“Bad company! Bad company!” said he, sadly shaking his head. “How did it happen, Doctor? You were here? First”–he held up his hand, as if to check the doctor’s speech–“will he live?”
“Men have recovered from worse wounds,” responded the doctor. “There’s a chance for him, at least.”
He related, then, the circumstance of the meeting, the brief quarrel, and the fight, Ten-Gallon putting in a word here and there, although his testimony was neither asked nor welcomed.
“I don’t know what the cause of the quarrel was,” concluded the doctor. “Two days ago I relinquished this claim to your son. He came here immediately and took possession.”
“You–you relinquished!” exclaimed Agnes, disappointment in her voice, reproach in her eyes.
“I am sorry that you relinquished it,” said the Governor. “This brave young woman rode all the way to my ranch–almost a hundred miles–to save it to you. I was absent when she arrived, but I set out with her at the earliest possible moment upon my return. We rode all night last night, sir, changing horses in Comanche this morning.”
“I am grateful to you, both of you, for the trouble and fatigue you have undergone in my behalf. But the case, as your son urged it, sir, was beyond temporizing. Perhaps Miss Gates has told you?”
The Governor nodded curtly, a look of displeasure on his face.
“I can’t believe that Jerry meant it,” he protested. “It must have been one of his jokes.”
“I am sorry, then, that my idea of humor is so widely divergent from his!” said Dr. Slavens with deep feeling.
“Well, he’s paid for it. The poor boy has paid for his indiscretion,” said the old man sadly.
He turned away and went a little space, where he stood as if in meditation.
“You promised me that you’d do nothing until you returned and saw me,” Agnes charged. “And I had saved it for you! I had saved it!”
“You would have been too late,” returned the doctor sharply. “The machinery for your humiliation was already in motion. I doubt whether even the Governor could have stopped it in another day without a great deal of unpleasant publicity for you. Boyle meant to have this piece of land, and he got it. That’s all.”
Ten-Gallon was fooling around the fire. He drew over toward the group as the Governor came back.
“Can my son be removed from here?” the old man asked.
The doctor said that he could not, without practically throwing away his slender chance for life.
“Do for him what you can; you seem to be a capable man, sir; you inspire confidence in me,” said the Governor, laying his hand appealingly on the doctor’s shoulder; “and if you can save him, I’ll pay you twice what this infernal claim was worth to you!”
“I’ve done all that can be done for him, without hope or expectation of reward,” said the doctor; “and I’ll stick by him to the end, one way or another. We can care for him here as long as this weather holds, just as well as they could in a hospital.”
“Well, as far as what this claim’s worth goes,” put in Ten-Gallon, edging into the conversation, “you don’t need to lose any sleep over that.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Slavens, turning upon him sharply.
Ten-Gallon stirred the dust with his toe, stooped and picked up an empty revolver-cartridge.
“It ain’t worth that!” said he, presenting it in the palm of his hand.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” said the doctor, inclined to walk away and leave him.
“I mean that Hun Shanklin queered all of you,” said Ten-Gallon. “You had the wrong figgers, and you filed on the wrong claim!”
Pressed for an explanation of how he knew, Ten-Gallon told them that he had been Shanklin’s partner at the beginning, and that Shanklin had deceived and cheated both him and Boyle.
“Ah, then he did double-cross my son!” cried the Governor triumphantly, seizing this vindication for the young man’s deed with avid eagerness.
“He sure did,” Ten-Gallon agreed; “and he done it right! I know all about you”–nodding to the doctor–“and what happened to you back of that tent in Comanche that night. Shanklin had it in for you ever since you showed up his game the night that sucker feller was goin’ to put down that wad of money. He’d been layin’ for you, one way and another, for a couple of days or so. You walked right into his hand that night.”
“I seemed to,” admitted Slavens with bitter recollection.
“Shanklin knew about copper in these rocks over here––”
“So it’s copper?” said Slavens, unable to restrain his words.
“Copper; that’s what it is,” nodded Ten-Gallon. “But it ain’t on this claim, and I’ll show that in a minute, too. Hun had been writin’ to Jerry about it, tryin’ to git up a company to pay him for what he knew, so they could locate the man that drawed Number One there, see? Well, Hun, he’d known about that copper a long time; he could go to it with his eyes shut. So he got the description of the land as soon as the survey maps was out, and he offered to sell the location for five thousand dollars. He had samples of the ore, and it run rich, and it is rich, richest in this state, I’m here to tell you, gentlemen.
“But Jerry wouldn’t give him no five thousand for what he knew. So Hun he got some other fellers on the string, and him and me was partners on the deal and was goin’ to split even on account of some things I knew and was to keep under my katy.
“Well, Hun sold the figgers of that land to Jerry for five hundred dollars in the end, and he sold it to them other fellers for the same. When it come out that you was Number One, Doc–and us fellers knew that in the morning of the day of the drawin’, for we had it fixed with Mong–Hun he tells Jerry that you’ll never sell out for no reasonable price.
“‘We’ll have to soak that feller,’ he says, ‘and git him out of the way.’ Jerry he agreed to it, and they had men out after you all that day and night, but they didn’t git a chance at you. Then you walked right into old Hun’s hand. Funny!” commented Ten-Gallon stopping there to breathe.
