"Did you ever have a tree burn up in your head?" he asked.
"Pring a policeman," whispered Schmidt to the girl, "and a doctor. De man is grazy mit fevers; he aindt trunk."
When the officer came in Harold looked at him with sternly steady eyes. "See here, cap, don't you try any funny business with me. I won't stand it; I'll shoot with you for dollars or doughnuts."
"What's the matter—jim-jams?" asked the officer indifferently.
"No," replied Schmidt, "I tondt pelief it—he's got some fever onto him."
The policeman felt his pulse. "He's certainly hot enough. Who is he?"
"Hank Jones."
"That's a lie—I'm 'Black Mose,'" said Harold.
The policeman smiled. "'Black Mose' was killed in San Juan last summer."
Harold received this news gravely. "Sorry for him, but I'm the man. You'll find my name on my revolver, the big one—not the little one. I'm all the 'Black Mose' there is. If you'll give me a chance I'll rope a steer with you for blood or whisky; I'm thirsty."
"Well now," said the policeman, "you be quiet till the doctor comes, and I'll go through your valise." After a hasty examination he said: "Damned little here, and no revolvers of any kind. Does he eat here?"
"No, he only hires this room."
"Mebbe he don't eat anywhere; he looks to me like a hungry man."
"Dot's what I think," said the maid. "I'll go pring him some soup."
The prisoner calmly said: "Too late now; my stomach is all dried up."
"Haven't you any folks?" the policeman asked.
Harold seemed to pause for thought. "I believe I have, but I can't think. Mary could tell you."
"Who's Mary?"
"What's that to you. Bring me some water—I'm burning dry."
"Now keep quiet," said the policeman; "you're sick as a horse."
When the doctor came the policeman turned Harold over to him. "This is a case for St. Luke's Hospital, I guess," he said as he went out.
The doctor briskly administered a narcotic as being the easiest and simplest way to handle a patient who seemed friendless and penniless. "The man is simply delirious with fever. He looks like a man emaciated from lack of food. What do you know about him?"
The landlord confessed he knew but little.
The doctor resumed: "Of course you can't attend to him here. I'll inform the hospital authorities at once. Meanwhile, communicate with his friends if you can. He'll be all right for the present."
This valuable man was hardly gone before a lively young fellow with a smoothly shaven, smiling face slipped in. He went through every pocket of Harold's clothing, and found a torn envelope with the name "Excell" written on it, and a small photo of a little girl with the words, "To Mose from Cora." The young man's smile became a chuckle as he saw these things, and he said to himself: "Nothing here to identify him, eh?" Then to the landlord he said; "I'm from The Star office. If anything new turns up I wish you'd call up Harriman, that's me, and let me in on it."
The hospital authorities were not informed, or paid no attention to the summons, and Harold was left to the care of the chambermaid, who did her poor best to serve him.
The Star next morning contained two columns of closely printed matter under the caption, "Black Mose, the Famous Dead Shot, Dying in a West Side Hotel. After Years of Adventure on the Trail, the Famous Desperado Succumbs to Old John Barley Corn." The article recounted all the deeds which had been ascribed to Harold and added a few entirely new ones. His marvelous skill with the revolver was referred to, and his defense of the red men and others in distress was touched upon so eloquently that the dying man was lifted to a romantic height of hardihood and gallantry. A fancy picture of him took nearly a quarter of a page and was surrounded by a corona of revolvers each spouting flame.
Mrs. Raimon seated at breakfast in the lofty dining room of her hotel, languidly unfolded The Star, gave one glance, and opened the paper so quickly and nervously her cup and saucer fell to the floor.
"My God! Can that be true? I must see him." As she read the article she carried on a rapid thinking. "How can I find him? I must see that reporter; he will know." She was a woman of decision. She arose quickly and returned to her room. "Call a carriage for me, quick!" she said to the bell boy who answered to her call. "No name is given to the hotel, but The Star will know. Good Heavens! if he should die!" Her florid face was set and white as she took her seat in the cab. "To The Star office—quick!" she said to the driver, and there was command in the slam of the door.
