil was prevalent. Lamps needed trimming. She would attend to that presently.
The doctor hailed her with, “Think
I’m losing a case upstairs. Pneumonia’s set in. Girl. Indian. Such a poor-looking little thing. Comes from Sage Springs. God, but I hanker for the city at times like this. A real hospital, the right equipment, sufficient help. Above all, efficiency. Before Miss Lange came here to nurse I was sent an empty-headed girl who hadn’t completed even a probation term. I set her to labeling medicines and she labeled them all wrong. Had to destroy a lot of medicine for fear she’d use it before I could straighten things out. She might have killed someone. She might be responsible for casualties now through this curtailing of supplies. We were short enough without that. I made out an order for more, but you know the red tape involved in spending money here. It’s awful. I’m running short of everything.”
Mary gasped. “Have you taken the matter up with the government agent, or the missionary, or the school?”
“It’s up for consideration. Everything’s ‘up for consideration’ — supplies, new quarters, extra nurse. But it’s action, not consideration, I need.”
“Can’t you order things from Flaggerston yourself?”
“Yes. With cash on delivery. I’ve bought things, myself, as much as I can afford. I’m supporting a family back East.”
Mary knew how little he could save from his meager salary. “How much of an expenditure would cover your present needs?” she asked.
“Oh, there’s so much! Hot-water bags, ice bags, medicines, blankets, towels — everything! Three hundred dollars would be slim.”
“And five hundred?”
“A fortune.”
“Maybe I can let you have it?”
Now the doctor gasped. “Have it? What do you mean? Who on this reservation owns that much money unless it’s MacDonald?”
“I have a draft for that amount.”
“But where’d you expect to get it back from?”
“I’m not thinking of getting it back.”
“And that, I reckon, is all you own. You with a husband who’s—” The doctor stumbled over another word and then murmured, “I beg your pardon.”
“You haven’t offended me,” Mary returned quickly.
“You mean to give that money for these poor beggars. Come now, you were just a little too impulsive, weren’t you? Suppose you help out with a hundred.”
“I want them to have it all.”
“You’re — you’re too good. You’re — you’re not natural,” sputtered the doctor. “I shouldn’t let you do it, but I can’t help it for the kids’ sake.” Then he groaned, “Oh, but I wish I had it before this storm came on. Wires are down. We can’t telegraph an order, and who’d try to take a car out in this snow?”
“Billy Horton will. He’s a lad with a heart. All I’ll have to do is tell him the situation here.”
“It was an inspiration, a sure-enough heaven-sent inspiration, my going to you tonight,” the doctor declared. “I was desperate. ‘Who’ll help?’ I asked myself. There were faces that turned away from me as quickly as I spoke. But I saw you clear as spring water. And I went to you straightway.”
“Well, put me to work,” said Mary. “And between your labors manage somehow to make out a list of the things you need.”
“God! This is Christmas!” said Dr. Kellogg.
His words thrilled Mary. Her forlorn day became suddenly a very happy one.
“I’ll put you up with Joy,” added the doctor, strictly professional again. “We’ll try to pull her through.”
Joy! What a name for the unhappy isolated little creature into whose room Mary was ushered. She was an eight-year-old mite with a body too frail for such a burden of pain. How pitifully she fought to breathe, plunging her hands upward like one drowning!
Mary thought of Katharine’s description of Alice’s struggle — how oxygen tanks rushed into service helped her through. Oxygen tanks. Oxygen. She shivered in the cold, for the two windows were open top and bottom. Joy needed all this air. She must fight for the precious oxygen, poor child. And meanwhile her body must be kept warm. So bricks had to be reheated and hot-water bags refilled between periods when Mary chafed the rebellious hands. Now and then, through the night, the doctor came in and gave the child hypodermic injections. His visits were brief and he had few words.
After midnight the wind lulled, the snow ceased. An occasional cry sounded from the other rooms, and the sound of coughing. Joy still labored and fought. She uttered sibilant words, staccato cries cut short by the succeeding struggles to breathe. Mary’s own breath came heavily, an unconscious reaction of her effort to help. She felt no need for sleep. The child’s fight had become her fight, and unbroken vigilance was the only way to victory.
It was six o’clock in the morning when Dr. Kellogg pronounced hope. “She may come through,” he said. “And it’s you she can thank.... Sure you’re not feeling stuffy yourself? No pains in your back, head, limbs? Eyes not sore?” He quoted these symptoms mechanically.
