"My God! Dan, won't you believe me and get me out of here? Honest,
honest, I'm goin' to die if you don't!"
In his growing excitement the boy's voice rose to a penetrating pitch
and it brought Lamb quickly from the office in the front. He looked
disconcerted for an instant when he saw the deputy, for he had not known
of his presence in the hospital. Glancing from one to the other he read
something of the situation in Billy Duncan's excited face and Dan Treu's
puzzled look. Stepping back from the doorway he beckoned the deputy into
the hall.
"I guess he was talkin' wild, wasn't he?" He walked out of the sick
boy's hearing. "Kickin', wasn't he?"
Dan Treu hesitated.
"I thought as much," nodded Lamb. "But you mustn't pay any attention to
him. His fever's way up and he's out of his head most of the time."
"He seems to think his arm ain't had the care it should,"--Treu's voice
was troubled--"that the wound ain't clean and it's swellin' bad."
Lamb laughed.
"His hallucination; he's way off at times. Everything's been done for
him. We like the boy and he's havin' the best of care. Why, we couldn't
afford to have it get around that we neglect our patients, so you see
what he says ain't sense."
The deputy-sheriff's face cleared gradually at Lamb's explanation and
solicitude.
"Yes, I guess he is a little 'off,' though I must say he don't exactly
look it. But do all you can for him, Lamb, for Billy's a fine chap at
heart and he's a friend of mine. The boys have raised some money for any
extras that he wants--I put it under his pillow."
Lamb brightened perceptibly.
"That's a good thing, because seein' as how he wasn't hurt on the works
he'll have to pay like any private patient and of course we'd like to
see where our money is comin' from. I've asked him for the money--his
week is up to-day--but he don't seem to think he owes it."
"Kind of strikes me the same way," replied the deputy obviously
surprised.
"That's accordin' to contract--that's the written agreement." Lamb's
nasal voice immediately became argumentative.
"It may be that,"--the deputy looked at him soberly--"but it don't sound
like common humanity to me--or fairness. He's been paying a dollar a
month to you and your hospital ever since it started and hundreds of
men who have no need of its services have been doin' the same, and I
must say, Lamb, it sounds like pretty small potatoes for you to charge
him for an outside accident like this because your contract will let you
do it and get away with it."
"We ain't here for our health, be we?" demanded Lamb, offensively on the
defensive.
"It don't look like it," Treu replied shortly.
"But he'll want for nothin' while he's under our care." Lamb's tone grew
suddenly conciliatory. "You'd better go now, your presence excites him
and he must have quiet. Step to the door and say good-by, if you like,
but no conversation, please."
"Adios, Billy!" The deputy thrust his head and broad shoulders in the
doorway. "I'll come again soon."
"Good-by, Dan, good-by for keeps, old man. I don't believe I'll be here
when you come again." All the excitement was gone and the boy spoke in
the quiet voice of conviction. "You're quittin' me, Dan. You don't
believe me and the jig's up. You'd risk your life to save me if I was
drowning or up against it in a fight, but you're walkin' away and
leavin' me here to die. You don't believe me now, but I know you're
goin' to find out some time for yourself that I'm tellin' the truth when
I say that I've been murdered. There's more ways to kill a man than with
a gun. Ignorance and neglect does the trick as well. Tell the boys 'much
obliged,' Dan." He turned his white face to the wall and the tears
slipped hot from beneath his lashes.
Dan Treu's troubled eyes sought Lamb's, who waited in the hallway.
"He'll be himself when you come again," said Lamb reassuringly. "We're
doin' everything to git his fever down. Don't let his talk worry you."
But in spite of Lamb's confident assurance Dan Treu walked away from the
hospital filled with a sense of oppression which lasted throughout the
day. The next morning he heard upon the street that they had amputated
Billy Duncan's arm.
"Amputated Billy Duncan's arm!" The deputy-sheriff kept saying it over
and over to himself as he hurried to the hospital. He was shocked; he
was filled with a regret that was personal in its poignancy. He knew
exactly what such a loss meant to Billy Duncan, who earned his living
with his hands and gloried in his strength--independent young Billy
Duncan an object of pity in his mutilated manhood! Dan Treu could not
entirely realize it yet.