To the city editor she abruptly said: "I want to find the man who wrote this article on 'Black Mose.' I want to find the hotel where he is."
The editor was enormously interested at once. "Harriman is on the night force and at home how, but I'll see what I can do." By punching various bells and speaking into mysteriously ramifying tubes he was finally able to say: "The man is at a little hotel just across the river. I think it is called the St. Nicholas. It isn't a nice place; you'd better take some one with you. Mind you, I don't vouch for the truth of that article; the boy may be mistaken about it."
Mrs. Raimon turned on her heel and vanished. She had her information and acted upon it. She was never finer than when she knelt at Harold's bedside and laid her hand gently on his forehead. She could not speak for a moment, and when her eyes cleared of their tears and she felt the wide, dry eyes of the man searching her, a spasm of pain contracted her heart.
"He don't know me!" she cried to the slatternly maid, who stood watching the scene with deep sympathy.
Harold spoke petulantly: "Go away and tell Mary I want her. It costs too much for her to sing, or else she'd come. These people won't let me get up, but Reynolds will be here soon and then something will rip wide open. They took my guns and my saddle. If I had old Kintuck here I could ride to Mary. She said she'd sing for me every Sunday. Look here, I want ice on my head. This pillow has been heated. I don't want a hot pillow—and I don't want my arms covered. Say, I wish you'd send word to old Jack. I don't know where he is, but he'd come—so will Reynolds. These policemen will have a hot time keeping me here after they come. It's too low here, I must take Mary away—it's healthier in the mountains. It ain't so hot——"
Out of this stream of loosely uttered words the princess caught and held little more than the names "Jack" and "Mary."
"Who is Jack?" she softly asked.
Harold laughed. "Don't you know old freckle-faced Jack? Why, I'd know Jack in the dark of a cave. He's my friend—my old chum. He didn't forget me when they sent me to jail. Neither did Mary. She sung for me."
"Can't you tell me Mary's name?"
"Why, it's just Mary, Mary Yardwell."
"Where does she live?"
"Oh, don't bother me," he replied irritably. "What do you want to know for?"
The princess softly persisted, and he said: "She lives in the East. In Chicago. It's too far off to find her. It takes five days to get down there on a cattle train, and then you have to look her up in a directory, and then trail her down. I couldn't find her."
The princess took down Mary's name and sent a messenger to try to find the address of this woman who was more to the delirious man than all the rest of the world.
As he tossed and muttered she took possession of the house. "Is this the worst room you have? Get the best bed in the house ready. I want this man to have the cleanest room you have. Hurry! Telephone to the Western Palace and ask Doctor Sanborn to come at once—tell him Mrs. Raimon wants him."
Under her vigorous action one of the larger rooms was cleared out and made ready, and when the doctor came Harold was moved, under his personal supervision. "I shall stay here till he is out of danger," she said to the doctor as he was leaving, "and please ask my maid to go out and get some clean bed linen and bring it down here at once—and tell her to send Mr. Doris here, won't you?"
The doctor promised to attend to these matters at once.
She sat by the bedside of the sufferer bathing his hands and f
ace as if he were a child, talking to him gently with a mother's grave cadences. He was now too weak to resist any command, and took his medicine at a gulp like a young robin.
* * *
Late in the afternoon as Mrs. Raimon returned from an errand to the street she was amazed to find a tall and handsome girl sitting beside the sick man's bed holding his two cold white hands in both of hers. There was a singular and thrilling serenity in the stranger's face—a composure that was exaltation, while Harold, with half-closed eyelids, lay as if in awe, gazing up into the woman's face.
Mrs. Raimon waited until Harold's eyes closed like a sleepy child's and the watcher arose—then she drew near and timidly asked:
"Are you Mary?"
"Yes," was the simple reply.
The elder woman's voice trembled. "I am glad you've come. He has called for you incessantly. You must let me help you—I am Mrs. Raimon, of Wagon Wheel—I knew him there."
Mary understood the woman's humble attitude, but she did not encourage a caress. She coldly replied: "I shall be very grateful. He is very ill, and I shall not leave him till his friends come."
