In her new buggy with its flashing wheels Dr. Harpe was soon driving
through the different camps along the project, and the laborers rather
enjoyed the novelty of visits from the "lady doc," as they called her,
and consented good-naturedly enough to the deduction of monthly dues for
hospital benefits from their wages.
While they regarded her professionally and personally in a humorous
light and made her more or less the target of coarse jokes, as is any
woman who leaves the beaten track, yet the general feeling toward her
was one of friendliness.
They laughed at her swaggering stride, her masculine dress, the
vernacular which was their own speech, but there was quickly established
between them and her a good-humored familiarity which was greatly to her
liking. They become "Bill" and "Pat" and "Tony" to her and she was "Doc"
to them.
While her horses trotted briskly the length of the ditch and she was
returning smiling nods and flinging retorts that were not too delicate
over her shoulder, she began to feel herself a personage; she was filled
with a growing sense of importance and power.
There was everything to indicate that the contract would prove all that
she and Lamb had hoped for. The general health was exceptionally good
and she urged sanitary precautions upon the men to prevent long and
expensive fevers; as yet there was no dangerous rock-work entailing the
use of explosives to imperil the lives and limbs of the men. The
remedies required were of the simplest and the running expenses of the
hospital were nil.
When they received their first checks from the Company and the
contractors, Lamb's joy was almost tearful.
"It's easier than layin' bricks, Doc," he said as they wrung each
other's hands in mutual congratulation.
Dr. Harpes' ambitions grew with her bank account, and among them there
was one which began to take the shape of a fixed purpose. With her
successful manipulations of conditions to further her own ends she came
to believe herself in her small world invincible. The effect of this
belief upon a nature like hers was to increase its natural arrogance and
her tendency to domineer, while the strange, extravagant personal
conceit which seemed so at variance with her practical nature became a
paramount trait.
There was really no doubt in her mind that she could marry Ogden Van
Lennop if she really set about doing so. It was only of late that she
had given the thought words. In the beginning when she had discovered
his identity, the most she had hoped for was to be friends, for a friend
of Van Lennop's importance might be useful. She felt that there would be
some way of turning his friendship to account. The fact that they were
still only acquaintances did not discourage her, nor the fact that he
seemed entirely satisfied with the companionship of the erstwhile belle
of Crowheart.
Rich men and rich men's sons had a way of amusing themselves with the
society of their inferiors where they were unknown, was her disdainful
explanation to herself, but it piqued and irritated her even while it
furnished the material for her sly innuendoes, for the insidious attacks
which were fast completing what Andy P. Symes's social dictatorship had
begun. With her mounting arrogance Dr. Harpe believed that if her
ultimate success in her new ambition demanded the entire removal of
Essie Tisdale from the field, this too she could accomplish. Her
overweening confidence now was such that she was persuaded that she
could shape events and mould the lives of others and her own as she
willed.
She was resting one day in her new office in the hospital after a long
drive along the ditch, and from her window she watched Van Lennop at the
Kunkel blacksmith shop across the street. He gave his horse a friendly
pat between the eyes before he swung into the saddle and she stood up to
watch him gallop the length of the street with the lithe and confident
grace which made him a noticeable figure in the saddle.
"Moses!" she observed aloud, "but he has improved in looks since he
landed here--his looks, however, are a mere incident compared to the
value of his name on the business end of a check. Harpe,"--she sniggered
at a mental picture--"how will you look anyhow hanging to a man's arm?
As a clingin' vine you'll never be a conspicuous success, but you could
give a fair imitation if the game was worth the candle, and this happens
to be an instance where it is. Let's have a look at you, my child."
She took a small hand-mirror from beneath the papers of a drawer and
regarded her reflection with a critically humorous smile.
"You're not the dimpled darling you once were, Harpe," she said aloud.
"You're tired now and not at your best, but all the same there's a kind
of a hard-boiled look coming that's a warning, a hint from Father Time,
that you've got to do something in the matrimonial line before it gets
chronic."