Lamb met him at the hospital door as though he had awaited his coming.
"Blood-poisonin' set in," he began with a haste which seemed due to
excitement. "Developed sudden. Had to amputate to save his life. He was
willin' enough; he knew it was for the best, his only chance in fact."
Dan Treu was seized with a sudden aversion for Lamb's shifty,
dark-circled eyes, his unconvincing nasal voice.
"Blood-poisonin' set in, you say?" He eyed Lamb steadily.
"His habits, you know, battin' around and all that. Bad blood."
"Bad blood--hell!" said Dan Treu sharply. "His blood was as good as
yours or mine, and his habits too."
He made to step inside, but Lamb stopped him.
"He hasn't come out of the ether yet--I'll let you know when you can see
him."
There was nothing more to say, so Dan Treu turned on his heel and walked
away, angry, sceptical--without exactly knowing why.
The aversion which Lamb had inspired was still strong within him when he
stopped on a street corner to ruminate and incidentally roll a
cigarette.
"When he gets close I feel like I do when a wet dog comes out of the
crick and is goin' to shake." The deputy felt uncommonly pleased with
the simile which so well described his feelings.
Dan Treu did not receive the promised notification that Billy Duncan was
in a condition to be seen, which was not strange, since Billy Duncan was
dying--dying because a man and woman whose diplomas licensed them to
juggle with human life and limb were unable in their ignorance and
inexperience to stop the flow of blood. Vital, life-loving,
happy-go-lucky Billy Duncan lay limp on his narrow bed in the bare,
white room, filled with a great heart-sickness at the uselessness of it,
the helpless ignominy of dying like a stuck pig! With a last effort he
turned his head upon his pillow and through the window by his bedside
watched the colors of the distant foothills change from gold to
purple--purple like the shadows of the Big Dark for which he was bound.
And when at last the night shut out the world he loved so well, Billy
Duncan coughed--a choking, strangling cough and died alone.
Nell Beecroft learned it first when she brought the soup and prunes
which she was pleased to call his supper. She set the tray upon the bed
and stood with arms akimbo looking down upon him. The boyish look of
him as he lay so still brought the thought home to her for the first
time that somewhere in the world there was some one--a mother--a woman
like herself who loved young Billy Duncan. She stooped and with rough
gentleness brushed a lock of fair hair from his forehead.
"Poor devil!" she murmured.
"He's dead." She conveyed the news shortly when Lamb came to make his
nightly round.
"Who?"
"The kid--Billy Duncan."
Lamb looked startled. It had come sooner than he thought. Recovering
himself, he wagged his head and sighed in his pious whine:
"Ah, truly, 'the wages of sin is death.' Altogether a most unfortunate
affair, but no human skill could save him." His voice faltered a little,
at the end, for pretence seemed ridiculous beneath Nell Beecroft's hard
eyes, and her unpleasant laugh nettled him as she strode back to the
kitchen.
Yes, Billy Duncan was dead--there was no doubt about that--perfectly and
safely dead. There was no question of it in Dr. Lamb's mind when he
slipped his hand beneath the pillow and withdrew the $90 which Billy
Duncan had so obstinately refused to turn over toward his hospital
expenses. Ninety dollars; yes, it was all there; Lamb counted it
carefully. Little enough for the trouble and anxiety he had been. The
eminent surgeon's waistcoat bulged with the gift of Billy Duncan's
friends when he closed the door behind him.
A curious stillness came over Dan Treu when Lamb himself brought the
news that Billy Duncan was dead. His jaw dropped slightly and he forgot
to smoke.
"The shock--his weakened condition--it was to be expected, though we
hoped for the best." Lamb found it something of an effort to speak
naturally beneath the Deputy-sheriff's fixed gaze. "But he wanted for
nothing. Me and the nurse was with him at the last."