She thought immediately of Jack, and sent a telegram saying: "Harold is here ill—come at once." She did not know where to reach Mr. Excell, so could only wait to consult Jack.
Mrs. Raimon remained with her and was so unobtrusively ready to do good that Mary's heart softened toward her—though she did not like her florid beauty and her display of jewels.
A telegram from Jack came during the evening: "Do all you can for Harold. Will reach him to-night."
He came in at eleven o'clock, his face knotted into anxious lines. They smoothed out as his eyes fell upon Mary, who met him in the hall.
"Oh, I'm glad to see you here," he said brokenly. "How is he—is there any hope?"
In his presence Mary's composure gave way. "O Jack! If he should die now——" She laid her head against his sturdy shoulder and for a moment shook with nervous weakness. Almost before he could speak she recovered herself. "He only knew me for a few moments. He's delirious again. The doctor is with him—oh, I can't bear to hear him rave! It is awful! He calls for me, and yet does not know me. O Jack, it makes my heart ache so, he is so weak! He came to see me—and then went away—I didn't know where he had gone. And all the time he was starving here. O God! It would be too dreadful—if he should die!"
"We won't let him die!" he stoutly replied. "I'm going in to see him."
Together they went in. The doctor, intently studying his patient, sat motionless and silent. He was a young man with a serious face, but his movements were quick, silent, and full of decision. He looked up and made a motion, stopping them where they were.
Out of a low mutter at last Harold's words grew distinct: "I don't care—but the water is cold as ice—I wouldn't put a cayuse into it—let alone Kintuck. Should be a bridge here somewhere."
"Oh, he's on the trail again!" said Mary. "Harold, don't you know me?" She bent over to him again and put forth the utmost intensity of her will to recall him. "I am here, Harold, don't you see me?"
His head ceased to roll and he looked at her with eyes that made her heart grow sick—then a slow, faint smile came to his lips. "Yes—I know you, Mary—but the river is between us, and it's swift and cold, and Kintuck is thin and hungry—I can't cross now!"
"Doctor," said Jack, as the physician was leaving, "what are the chances?"
The doctor's voice carried conviction: "Oh, he'll pull through—he has one of the finest bodies I ever saw." He smiled. "He'll cross the river all right—and land on our side."
Two days later Mr. Excell, big and brown, his brow also knotted with anxiety, entered the room, and fell on his knees and threw his long arm over the helpless figure beneath the coverlet. "Harry! My boy, do you know me?"
Harold looked up at him with big staring eyes and slowly put out his hand. "Sure thing! And I'm not dead yet, father. I'll soon be all right. I've got Mary with me. She can cure me—if the doctor can't."
He spoke slowly, but there was will behind the voice. His wasted face had a gentleness that was most moving to the father. He could not look at the pitiful wreck of his once proud and fearless boy without weeping, and being mindful of Harold's prejudice against sentiment, he left the room to regain his composure. To Mary Mr. Excell said: "I don't know you—but you are a noble woman. I give you a father's gratitude. Won't you tell me who you are?"
"I am Mary Yardwell," she replied in her peculiarly succinct speech. "My home was in Marmion, but I attended school in your village. I sang in your church for a little while."
His face lighted up. "I remember you—a pale, serious little girl. Did you know my son there?"
She looked away for a moment. "I sang for him—when he was in jail," she replied. "I belonged to the Rescue Band."
A shadow fell again upon the father's face.
"I did not know it," he said, feeling something mysterious here—something which lay outside his grasp. "Have you seen him meanwhile? I suppose you must have done so."
"Once, in Marmion, some four years ago."
"Ah! Now I understand his visit to Marmion," said Mr. Excell, with a sudden smile. "I thought he came to see Jack and me. He really came to see you. Am I right?"
"Yes," she replied. "He wanted me to go back with him, but I—I—couldn't do so."
"I know—I know," he replied hastily. "He had no right to ask it of you—poor boy."
"It seems now as though I had no right to refuse. I might have helped him. If he should die now there would be an incurable ache here"—she lifted her hand to her throat; "so long as I lived I should not forgive myself."