“Very!” said the doctor, putting his hand to the tender scar on his forehead.
He pushed back his hat and turned to the Governor.
“Very funny!” said he.
“Of course, Jerry, he was winded some when you put in your bill there ahead of him and Peterson that morning and filed on the claim he had it all framed up to locate the Swede feller on. Jerry telephoned over to Comanche and found out from Shanklin how you got the numbers, and then he laid out to start a fire under you and git you off. Well, he done it, didn’t he?”
Ten-Gallon leered up at Slavens with some of his old malevolence and official hauteur in his puffy face.
“Go on with your story, and be careful what charges you lay against my son!” commanded the Governor sharply.
Ten-Gallon was not particularly squelched or abashed by the rebuke. He winked at Agnes as if to express a feeling of secret fellowship which he held for her on account of things which both of them might reveal if they saw fit.
“Shanklin, he closed up his game in Comanche three or four days ago and went over to Meander,” Ten-Gallon resumed. “He never had split with me on that money he got for the numbers of this claim out of Jerry and that other crowd. So I follered him. Yesterday morning, you know, the land left over from locatin’ them that had drawed claims was throwed open to anybody that wanted to file on it.
“Well, the first man in the line was that old houn’ that’s layin’ over there with his toes turnin’ cold. He filed on something, and when I collared him about the money, he throwed me down. He said he sold the numbers of land that didn’t have no more copper on it than the palm of his hand, and he said he’d just filed on the land that had the mines. He showed me the papers; then he hopped his horse and come on down here.”
“Incredible!” exclaimed the Governor.
“It was like him,” Slavens corroborated. “He was a fox.”
“
I was goin’ to take a shot at him,” bragged Ten-Gallon, “but he was too fur ahead of me. He had a faster horse than mine; and when I got here last night he was already located on that claim. The copper mine’s over there where the old feller’s tent stands, I tell you. They ain’t enough of it on this place to make a yard of wire.”
“And you carried the story of Shanklin’s deception and fraud to my son,” nodded the Governor, fixing a severe eye on Ten-Gallon, “and he sought the gambler for an explanation?”
“Well, he was goin’ to haul the old crook over the fire,” admitted Ten-Gallon, somewhat uneasy under the old man’s eye.
The Governor walked away from them again in his abstracted, self-centered way, and stood looking off across the troubled landscape. Dr. Slavens stepped to the tent to see how the patient rested, and Ten-Gallon gave Agnes another wink.
“Comanche’s dwindlin’ down like a fire of shavin’s,” said he. “Nobody couldn’t git hurt there now, not even a crawlin’ baby.”
Indignation flushed her face at the man’s familiarity. But she reasoned that he was only doing the best he knew to be friendly.
“Are you still chief of police there?” she asked.
“I’m marshal now,” he replied. “The police force has been done away with by the mayor and council.”
“Well then, I still have doubt about the safety of Comanche,” she observed, turning from him.
Governor Boyle approached Ten-Gallon and pointed to Hun Shanklin’s body.
“You must do something to get that carcass out of camp right away,” he said. “Isn’t there a deputy coroner at Comanche?”
“The undertaker is,” said Ten-Gallon, drawing back at the prospect of having to lay hands on the body of the man whom he feared in death as he had feared him in life.
“Send him over here,” Governor Boyle directed.
Ten-Gallon departed on his mission, and the Governor took one of the trodden blankets from in front of the tent and spread it over Shanklin’s body, shrouding it completely. Dr. Slavens had lowered the flap of the tent to keep the sun from the wounded man’s face. When he came out, Agnes met him with an inquiring look.
“He’s conscious,” said the doctor. “The blow of that heavy bullet knocked the wind out of him for a while.”
“Will he–lapse again?” asked the Governor, balancing between hope and fear.
“It isn’t likely. You may go in and speak to him now if you want to. But he must keep still. A little exertion might start a hemorrhage.”
Jerry Boyle lay upon his back, his bloodless face toward them, as they gathered noiselessly in the door of the tent. His eyes were standing open, great and questioning, out of his pallor, nothing but the animal quality of bewilderment and fear in their wide stare.
Governor Boyle went in and dropped to his knees beside the cot. Dr. Slavens followed hastily, and placed his hand on the wounded man’s breast.
“You may listen,” said he; “but keep still.”
“Don’t even try to whisper,” admonished the Governor, taking his son’s hand between his own.
“That’s all right, Governor,” replied the young man, his face quickening with that overrunning little crinkling, like wind over water, which was his peculiar gift for making his way into the hearts of women and men, unworthy as he was.
“Be still!” commanded the old man. “I know what happened. There’s nothing to say now.”
“Did I get him?” whispered Jerry, turning his head a little and looking eagerly into his father’s face.
The Governor placed his hand over his son’s mouth, silencing the young man with a little hissing sound, like a mother quieting her babe.
Agnes turned away, the disgust which she felt for this savage spirit of the man undisguised in her face. Dr Slavens cautioned the Governor again.