“I’m as fit as I was last night.”
“Good. Two things for you to do this morning. See this Horton fellow and then get some sleep. List’s ready.”
“I don’t need sleep,” Mary protested. “A cup of coffee will set me right for the day.”
“Not for the day. Only until I get someone to take your place.”
“Oh, no, doctor! Joy’s mine to pull through now!”
“And then who’ll pull you through?”
“Why, the will to help her, of course.”
“That sounds all right, but I believe in exercising care.”
“And meanwhile take no precautions yourself!”
“I’m a doctor.”
“And I’ve accepted a nurse’s place.”
With the night’s triumph scored in her favor, Mary went to the government mess where she could have breakfast and see Billy Horton at the same time. At first Billy received her request that he drive to Flaggerston as a joke, but when he was convinced of her earnestness and heard the cause for which she was pleading he capitulated without further ado. She went then to fetch the draft. It was in her change box where it had lain for seven long weeks. She had intended never to cash it while its origin remained a mystery, nor would she, had this emergency not pressed her. It represented five hundred dollars deposited in her name in a San Antonio bank. It had arrived in a typewritten envelope with a San Antonio cancellation stamp, but no word or address to explain it. At first she had thought her relatives from Texas had sent it. “If so — why?” she asked herself. They knew nothing of her financial difficulties. Furthermore, they were not given to generosity, and a generous act undeclared would be a breach of their ethics. She could neither reject nor accept it on the assumption that it came from them. The thought that Wilbur might have sent the draft presented itself tardily. It did not seem consistent that Wilbur, who was selfish, who had deserted her, taking with him what money was in the change box and her jewelry, who had no money nor the credit to borrow it, had turned benefactor.
“Texas ... Texas!” she would repeat to herself, trying to stir associations that might reveal a clue. And taking the chance of having a letter to her father intercepted by her stepmother as others had been, she wrote asking him in what state was the copper mine in which he had taken shares for her when she was a child. She knew the mine operations had been suspended years ago, and, as far as she knew, never reopened. An answer that the mine was in New Mexico satisfied her that so far she was more in the dark than ever as to the identity of her benefactor.
While the mystery was yet unsolved, she would not, could not, let the money remain idle in the San Antonio bank when there was a crying need for it in Taho. She hurried to Billy, eager to make her act irrevocable.
Indomitable will and several cups of strong coffee kept Mary at Joy’s bedside through the day, and she would have resisted the fatigue that crept over her toward evening had Dr. Kellogg not said Joy would live, and convinced her his faith had nothing to do with his insistence that she accept relief.
A schoolteacher named Miss Hills took Mary’s p
lace. Not only had the girl slept during the day to fortify herself for the night, but before reporting, thoughtful of all that Mary had undergone, she had arranged with neighbors to have Mary’s house warm for her return. Tears came to Mary’s eyes when she found what had been done. There was a certain sweetness in being so deadly tired. She slept twelve hours. At eight she was on duty again. Joy lifted a feeble hand to greet her.
Several new cases came in that day. Doctor Kellogg grew anxious about Billy Horton. They looked for him hourly, but Billy did not arrive until the morning of the next day. He appeared to have been through a Homeric struggle. When Mary tried to thank him, he turned away shamefaced and said, “You mustn’t be handin’ me too much credit, Mrs. Newton.”
“Why, you — you’ve done everything!” declared Mary.
“You picked me to ask to go because I’ve been doin’ little jobs for you, didn’t you?” Billy asked.
Mary was puzzled. “Yes. That was what made me think of you.”
“An’ you might have been wonderin’ about my sudden interest, an’ thinkin’ it was that trunk business I was tryin’ to square.”
“No. That never occurred to me. I’ve thought of you as a fine upstanding lad who understood my difficulties.”
“And there’s where in the beginning you got me a little wrong. I was asked to help you, so it’s only square I shouldn’t take too much credit.”
“Asked to help me?” echoed Mary.
A more vivid red mounted the boy’s windburned face. “Yes. John Curry asked me and offered to pay me, and I like to throwed him for that. He asked me to do chores for you and make myself generally handy.”
Mary’s cheeks burned in their turn.
“That was thoughtful of Mr. Curry,” she said, very self-conscious and fighting it. “And ever so good of you.”
“What gets me,” Billy went on penitently, “is that I had to be asked. I’d have wanted to do it, you see, if I’d been smart enough to figure you’d be needin’ a man. I’m not smart like John.”
“You are brave,” Mary interrupted.