A mist blurred Dan Treu's eyes and he turned abruptly on his heel.
"Wait a minute! Ahem! there's one thing more."
The deputy halted.
"You will arrange with the County about his funeral expenses?"
"With the County? Billy Duncan's no pauper."
"Why ain't he? I've been around and found out he's got nothin' in the
bank."
"You have?" He eyed Lamb for a moment. "Billy Duncan will not be buried
by the County," he finished curtly.
"I'm glad to hear that," said Lamb conciliatingly, and added: "Of course
you're not counting on that $90?"
"There must be some left."
"Oh, no--nothing. Arm amputations are a $100. We are really out
$10--more than that with his board and all, but"--his tone was
magnanimity itself--"let it go."
When the Deputy-sheriff went out on the works and raised $125 more among
Billy Duncan's friends, he handed it to Lutz, the hospital undertaker,
and said--
"The best you can do for the money, Lutz. I've got to go to the County
seat on a case and I can't be here myself. Billy was a personal friend
of mine, so treat him right."
"Sure; we can turn him out first-class for that money; a new suit of
clothes and a tony coffin. Any friend of yours I'll handle like he was
my own."
There was something slightly jocular in his tone, a flippancy which Dan
Treu felt and silently resented. He looked at Lutz in his shiny, black
diagonals, undersized, sallow, his meaningless brown eyes as dull as the
eyes of a dead fish, and he thought to himself as he walked away--
"That feller's in the right business, and, by gosh, he's thrown in with
the right bunch."
The grave-digger's mouth puckered in a whistle when Lutz went to his
home to notify him that his services were needed.
"What! Another!"
The undertaker grinned.
"I'm about used up from gittin' robbed of my rest," complained the
grave-digger. "This night-work ain't to my taste."
"It's no use kickin'; you know what Lamb says--that these daylight
buryin's makes talk amongst the neighbors."
"Should think it would," retorted the grave-digger, "with them typhoids
dyin' like flies."
"I thought of a joke, Lem."
"Undertakin' is a comical business; what is it?"
"When an undertaker's sick ought he to go to the doctor what gives him
the most work or the least?"
"You got me; I'll think it over and let you know."
In spite of his garrulous complaints the grave-digger was at work in a
new grave on the sagebrush flat a mile or more from town when the
undertaker and the liveryman drove up at midnight with all that remained
of Billy Duncan jolting in the box of a lumber wagon.
The coffin of unplaned lumber was unloaded at the grave and the
liveryman hastened away, for he himself had no liking for these
nocturnal drives, but neither was he the man to quarrel with his own
interests. If the Health Officer and His Honor, the mayor, asked no
questions when the hospital deaths went unreported, he felt that these
frequent midnight pilgrimages were no concern of his.
The undertaker peered into the shallow grave.
"This hole looks like a chicken had been dustin' itself."
"You'd think it was deep enough if you was diggin' in these rocks and
drawin' only $5.00 for it," was the tart reply. "I told you I wouldn't
dig but three feet for that money. 'Tain't like diggin' in nice, easy
Nebrasky soil. Gimme $10 a grave an' I'll dig 'em regalation depth."
"Quit jawin' and take holt of this here box."
"Is he heavy?"
"Never heard of any of 'em comin' out of there fat. Slide the strap
under your end."
"He's heavier than most," grunted the grave-digger. "He couldn't a been
in there long."
Lutz laughed.
"They made a quick job of this one. Steady now--let her slide."
The grave-digger was sleepy and cross and careless. The strap slipped
through his fingers and the box fell with a heavy thud. It fell upon its
side and the lid came off.
"My God!" The grave-digger was staring into the hole with all his
bulging eyes.
"You fool! You clumsy, blunderin' fool!"
The epithet passed unheard, for the grave-digger was looking at the
stark body rolled in a soiled blanket now lying face downward in the
dirt of the grave.
"Jump in there and put him back!" cried Lutz excitedly.
The grave-digger backed off and shook his head emphatically.
"Not _me_!"
"What are you here for--you?"
