by B. M. Bower
While he talked he was working on the stretcher. He had a rope, and he was knotting it in a long loop to the poles. Lorraine wondered why, until he had lifted her father and placed him on the stretcher and placed the loop over his own head and under one arm, as a ploughman holds the reins, so that his hands may be free.
“If you will carry the front,” said Swan politely, “it will not be heavy for you like this. But you will help me keep it steady.”
Lorraine was past discussing anything. She obeyed him silently, lifting the end of the stretcher and leading the way down to the canyon’s bottom, where Swan assured her they could walk quite easily and would save many détours which the road above must take. At the bottom Swan stopped her so that he might shorten the rope and take more of the weight on his shoulders. She protested half-heartedly, but Swan only laughed.
“I am strong like a mule,” he said. “You should see me wrestle with somebody. Clear over my head—I can carry a man in my hands. This is so you can walk fast. Three miles straight down we come to Thurman’s ranch, where I get the horses. It’s funny how hills make a road far around. Just three miles—that’s all. I have walked many times.”
Lorraine did not answer him. She felt that he was talking merely to keep her from worrying, and she was fairly sick with anxiety and did not hear half of what he was saying. She was nervously careful about choosing her steps so that she would not stumble and jolt her father. She did not believe that he was wholly unconscious, for she had seen his eyelids tighten and his lips twitch several times, when she was waiting for Swan. He had seemed to be in pain and to be trying to hide the fact from her. She felt that Swan knew it, else he would have talked of her dad, would at least have tried to reassure her. But it is difficult to speak of a person who hears what you are saying, and Swan was talking of everything, it seemed to her, except the man they were carrying.
She wondered if it were really true that Swan had sent a call through space for a doctor; straightway she would call herself crazy for even considering for a moment its possibility. If he could do that—but of course he couldn’t. He must just imagine it.
Many times Swan had her lower the stretcher to the ground, and would make a great show of rubbing his arms and easing his shoulder muscles. Whenever Lorraine looked full into his face he would grin at her as though nothing was wrong, and when they came to a clear-running stream he emptied the water bottle, dipped up a little fresh water, added brandy, and lifted Brit’s head very gently and gave him a drink. Brit opened his eyes and looked at Swan, and from him to Lorraine, but he did not say anything. He still had that tightened look around his mouth which spelled pain.
“Pretty quick now we get you fixed up good,” Swan told him cheerfully. “One mile more is all, and we get the horses and I make a good bed for you.” He looked a signal, and Lorraine once more took up the stretcher.
Another mile seemed a long way, light though Swan had made the load for her. She thought once that he must have some clairvoyant power, because whenever she felt as if her arms were breaking, Swan would tell her to stop a minute.
“How do you know a doctor will come?” she asked Swan suddenly, when they were resting with the Thurman ranch in view half a mile below them.
Swan did not look at her directly, as had been his custom. She saw a darker shade of red creep up into his cheeks. “My mother says she would send a doctor quick,” he replied hesitatingly. “You will see. It is because—your father he is not like other men in this country. Your father is a good man. That is why a doctor comes.”
Lorraine looked at him strangely and stooped again to her burden. She did not speak again until they were passing the Thurman fence where it ran up into the mouth of the canyon. A few horses were grazing there, the sun striking their sides with the sheen of satin. They stared curiously at the little procession, snorted and started to run, heads and tails held high. But one wheeled suddenly and came galloping toward them, stopped when he was quite close, ducked and went thundering past to the head of the field. Lorraine gave a sharp little scream and set down the stretcher with a lurch, staring after the horse wide-eyed, her face white.
“They do it for play,” Swan said reassuringly. “They don’t hurt you. The fence is between, and they don’t hurt you anyway.”
“That horse with the white face—I saw it—and when the man struck it with his quirt it went past me, running like that and dragging—oh-h!” She leaned against the bluff side, her face covered with her two palms.
Swan glanced down at Brit, saw that his eyes were closed, ducked his head from under the looped rope and went to Lorraine.
