CHAPTER 8. IN THE LAZY D HOSPITAL
Helen's first swift glance showed that the wounded man was Bannister.She turned in crisp command to her foreman.
"Have him taken to my room and put to bed there. We have no time toprepare another. And send one of the boys on your best horse for adoctor."
They carried the limp figure in with rough tenderness and laid him inthe bed. McWilliams unbuckled the belt and drew off the chaps; then,with the help of Denver, undressed the wounded man and covered himwith quilts. So Helen found him when she came in to attend his wounds,bringing with her such things as she needed for her task. Mrs. Winslow,the housekeeper, assisted her, and the foreman stayed to help, but itwas on the mistress of the ranch that the responsibility of saving himfell. Missou was already galloping to Bear Creek for a doctor, but thegirl knew that the battle must be fought and the issue decided before hecould arrive.
He had fallen again into insensibility and she rinsed and dressed hiswounds, working with the quiet impersonal certainty of touch that didnot betray the inner turmoil of her soul. But McWilliams, his eyesfollowing her every motion and alert to anticipate her needs, saw thatthe color had washed from her face and that she was controlling herselfonly to meet the demands of the occasion.
As she was finishing, the sheepman opened his eyes and looked at her.
"You are not to speak or ask questions. You have been wounded and we aregoing to take care of you," she ordered.
"That's right good of y'u. I ce'tainly feet mighty trifling." His wideeyes traveled round till they fell on the foreman. "Y'u see I cameback to help fill your hospital. Am I there now? Where am I?" His gazereturned to Helen with the sudden irritation of the irresponsible sick.
"You are at the Lazy D, in my room. You are not to worry about anything.Everything's all right."
He took her at her word and his eyes closed; but presently he began tomutter unconnected words and phrases. When his lids lifted again therewas a wilder look in his eyes, and she knew that delirium was beginning.At intervals it lasted for long; indeed, until the doctor came nextmorning in the small hours. He talked of many things Helen Messiter didnot understand, of incidents in his past life, some of them jerky withthe excitement of a tense moment, others apparently snatches of talkwith relatives. It was like the babbling of a child, irrelevant and yetoften insistent. He would in one breath give orders connected with thelambing of his sheep, in the next break into football talk, calling outsignals and imploring his men to hold them or to break through and getthe ball. Once he broke into curses, but his very oaths seemed to comefrom a clean heart and missed the vulgarity they might have had. Againhis talk rambled inconsequently over his youth, and he would urgehimself or someone else of the same name to better life.
"Ned, Ned, remember your mother," he would beseech. "She asked me tolook after you. Don't go wrong." Or else it would be, "Don't disgracethe general, Ned. You'll break his heart if you blacken the old name."To this theme he recurred repeatedly, and she noticed that when heimagined himself in the East his language was correct and his intonationcultured, though still with a suggestion of a Southern softness.
But when he spoke of her his speech lapsed into the familiar drawl ofCattleland. "I ain't such a sweep as y'u think, girl. Some day I'll suretell y'u all about it, and how I have loved y'u ever since y'u scoopedme up in your car. You're the gamest little lady! To see y'u comea-sailin' down after me, so steady and businesslike, not turning a hairwhen the bullets hummed--I sure do love y'u, Helen." And then he fellupon her first name and called her by it a hundred times softly tohimself.
This happened when she was alone with him, just before the doctor came.She heard it with starry eyes and with a heart that flushed for joy awarmer color into her cheeks. Brushing back the short curls, she kissedhis damp forehead. It was in the thick of the battle, before he hadweathered that point where the issues of life and death pressed closely,and even in the midst of her great fears it brought her comfort. She wasto think often of it later, and always the memory was to be music inher heart. Even when she denied her love for him, assured herself it wasimpossible she could care for so shameful a villain, even then it wasa sweet torture to allow herself the luxury of recalling his brokendelirious phrases. At the very worst he could not be as bad asthey said; some instinct told her this was impossible. His fearlessdevil-may-care smile, his jaunty, gallant bearing, these pleaded againstthe evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, agentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odiumof such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought thisprofitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind.Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in somesnatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow inhis face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of thedifference between what he was and what he seemed to be.
One of the things that had been a continual surprise to Helen was theshort time required by these deep-cheated and clean-blooded Westernersto recover from apparently serious wounds. It was scarce more than twoweeks since Bannister had filled the bunkhouse with wounded men, andalready two of them were back at work and the third almost fit forservice. For perhaps three days the sheepman's life hung in the balance,after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life began totell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a notch,and he was now sleeping wholesomely a good part of his time. Altogether,unless for some unseen contingency, the doctor prophesied that thesheepman was going to upset the probabilities and get well.
"Which merely shows, ma'am, what is possible when you give a sound mantwenty-four hours a day in our hills for a few years," he added. "Thanksto your nursing he's going to shave through by the narrowest marginpossible. I told him to-day that he owed his life to you, MissMessiter."
"I don't think you need have told him that Doctor," returned that youngwoman, not a little vexed at him, "especially since you have just beentelling me that he owes it to Wyoming air and his own soundness ofconstitution."
When she returned to the sickroom to give her patient his medicinehe wanted to tell her what the doctor had said, but she cut him offruthlessly and told him not to talk.
