"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 Swan 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 to-night; 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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LONE TAKES HIS STAND
Lone Morgan, over at Elk Spring camp, was just sitting down to eat his
midday meal when some one shouted outside. Lone stiffened in his chair,
felt under his coat, and then got up with some deliberation and looked
out of the window before he went to the door. All this was a matter of
habit, bred of Lone's youth in the feud country, and had nothing
whatever to do with his conscience.
"Hello!" he called, standing in the doorway and grinning a welcome to
Swan, who stood with one arm resting on the board gate. "She's on the
table--come on in."
"I don't know if you're home with the door shut like that," Swan
explained, coming up to the cabin. "I chased a coyote from Rock City to
here, and by golly, he's going yet! I'll get him sometime, maybe. He's
smart, but you can beat anything with thinking if you don't stop
thinking. Always the other feller stops sometimes, and then you get
him. You believe that?"
"It most generally works out that way," Lone admitted, getting another
plate and cup from the cupboard, which was merely a box nailed with its
bottom to the wall, and a flour sack tacked across the front for a
curtain. "Even a coyote slips up now and then, I reckon."
Swan sat down, smoothing his tousled yellow hair with both hands as he
did so. "By golly, my shoulder is sore yet from carrying Brit Hunter,"
he remarked carelessly, flexing his muscles and grimacing a little.
Lone was pouring the coffee, and he ran Swan's cup over before he
noticed what he was doing. Swan looked up at him and looked away again,
reaching for a cloth to wipe the spilled coffee from the table.
"How was that?" Lone asked, turning away to the stove. "What-all
happened to Brit Hunter?"
Swan, with his plate filled and his coffee well sweetened, proceeded to
relate with much detail the story of Brit's misfortune. "By golly, I
don't see how he don't get killed," he finished, helping himself to
another biscuit. "By _golly_, I don't. Falling into Spirit Canyon is
like getting dragged by a horse. It should kill a man. What you think,
Lone?"
"It didn't, you say." Lone's eyes were turned to his coffee cup.
"It don't kill Brit Hunter--not yet. I think maybe he dies with all his
bones broke, like that. By golly, that shows you what could happen if a
man don't think. Brit should look at that chain on his wheel before he
starts down that road."
"Oh. His brake didn't hold, eh?"
"I look at that wagon," Swan answered carefully. "It is something funny
about that chain. I worked hauling logs in the mountains, once. It is
something damn funny about that chain, the way it's fixed."
Lone did not ask him for particulars, as perhaps Swan expected. He did
not speak at all for awhile, but presently pushed back his plate as if
his appetite were gone.
"It's like Fred Thurman," Swan continued moralizing. "If Fred don't ride
backwards, I bet he don't get killed--like that."
"Where's Brit now?" Lone asked, getting up and putting on his hat. "At
the ranch?"
"Or heaven, maybe," Swan responded sententiously. "But my dog Yack, he
don't howl yet. I guess Brit's at the ranch."
"Sorry I'm busy to-day," said Lone, opening the door. "You stay as long
as you like, Swan. I've got some riding to do."
"I'll wash the dishes, and then I maybe will think quicker than that
coyote. I'm after him, by golly, till I get him."
Lone muttered something and went out. Within five minutes Swan, hearing
hoofbeats, looked out through a crack in the door and saw Lone riding at
a gallop along the trail to Rock City. "Good bait. He swallows the
hook," he commented to himself, and his good-natured grin was not
brightening his face while he washed the dishes and tidied the cabin.
With Lone rode bitterness of soul and a sick fear that had nothing to do
with his own destiny. How long ago Brit had been hurled into the canyon
Lone did not know; he had not asked. But he judged that it must have
been very recently. Swan had not told him of anything but the runaway,
and of helping to carry Brit home--and of the "damn funny thing about
the chain"--the rough-lock, he must have meant. Too well Lone
understood the sinister meaning that probably lay behind that phrase.
"They've started on the Quirt now," he told himself with foreboding.
"She's been telling her father----"
Lone fell into bitter argument with himself. Just how far was it
justifiable to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what
possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An
accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade
had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question.
Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his
rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither
was Brit the man to forget the brake on his load. If Brit lived, he
might talk as much as he pleased, but he could never prove that his
accident had been deliberately staged with murderous intent.
Lone lifted his head and looked away across the empty miles of sageland
to the quiet blue of the mountains beyond. Peace--the peace of
untroubled wilderness--brooded over the land. Far in the distance,
against the rim of rugged hills, was an irregular splotch of brown which
was the headquarters of the Sawtooth. Lone turned his wrist to the
right, and John Doe, obeying the rein signal, left the trail and began
picking his way stiff-legged down the steep slope of the ridge, heading
directly toward the home ranch.
John Doe was streaked with sweat and his flanks were palpitating with
fatigue when Lone rode up to the corral and dismounted. Pop Bridgers saw
him and came bow-legging eagerly forward with gossip titillating on his
meddlesome tongue, but Lone stalked by him with only a surly nod. Bob
Warfield he saw at a distance and gave no sign of recognition. He met
Hawkins coming down from his house and stopped in the trail.
"Have you got time to go back to the office and fix up my time,
Hawkins?" he asked without prelude. "I'm quitting to-day."
Hawkins stared and named the Biblical place of torment. "What yuh
quittin' for, Lone?" he added incredulously. "All you boys got a raise
last month; ain't that good enough?"
"Plenty good enough, so long as I work for the outfit."
"Well, what's wrong? You've been with us five years, Lone, and it's
suited you all right so far----"
Lone looked at him. "Say, I never set out to _marry_ the Sawtooth," he
stated calmly. "And if I have married you-all by accident, you can get a
bill of divorce for desertion. This ain't the first time a man ever quit
yuh, is it, Hawkins?"
"No--and there ain't a man on the pay roll we can't do without," Hawkins
retorted, his neck stiffening with resentment. "It's a kinda rusty
trick, though, Lone, quittin' without notice and leaving a camp empty."
"Elk Spring won't run away," Lone assured him without emotion. "She's
been left alone a week or two at a time during roundups. I don't reckon
the outfit'll bust up before you get a man down there."
The foreman looked at him curiously, for this was not like Lone, whose
tone had always been soft and friendly, and whose manner had no hint of
brusqueness. There was a light, too, in Lone's eyes that had not been
there before. But Hawkins would not question him further. If Lone Morgan
or any other man wanted to quit, that was his privilege,--providing, of
course, that his leaving was not likely to menace the peace and
security of the Sawtooth. Lone had made it a point to mind his own
business, always. He had never asked questions, he had never surmised or
gossiped. So Hawkins gave him a check for his wages and let him go with
no more than a foreman's natural reluctance to lose a trustworthy man.
By hard riding along short cuts, Lone reached the Quirt ranch and
dropped reins at the doorstep, not much past mid-afternoon.
"I rode over to see if there's anything I can do," he said, when
Lorraine opened the door to him. He did not like to ask about her
father, fearing that the news would be bad.
"Why, thank you for coming." Lorraine stepped back, tacitly inviting him
to enter. "Dad knows us to-day, but of course he's terribly hurt and
can't talk much. We do need some one to go to town for things. Frank
helps me with dad, and Jim and Sorry are trying to keep things going on
the ranch. And Swan does what he can, of course, but----"
"I just thought you maybe needed somebody right bad," said Lone quietly,
meaning a great deal more than Lorraine dreamed that he meant. "I'm not
doing anything at all, right now, so I can just as well help out as
not. I can go to town right away, if I can borrow a horse. John Doe,
he's pretty tired. I been pushing him right through--not knowing there
was a town trip ahead of him."
Lorraine found her eyes going misty. He was so quiet, and so reassuring
in his quiet. Half her burden seemed to slip from her shoulders while
she looked at him. She turned away, groping for the door latch.
"You may see dad, if you like, while I get the list of things the doctor
ordered. He left only a little while ago, and I was waiting for one of
the boys to come back so I could send him to town."