“If he says another word, you’ll have to leave him,” said he. “This is one case where talk will turn out anything but cheap.”
He joined Agnes, and together they walked away from the scene of violence and death.
“You’re tired to death,” said he. “I’m going to take possession of Boyle’s tent down there for you, and you’ve got to take a long sleep. After that we’ll think about the future.”
She walked on beside him, silent and submissive, interposing no objection to his plan. They found the tent very well equipped; he started to leave her there to her repose. She stood in the door with her hat in her hand, her hair in disorder, dust over her dress and shoes.
“Could you send word to Smith by the stage this morning and ask him to bring my things–tent and everything–down here?” she asked.
“Then you’re not planning to go back there?” he asked, his heart jumping with hope.
She shook her head, smiling wanly.
“I can’t bear the thought of it,” said she.
* * *
CHAPTER XX
A SUDDEN CLOUD
Dr. Slavens went back to his camp, concluding on the way that it would be wise to have a complete understanding with Governor Boyle in regard to taking further charge of his son’s case. If, after three days allowed for infection to manifest itself, the wound remained healthy and clean, there would be little need of a doctor in constant attendance. Young Boyle would be able to express his preference in the matter then, and Slavens did not want to act as physician to him against his will.
Governor Boyle was walking up and down like a sentry before the tent when Dr. Slavens came up.
“He’s asleep,” said the father. “He seems to be pitifully weak for a man suffering from a fresh wound; he dropped off as if he had fainted.”
“When you consider that a bullet of that caliber, with the powder back of it that this one had, strikes somewhere around a ton,” said the doctor, “it ceases to be a wonder that he is weak.”
“It’s Heaven’s mercy that spared him!” declared the Governor, his voice troubled with emotion.
Slavens wondered at the deep affection which this man of so hard a repute could show for his son, and at the tie of tenderness which plainly bound them. But precedent is not wanting, as the doctor reflected, to establish the contention that some of the world’s greatest oppressors have been good fathers, kind husbands, and tender guardians of the home.
“Yes; Shanklin shot twice,” said Slavens. “It was his second one that hit, after he had been mortally hurt himself.”
“It was the hand of Providence that turned his aim!” said the Governor. “The old one-eyed villain had the reputation of being the best shot in the Northwest. He provoked my son to draw on him, or tried to at least–for I can’t believe that Jerry drew first–with the intention of putting him out of the way.”
“What do you propose to do about bringing another surgeon here?” asked Dr. Slavens.
“Why, I hadn’t given it any serious thought,” answered Governor Boyle, looking at him quickly.
“It would please me better to have you do so.”
“But I have entire confidence in your ability to handle the case, sir. Your conduct in the matter has been admirable, and I see no reason why you should not continue to attend my son until–the end, one way or the other.”
“You understand, Governor,” said Dr. Slavens gravely, searching the old man’s face with steady eyes, “that there is no ground for good feeling or friendship between your son and me?”
The Governor nodded, averting his face, as if the acknowledgment gave him pain or shame.
“And in case that everything should not turn out to the happiest conclusion for him, I should not want to stand the chance of blame.”
“Quite sensible, but unnecessarily cautious, I tell you,” the Governor replied.
“I have done all that a better surgeon could have done,” pursued the doctor, “and I am quite willing to go ahead and do all that can be done until you can bring another physician here, to relieve me, or at least satisfy you that I have not allowed any feeling of man to man to stand between physician and patient.
”
“Very well; I will telegraph to Cheyenne for a physician,” agreed the Governor, “since it is your wish. But I am entirely satisfied with, and trustful of you, sir. That I desire you to understand plainly.”
Dr. Slavens thanked him.
“I shall send for the other physician to act merely in an advisory capacity, and in no manner to relieve you of the case unless you desire to be relieved. But I think it will be to your interest to stand by me. I feel that I am under a certain obligation to you, more especially to Miss Gates, for my son’s––”
“We will not discuss that, if you please,” Dr. Slavens interrupted.
“At least I will stand by what I said to you a little while back,” the Governor said; “that is, in the matter of remuneration, if you pull him through.”
“All of that in its proper place,” said the doctor. “I am going back to Comanche now to send for the boy’s mother,” the Governor announced, “and telegraph to Cheyenne for the doctor of whom I spoke. I have known him for many years. I’ll have some more tents and camp-supplies sent out, and anything that you stand in need of which can be procured in Comanche.”
Dr. Slavens gave him a list of articles needed in the patient’s case, and the Governor rode away. The undertaker from Comanche arrived a little later, and took Hun Shanklin’s body up from the ground. When his wagon, on its return to Comanche, had passed the tent where Agnes was trying to sleep, she got up and joined Dr. Slavens.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she explained. “Every time I shut my eyes I could see that poor old gambler’s body lying there with the coat over his face!”
“I don’t feel either pity or pain in his case,” said the doctor; “or, when it comes to that, for the other one, either.”
“Well, you couldn’t have prevented it, anyway,” she sighed.
“And wouldn’t have if I could,” he declared. “I looked on them as one poison fighting another, as we set them to do in the human system. When one overcomes the other, and the body throws them both out, health follows.”
Claim Number One Page 24