"Mayn't I even say 'Thank you?'" he wanted to know.
"No; you talk far too much as it is."
He smiled "All right. Y'u sit there in that chair, where I can see y'udoing that fancywork and I'll not say a word. It'll keep, all right,what I want to say."
"I notice you keep talking," she told him, dryly.
"Yes, ma'am. Y'u had better have let me say what I wanted to, but I'llbe good now."
He fell asleep watching her, and when he awoke she was still sittingthere, though it was beginning to grow dark. He spoke before she knew hewas awake.
"I'm going to get well, the doctor thinks."
"Yes, he told me," she answered.
"Did he tell y'u it was your nursing saved me?"
"Please don't think about that."
"What am I to think about? I owe y'u a heap, and it keeps piling up. Ireckon y'u do it all because it's your Christian duty?" he demanded.
"It is my duty, isn't it?"
"I didn't say it wasn't, though I expaict Bighorn County will forget togive y'u a unanimous vote of thanks for doing it. I asked if y'u did itbecause it was your duty?"
"The reason doesn't matter so that I do it," she answered, steadily.
"Reasons matter some, too, though they ain't as important as actions outin this country. Back in Boston they figure more, and since y'u used togo to school back there y'u hadn't ought to throw down your professor ofethics."
"Don't you think you have talked enough for the present?" she smiled,and added: "If I make you talk whenever I sit beside you I shall have tostay away."
"That's where y'u've ce'tainly got the drop on me, ma'am. I'm a clamtill y'u give the word."
Before a week he was able to sit up in a chair for an hour or two, andsoon after could limp in
to the living room with the aid of a walkingstick and his hostess. Under the tan he still wore an interestingpallor, but there could be no question that he was on the road tohealth.
"A man doesn't know what he's missing until he gets shot up and isbrought to the Lazy D hospital, so as to let Miss Messiter exercise herChristian duty on him," he drawled, cheerfully, observing the suddenglow on her cheek brought by the reference to his unanswered question.
He made the lounge in the big sunny window his headquarters. From ithe could look out on some of the ranch activities when she was not withhim, could watch the line riders as they passed to and fro and commanda view of one of the corrals. There was always, too, the turquoise sky,out of which poured a flood of light on the roll of hilltops. Sometimeshe read to himself, but he was still easily tired, and preferred usuallyto rest. More often she read aloud to him while he lay back with hisleveled eyes gravely on her till the gentle, cool abstraction sheaffected was disturbed and her perplexed lashes rose to reproach theintensity of his gaze.
She was of those women who have the heavenborn faculty of making homeof such fortuitous elements as are to their hands. Except her piano andsuch knickknacks as she had brought in a single trunk she had had todepend upon the resources of the establishment to which she had come,but it is wonderful how much can be done with some Navajo rugs, abearskin, a few bits of Indian pottery and woven baskets and a judiciousarrangement of scenic photographs. In a few days she would have herpictures from Kalamazoo, pending which her touch had transformed the bigliving room from a cheerless barn into a spot that was a comfort tothe eye and heart. To the wounded man who lay there slowly renewing theblood he had lost the room was the apotheosis of home, less, perhaps, byreason of what it was in itself than because it was the setting for herpresence--for her grave, sympathetic eyes, the sound of her clear voice,the light grace of her motion. He rejoiced in the delightful intimacythe circumstances made necessary. To hear snatches of joyous song andgay laughter even from a distance, to watch her as she came in and outon her daily tasks, to contest her opinions of books and life and seehow eagerly she defended them; he wondered himself at the strength ofthe appeal these simple things made to him. Already he was dreading theday when he must mount his horse and ride back into the turbulent lifefrom which she had for a time, snatched him.
"I'll hate to go back to sheepherding," he told her one day at lunch,looking at her across a snow-white tablecloth upon which were a serviceof shining silver, fragile china teacups and plates stamped Limoges.
He was at the moment buttering a delicious French roll and she wasdaintily pouring tea from an old family heirloom. The contrast betweenthis and the dust and the grease of a midday meal at the end of a "chuckwagon" lent accent to his smiling lamentation.
"A lot of sheepherding you do," she derided.
"A shepherd has to look after his sheep, y'u know."
"You herd sheep just about as much as I punch cows."
"I have to herd my herders, anyhow, and that keeps me on the move."
"I'm glad there isn't going to be any more trouble between you and theLazy D. And that reminds me of another thing. I've often wonered whothose men could have been that attacked you the day you were hurt."
She had asked the question almost carelessly, without any thought thatthis might be something he wished to conceal, but she recognized hermistake by the wariness that filmed his eyes instantly.
"Room there for a right interesting guessing contest," he replied.
"You wouldn't need to guess," she charged, on swift impulse.
"Meaning that I know?"
"You do know. You can't deny that you now."
"Well, say that I know?"
"Aren't you going to tell?"
He shook his head. "Not just yet. I've got private reasons for keepingit quiet a while."
"I'm sure they are creditable to you," came her swift ironic retort.
"Sure," he agreed, whimsically. "I must live up to the professionalstandard. Honor among thieves, y'u know."
Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West Page 8