It was on Lone's tongue to ask why the doctor had not taken in the order
himself and instructed some one to bring out the things; but he
remembered how very busy with its own affairs was Echo and decided that
the doctor was wise.
He tiptoed in to the bed and saw a sallow face covered with stubbly gray
whiskers and framed with white bandages. Brit opened his eyes and moved
his thin lips in some kind of greeting, and Lone sat down on the edge of
a chair, feeling as miserably guilty as if he himself had brought the
old man to this pass. It seemed to him that Brit must know more of the
accident than Swan had told, and the thought did not add to his comfort.
He waited until Brit opened his eyes again, and then he leaned forward,
holding Brit's wandering glance with his own intent gaze.
"I ain't working now," he said, lowering his voice so that Lorraine
could not hear. "So I'm going to stay here and help see you through with
this. I've quit the Sawtooth."
Brit's eyes cleared and studied Lone's face. "D'you know--anything?"
"No, I don't." Lone's face hardened a little. "But I wanted you to know
that I'm--with the Quirt, now."
"Frank hire yuh?"
"No. I ain't hired at all. I'm just--_with_ yuh."
"We--need yuh," said Brit grimly, looking Lone straight in the eyes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"FRANK'S DEAD"
"Frank come yet?" The peevish impatience of an invalid whose horizon has
narrowed to his own personal welfare and wants was in Brit's voice. Two
weeks he had been sick, and his temper had not sweetened with the pain
of his broken bones and the enforced idleness. Brit was the type of man
who is never quiet unless he is asleep or too ill to get out of bed.
Lorraine came to the doorway and looked in at him. Two weeks had set
their mark on her also. She seemed older, quieter in her ways; there
were shadows in her eyes and a new seriousness in the set of her mouth.
She had had her burdens, and she had borne them with more patience than
many an older woman would have done, but what she thought of those
burdens she did not say.
"No, dad--but I thought I heard a wagon a little while ago. He must be
coming," she said.
"Where's Lone at?" Brit moved restlessly on the pillow and twisted his
face at the pain.
"Lone isn't back, either."
"He ain't? Where'd he go?"
Lorraine came to the bedside and, lifting Brit's head carefully,
arranged the pillow as she knew he liked it. "I don't know where he
went," she said dully. "He rode off just after dinner. Do you want your
supper now? Or would you rather wait until Frank brings the fruit?"
"I'd ruther wait--if Frank don't take all night," Brit grumbled. "I hope
he ain't connected up with that Echo booze. If he has----"
"Oh, no, dad! Don't borrow trouble. Frank was anxious to get home as
soon as he could. He'll be coming any minute, now. I'll go listen for
the wagon."
"No use listenin'. You couldn't hear it in that sand--not till he gits
to the gate. I don't see where Lone goes to, all the time. Where's Jim
and Sorry, then?"
"Oh, they've had their supper and gone to the bunk-house. Do you want
them?"
"No! What'd I want 'em fur? Not to look at, that's sure. I want to know
how things is going on this ranch. And from all I can make out, they
ain't goin' at all," Brit fretted. "What was you 'n Lone talkin' so long
about, out in the kitchen last night? Seems to me you 'n' him have got
a lot to say to each other, Raine."
"Why, nothing in particular. We were just--talking. We're all human
beings, dad; we have to talk sometimes. There's nothing else to do."
"Well, I caught something about the Sawtooth. I don't want you talking
to Lone or anybody else about that outfit, Raine. I told yuh so once.
He's all right--I ain't saying anything against Lone--but the less you
have to say the more you'll have to be thankful fur, mebby."
"I was wondering if Swan could have gotten word somehow to the Sawtooth
and had them telephone out that you were hurt. And Lone was drawing a
map of the trails and showing me how far it was from the canyon to the
Sawtooth ranch. And he was asking me just how it happened that the brake
didn't hold, and I said it must have been all right, because I saw you
come out from under the wagon just before you hitched up. I thought you
were fixing the chain on them."
"Huh?" Brit lifted his head off the pillow and let it drop back again,
because of the pain in his shoulder. "You never seen me crawl out from
under no wagon. I come straight down the hill to the team."