* * *
CHAPTER XXI
CONCLUSION
As he crawled slowly back to life and clear thinking, Harold's wild heart was filled with a peace and serenity of emotion such as it had not known since childhood. He was like a boy in a careless dream, forecasting nothing, remembering nothing, content to see Mary come and go about the room, glad of the sound of her skirts, thrilling under the gentle pressure of her hand.
She, on her part, could not realize any part of his dark fame as she smiled down into his big yellow-brown eyes which were as pathetic and wistful as those of a gentle animal.
Mrs. Raimon spoke of this. "I saw 'Black Mose' as he stood in the streets of Wagon Wheel, the most famous dead-shot in the State. I can't realize that this is the same man. He's gentle as a babe now; he was as terrible and as beautiful as a tiger then."
Reynolds sent fifty dollars with an apology for the delay and Mr. Excell offered his slender purse, but Mrs. Raimon said: "I'll attend to this matter of expense. Let me do that little for him—please!" And he gave way, knowing her great wealth.
But all these things began at last to trouble the proud heart of the sick man, and as he grew stronger his hours of quiet joy began to be broken by disquieting calculations of his indebtedness to Mrs. Raimon as well as to Mary and Jack. He wished to be free of all obligations, even gratitude. He insisted on his father's return to his pastorate—which he did at the end of the week.
Meanwhile Mary and Jack conspired for the Eagle's good. Together they planned to remove him to some fairer quarter of the city. Together they read and discussed the letters which poured in upon them from theatrical managers, Wild West shows, music halls, and other similar enterprises, and from romantic girls and shrewd photographers, and every other conceivable kind of crank. The offers of the music halls Jack was inclined to consider worth while. "He'd be a great success there, or as a dead-shot in a Wild West show. They pay pretty well, too."
"I don't believe he'd care to do anything like that," Mary quietly replied.
They both found that he cared to do nothing which involved his remaining in the East. As his eyes grew brighter, his longing for the West came back. He lifted his arms above his quilts with the action of the eaglet who meditates leaping from the home ledge. It was a sorrowful thing to see this powerful young animal made thin and white and w
eak by fever, but his spirit was indomitable.
"He must be moved to the West before he will fully recover," said the doctor, and to this Mrs. Raimon replied:
"Very well, doctor. You name the day when it is safe and we'll go. I'll have a special car, if necessary, but first of all he must go to a good hotel. Can't he be moved now?"
Outwardly Mary acknowledged all the kindness of this rich and powerful woman, but inwardly she resented her intimacy. Drawing all her little store of ready money she quietly began paying off the bills. When all was settled she took a seat beside Harold one day when they were alone and laying one strong, warm hand on his thin, white arm, she said:
"Harold, the doctor says you can be moved from here, and so—you must give me the right to take you home with me."
There was a piercing pathos in his wan smile as he replied, "All right, you're the boss. It's a pretty hard come down, though. I thought once I'd come back after you in a private car. If you stand by me I may be a cattle king yet. There's a whole lot of fight in me still—you watch me and see."
The next day he was moved to a private hotel on the north side, and Mary breathed a sigh of deep relief as she saw him sink back into his soft bed in a clean and sunny room. He, with a touch of his old fire, said: "This sure beats a holler log, but all the same I'll be glad to see the time when I can camp on my saddle again."
Mary only smiled and patted him like a mother caressing a babe. "I'll hate to have you go and leave me—now."
"No danger of that, Mary. We camp down on the same blanket from this on."
Mr. Excell came on to marry them, but Jack sent his best wishes by mail; he could not quite bring himself to see Mary give herself away—even to his hero.
Mrs. Raimon took her defeat with most touching grace. "You're right," she said. "He's yours—I know that perfectly well, but you must let me help him to make a start. It won't hurt him, and it'll please me. I have a ranch, I have mines, I could give him something to do till he got on his feet again, if you'd let me, and I hope you won't deny me a pleasure that will carry no obligation with it."
The Eagles Heart Page 23