"Not for jobs like this; this sure don't look right to me."
"What do I care how it looks to you! Get busy and help me roll him back
and be quick about it!"
"I ain't paid for no such crooked work as this."
"Crooked?"
"I've heard it straight that every pauper had a suit o' clothes, a
coffin, a six-foot grave, and a headboard comin' to him from the County.
That's the law."
"Look here, Lem, use a little sense. Now what's the use spendin' County
money on these paupers from God knows where? That's a good blanket."
"Oh, yes, that's a peach of a blanket. Kind of a shame to waste such a
good blanket, ain't it? Why don't you take it off him? He'll never tell.
But say, are you sure the County don't pay for that suit of clothes and
coffin and six feet of diggin' he didn't git?"
"Are you goin' to lend a hand here or not?"
"Not." The grave-digger picked up his shovel and started off looking
like a gnome in the moonlight under his high-crowned Stetson.
"Come back here! Don't be a fool."
"I'm not the man you're lookin' for," he replied stubbornly.
The undertaker started after him and laid a hand roughly upon his arm.
"See here, Lem, you goin' to blab this all over town?"
Remembering the graves he had dug for $5.00, the grave-digger began to
enjoy Lutz's anxiety.
"Can't tell what I'll do when I get a few drinks in me."
"You start somethin' and you'll be sorry." Lutz's tone was threatening.
"I'm naturally truthful; I aims to stick strictly to facts if I does
talk."
"Facts don't cut any ice in a libel suit," replied the undertaker
significantly.
Libel suit! That sounded like the law and the grave-digger had a poor
man's fear of the law. There was less assurance in his voice when he
asserted--
"No man don't own me."
"I don't want to see you get in trouble, Lem, and I'm tellin' you for
your own good that you better keep your trap shut on this. Who'd believe
you if you'd tell any such story? You couldn't prove anything with the
mayor and town officer against you if it was anything likely to get out
and hurt the town. Who of Lamb and Harpe's friends that see them pikin'
off to church every Sunday, singin' their sa'ms and the first at the
altar of a Communion Sunday, who, I say, would believe us if we'd tell
what we knew about that hospital and the whole lot more that we suspect?
They could bluff you out because you haven't got the money it would take
to prove you're right. Come back here and behave yourself and I'll try
and get you that $10."
"If I wasn't a family man----" mumbled the grave-digger.
"But you are, and it's no use bein' squeamish over somethin' that's none
of your business. This is your bread and butter."
It was the argument which has tied men's tongues since the world began
and it never grows less effective. The shovel dropped from the
grave-digger's shoulder.
"Hop in here and help me roll him back."
The grave-digger reluctantly obeyed.
"This looks fierce to me." He wiped the cold perspiration from his
forehead.
"Take a rock and hammer in them shingle-nails and forget it!"
When Dan Treu returned from his business trip to the County seat the
undertaker met him smilingly.
"I made a fine show for the money, Dan; you'd have been pleased.
Everything was plain but good and went off without a slip. I handled him
as I promised--like he was my own."
The few in Crowheart who heard the story laughed openly at the statement
which Giovanni Pelezzo made when he returned to camp one day and
declared that while seated in the doorway of the operating room of the
hospital he had turned in time to see Dr. Harpe take five dollars and
some small change from the pocket of his cousin Antonio Pelezzo, whom
she had etherized for a minor operation.
Although Antonio turned his empty pockets inside out to verify
Giovanni's stoutly reiterated assertion, the camp ridiculed their story
and none laughed more heartily at the absurdity of the tale than Dr.
Harpe herself. When she declared that it was only one illustration of
the lengths to which ignorant and suspicious foreigners would go, her
listeners agreed that she must indeed have much with which to contend in
practising her profession among such a class of people as were employed
upon the project.
The only person who did not laugh, beside the countrymen of the two
Italians, was Dan Treu. He made no comment when he heard the tale, but
he sat for a long time on the corner of the White Elephant's billiard
table, holding a cigarette which he forgot to smoke.