“The man that struck that horse—do you know that man?” he asked, all the good nature gone from his voice.
“No—I don’t know—I saw him twice, by the lightning flashes. He shot—and then I saw him——” She stopped abruptly, stood for a minute longer with her eyes covered, then dropped her hands limply to her sides. But when the horse came circling back with a great flourish, she shivered and her hands closed into the fists of a fighter.
“Are you a Sawtooth man?” she demanded suddenly, looking up at Swan defiantly. “It was a nightmare. I—I dreamed once about a horse—like that.”
Swan’s wide-open eyes softened a little. “The Sawtooth calls me that damn Swede on Bear Top,” he explained. “I took a homestead up there and some day they will want to buy my place or they will want to make a fight with me to get the water. Could you know that man again?”
“Raine!” Brit’s voice held a warning, and Lorraine shivered again as she turned toward him. “Raine, you——”
He closed his eyes again, and she could get no further speech from him. But she thought she understood. He did not want her to talk about Fred Thurman. She went to her end of the stretcher and waited there while Swan put the rope over his head. They went on, Lorraine walking with her head averted, trying not to see the blaze-faced roan, trying to shut out the memory of him dashing past her with his terrible burden, that night.
Swan did not speak of the matter again. With Lorraine’s assistance he carried Brit into Thurman’s cabin, laid him, stretcher and all, on the bed and hurried out to catch and harness the team of work horses. Lorraine waited beside her father, helpless and miserable. There was nothing to do but wait, yet waiting seemed to her the one thing she could not do.
“Raine!” Brit’s voice was very weak, but Lorraine jumped as though a trumpet had bellowed suddenly in her ear. “Swan—he’s all right. But don’t go telling—all yuh know and some besides. He ain’t—Sawtooth, but—he might let out——”
“I know. I won’t, dad. It was that horse——”
Brit turned his face to the wall as if no more was to be said on the subject. Lorraine wandered around the cabin, which was no larger than her father’s place. The rooms were scrupulously clean—neater than the Quirt, she observed guiltily. Not one article, however small and unimportant, seemed to be out of its place, and the floors of both rooms were scrubbed whiter than any floors she had ever seen. Swan’s housekeeping qualities made her ashamed of her own imperfections; and when, thinking that Swan must be hungry and that the least she could do was to set out food for him, she opened the cupboard, she had a swift, embarrassed vision of her own culinary imperfections. She could cook better food than her dad had been content to eat and to set before others, but Swan’s bread was a triumph in sour dough. Biscuits tall and light as bread can be she found, covered neatly with a cloth. Prunes stewed so that there was not one single wrinkle in them—Lorraine could scarcely believe they were prunes until she tasted them. She was investigating a pot of beans when Swan came in.
“Food I am thinking of, Miss,” he grinned at her. “We shall hurry, but it is not good to go hungry. Milk is outside in a cupboard. It is quicker than to make coffee.”
“It will be dark before we can get him home,” said Lorraine uneasily. “And by the time a doctor can get out there——”
“A doctor will be there, I think. You don
’t believe, but that is no difference to his coming just the same.”
He brought the milk, poured off the creamy top into a pitcher, stirred it, and quietly insisted that she drink two glasses. Lorraine observed that Swan himself ate very little, bolting down a biscuit in great mouthfuls while he carried a mattress and blankets out to spread in the wagon. It was like his pretense of weariness on the long carry down the canyon, she thought. It was for her more than for himself that he was thinking.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW
A car with dimmed lights stood in front of the Quirt cabin when Swan drove around the last low ridge and down to the gate. The rattle of the wagon must have been heard, for the door opened suddenly and Frank stood revealed in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp on the table within. Behind Frank, Lorraine saw Jim and Sorry standing in their shirt sleeves looking out into the dark. Another, shorter figure she glimpsed as Frank and the two men stepped out and came striding hastily toward them. Lorraine jumped out and ran to meet them, hoping and fearing that her hope was foolish. That car might easily be only Bob Warfield on some errand of no importance. Still, she hoped.
