CHAPTER XXXIV
AT SLEEPY CAT
Nothing in nature, not even the storm itself, is so cruel as thebeauty of the after calm. In the radiance of the sunshine next day deSpain, delirious and muttering, was taken to the hospital at SleepyCat. In an adjoining room lay Nan, moaning reproaches at those whowere torturing her reluctantly back to life. Day and night the doctorsworked over the three. The town, the division, the stagemen, and themountain-men watched the outcome of the struggle. From as far asMedicine Bend railroad surgeons came to aid in the fight.
De Spain cost the most acute anxiety. The crux of the battle, afterthe three lives were held safe, centred on the effort to save deSpain's arm--the one he had chosen to lose, if he must lose one, whenhe strapped it to the whiffletree. The day the surgeons agreed that ifhis life were to be saved the arm must come off at the shoulder agloom fell on the community.
In a lifetime of years there can come to the greater part of us but afew days, a few hours, sometimes no more than a single moment, toshow of what stuff we are really made. Such a crisis came that day toNan. Already she had been wheeled more than once into de Spain's room,to sit where she could help to woo him back to life. The chiefsurgeon, in the morning, told Nan of the decision. In her hospital bedshe rose bolt upright. "No!" she declared solemnly. "You shan't takehis arm off!"
The surgeon met her rebellion tactfully. But he told Nan, at last,that de Spain must lose either his arm or his life. "No," she repeatedwithout hesitation and without blanching, "you shan't take off hisarm. He shan't lose his life."
The blood surged into her cheeks--better blood and redder than thedoctors had been able to bring there--such blood as de Spain alonecould call into them. Nan, with her nurse's help, dressed, joined deSpain, and talked long and earnestly. The doctors, too, laid thesituation before him. When they asked him for his decision, he noddedtoward Nan. "She will tell you, gentlemen, what we'll do."
And Nan did tell them what the two who had most at stake in thedecision would do. Any man could have done as much as that. But Nandid more. She set herself out to save the arm and patient both, and,lest the doctors should change their tactics and move together on thearm surreptitiously, Nan stayed night and day with de Spain, until hewas able to make such active use of either arm as to convince her thathe, and not the surgeons, would soon need the most watching.
Afterward when Nan, in some doubt, asked the chaplain whether she wasmarried or single, he obligingly offered to ratify and confirm thedesert ceremony.
This affair was the occasion for an extraordinary round-up at SleepyCat. Two long-hostile elements--the stage and railroad men and theCalabasas-Morgan Gap contingent of mountain-men, for once at least,fraternized. Warrants were pigeonholed, suspicion suspended, side-armsneglected in their scabbards. The fighting men of both camps, in thepresence of a ceremony that united de Spain and Nan Morgan, could notbut feel a generous elation. Each party considered that it wascontributing to the festivity in the bride and the groom the very besteach could boast, and no false note disturbed the harmony of thenotable day.
Gale Morgan, having given up the fight, had left the country.Satterlee Morgan danced till all the platforms in town gave way. JohnLefever attended the groom, and Duke Morgan sternly, but withoutcompunction, gave the bride. From Medicine Bend, Farrell Kennedybrought a notable company of de Spain's early associates for theevent. It included Whispering Smith, whose visit to Sleepy Cat on thisoccasion was the first in years; George McCloud, who had come all theway from Omaha to join his early comrades in arms; Wickwire, who hadlost none of his taciturn bluntness--and so many train-despatchersthat the service on the division was crippled for the entire day.
A great company of self-appointed retainers gathered together fromover all the country, rode behind the gayly decorated bridal-coach inprocession from the church to Jeffries's house, where the feasts hadbeen prepared. During the reception a modest man, dragged from anobscure corner among the guests, was made to take his place nextLefever on the receiving-line. It was Bob Scott, and he looked mostuncomfortable until he found a chance to slip unobserved back to theside of the room where the distinguished Medicine Bend contingent,together with McAlpin, Pardaloe, Elpaso, and Bull Page, slightlyunsteady, but extremely serious for the grave occasion, appearedvastly uncomfortable together.
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The railroad has not yet been built across the Sinks to Thief River.But only those who lived in Sleepy Cat in its really wild stage daysare entitled to call themselves early settlers, or to tell storiesmore or less authentic about what then happened. The greater number ofthe Old Guard of that day, as cankering peace gradually reasserteditself along the Sinks, turned from the stage coach to the railroadcoach; some of them may yet be met on the trains in the mountaincountry. Wherever you happen to find such a one, he will tell you ofthe days when Superintendent de Spain of the Western Division wore agun in the mountains and used it, when necessary, on his wife'srelations.
Whether it was this stern sense of discipline or not that endeared himto the men, these old-timers are, to a man, very loyal to the youngcouple who united in their marriage the two hostile mountain elements.One in especial, a white-haired old man, described by the fanciful asa retired outlaw, living yet on Nan's ranch in the Gap, always spendshis time in town at the de Spain home, where he takes great interestin an active little boy, Morgan de Spain, who waits for his UncleDuke's coming, and digs into his pockets for rattles captured alongthe trail from recent huge rattlesnakes. When his uncle happens tokill a big one--one with twelve or thirteen rings and a button--Morganuses it to scare his younger sister, Nan. And Duke, secretlyrejoicing at his bravado, but scolding sharply, helps him adjust theold ammunition-belt dragged from the attic, and cuts fresh gashes init to make it fit the childish waist. His mother doesn't like to seeher son in warlike equipment, ambushing little Nan in the way BobScott says the Indians used to do. She threatens periodically to burnthe belt up and throw the old rifles out of the house. But when shesees her uncle and her husband watching the boy and laughing at theparade together, she relents. It is only children, after all, thatkeep the world young.
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