“That you, Raine? Where’s Brit? What’s all this about Brit being hurt? A doctor from Shoshone——”
“A doctor? Oh, did a doctor come, then? Oh, help Swan carry dad in! I’m—oh, I’m afraid he’s awfully injured!”
“Yes-s—but how’n hell did a doctor know about it?” Sorry, the silent, blurted unexpectedly.
“Oh,—never mind—but get dad in. I’ll——” She ran past them without finishing her sentence and burst incoherently into the presence of an extremely calm little man with gray whiskers and dust on the shoulders of his coat. These details, I may add, formed the sum of Lorraine’s first impression of him.
“Well! Well!” he remonstrated with a professional briskness, when she nearly bowled him over. “We seem to be in something of a hurry! Is this the patient I was sent to examine?”
“No!” Lorraine flashed impatiently over her shoulder as she rushed into her own room and began turning down the covers. “It’s dad, of course—and you’d better get your coat off and get ready to go to work, because I expect he’s just one mass of broken bones!”
The doctor smiled behind his whiskers and returned to the doorway to direct the carrying in of his patient. His sharp eyes went immediately to Brit’s face, pallid under the leathery tan, his fingers went to Brit’s hairy, corded wrist. The doctor smiled no more that evening.
“No, he is not a mass of broken bones, I am happy to say,” he reported gravely to Lorraine afterwards. “He has a sufficient number, however. The left scapula is fractured, likewise the clavicle, and there is a compound fracture of the femur. There is some injury to the head, the exact extent of which I cannot as yet determine. He should be removed to a hospital, unless you are prepared to have a nurse here for some time, or to assume the burden of a long and tedious illness.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “The journey to Shoshone would be a considerable strain on the patient in his present condition. He has a splendid amount of constitutional vitality, or he would scarcely have survived his injuries so long without medical attendance. Can you tell me just how the accident occurred?”
“Excuse me, doctor—and Miss,” Swan diffidently interrupted. “I could ask you to take a look on my shoulder, if you please. If you are done setting bones in Mr. Hunter. I have a great pain on my shoulder from carrying so long.”
“You never mentioned it!” Lorraine reproached him quickly. “Of course it must be looked after right away. And then, Doctor, I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.” She watched them retreat to the bunk-house together, Swan’s big form towering above the doctor’s slighter figure. Swan was talking earnestly, the mumble of his voice reaching Lorraine without the enunciation of any particular word to give a clue to what he was saying. But it struck her that his voice did not sound quite natural; not so Swedish, not so careful.
Frank came tiptoeing out of the room where Brit lay bandaged and unconscious and stood close to Lorraine, looking down at her solemnly.
“How ’n ’ell did he git here—the doctor?” he demanded, making a great effort to hold his voice down to a whisper, and forgetting now and then. “How’d he know Brit rolled off’n the grade? Us here, we never knowed it, and I was tryin’ to send him back when you came. He said somebody telephoned there was a man hurt in a runaway. There ain’t a telephone closer’n the Sawtooth, and that there’s a good twenty mile and more from where Brit was hurt. It’s damn funny.”
“Yes, it is,” Lorraine admitted uncomfortably. “I don’t know any more than you do about it.”
“Well, how’n ’ell did it happen? Brit, he oughta know enough to rough-lock down that hill. An’ that team ain’t a runaway team. I never had no trouble with ’em—they’re good at holdin’ a load. They’ll set down an’ slide but what they’ll hold ’er. What become of the horses?”
“Why—they’re over there yet. We forgot all about the horses, I think. Caroline was standing up, all right. The other horse may be killed. I don’t know—it was lying down. And Yellowjacket was up that little gully just this side of the wreck, when I left him. They did try to hold the load, Frank. Something must have happened to the brake. I saw dad crawling out from under the wagon just before I got to where the load was standing. Or some one did. I think it was dad. But Caroline kicked my horse down off the road, and I only saw him a minute—but it must have been dad. And then, a little way down the hill, something went wrong.”
Frank seemed trying to reconstruct the accident from Lorraine’s description. “He’d no business to start down if his rough-lock wasn’t all right,” he said. “It ain’t like him. Brit’s careful about them things—little men most always are. I don’t see how ’n ’ell it worked loose. It’s a damn queer layout all around; and this here doctor gitting here ahead of you folks, that there is the queerest. What’s he say about Brit? Think he’ll pull through?”
The doctor himself, coming up just then, answered the question. Of course the patient would pull through! What were doctors for? As to his reason for coming, he referred them to Mr. Vjolmar, whom he thought could better explain the matter.
The three of them waited,—five of them, since Jim and Sorry had come up, anxious to hear the doctor’s opinion and anything else pertaining to the affair. Swan was coming slowly from the bunk-house, buttoning his coat. He seemed to feel that they were waiting for him and to know why. His manner was diffident, deprecating even.
“We may as well go in out of the mosquitoes,” the doctor suggested. “And I wish you would tell these people what you told me, young man. Don’t be afraid to speak frankly; it is rather amazing but not at all impossible, as I can testify. In fact,” he added dryly, “my presence here ought to settle any doubt of that. Just tell them, young man, about your mother.”
Swan was the last to enter the kitchen, and he stood leaning against the closed door, turning his old hat round and round, his eyes going swiftly from face to face. They were watching him, and Swan blushed a deep red while he told them about his mother in Boise, and how he could talk to her with his thoughts. He explained laboriously how the thoughts from her came like his mother speaking in his head, and that his thoughts reached her in the same way. He said that since he was a little boy they could talk together with their thoughts, but people laughed and some called them crazy, so that now he did not like to have somebody know that he could do it.
“But Brit Hunter’s hurt bad, so a doctor must come quick, or I think he maybe will die. It takes too long to ride a horse to Echo from this ranch, so I call on my mother, and I tell my mother a doctor must come quick to this ranch. So my mother sends a telephone to this doctor in Shoshone, and he comes. That is all. But I would not like it if everybody maybe finds it out that I do that, and makes talk about it.”
He looked straight at Jim and Sorry, and those two unprepossessing ones looked at each other and at Swa
n and at the doctor and at each other again, and headed for the door. But Swan was leaning against it, and his eyes were on them. “I would like it if you say somebody rides to get the doctor,” he hinted quietly.
Sorry looked at Jim. “I rode like hell,” he stated heavily. “I leave it to Jim.”
“You shore’n hell did!” Jim agreed, and Swan removed his big form from the door.
“You boys goin’ over t’ Spirit Canyon?” Frank wanted to know.
“Yeah,” said Sorry, answering for them both, and they went out, giving Swan a sidelong look of utter bafflement as they passed him. Talking by the thought route from Spirit Canyon to Boise City was evidently a bit too much for even their phlegmatic souls to contemplate with perfect calm.
“They’ll keep it to theirselves, whether they believe it or not,” Frank assured Swan in his labored whisper. “It don’t go down with me. I ain’t supe’stitious enough fer that.”
“The doctor he comes, don’t he?” Swan retorted. “I shall go back now and milk the cows and do chores.”
“But if your shoulder is lame, Swan, how can you?” Lorraine asked in her unexpected fashion.
Swan swallowed and looked helplessly at the doctor, who stood smoothing his chin. “The muscle strain is not serious,” he said calmly. “A little gentle exercise will prevent further trouble, I think.” Whereupon he turned abruptly to the door of the other room, glanced in at Brit and beckoned Lorraine with an upraised finger.
“You have had a hard time of it yourself, young lady,” he told her. “You needn’t worry about Swan. He is not suffering appreciably. I shall mix you a very unpleasant dose of medicine, and then I want you to go to bed and sleep. I shall stay with your father tonight; not that it is necessary, but because I prefer daylight for the trip back to town. So there is no reason why you should sit up and wear yourself out. You will have plenty of time to do that while your father’s bones mend.”
He proceeded to mix the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father’s desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was shining into the room.