Juno had been delirious since the day she was stricken. Her mutterings
had been disjointed and unintelligible, but that night, while Mother Camp
and the New Englander sat at her bedside, she said again:
"Don't let him come."
"She ain't said that for three days now," said Mother Camp. "Whut d'
you s'pose she means?" The husband shook his head.
Next morning the nurse for whom St. Hilda had sent arrived from the
Bluegrass, and the New Englander started down Little Clover to the
settlement school to consult the doctor and see St. Hilda. It was a
brilliant, drenched June day, and never, he believed, had his eyes
rested on such a glory of green and gold. Already he had been heralded
in the swift way common in the hills, and all who saw him coming knew
who he was. He was Juno's man, and the people straightway called him--Jim.
When he stood on St. Hilda's porch her words and her drawn, anxious face
went straight to his heart. There was nobody like Juno, and without Juno
she did not know how she could get along. Her own little sufferers were
in tents about her, and there was only one nurse for them. Juno, said the
doctor, might be unconscious for a long time, and her nurse must be with
her night and day: so who would take Juno's place throughout the hills
she did not know. At once the New Englander, who knew a good deal about
medicine and something of typhoid, found himself offering to do all he
could. Then and there the Mission teacher gave him a list of patients,
and then and there, with a thermometer in his pocket and a medicine-case
in his hand, he started on his first round. The people were very shy with
him at first. In a few days he was promoted to Doctor Jim, and soon he
was plain "Doc" to all. By every mouth that opened he found Juno's name
blessed, and many were the tales of what she had done. She had saved wild
Jay Dawn's little girl and Lum Chapman's firstborn. She had brought old
Aunt Sis Stidham back from the shadow of the grave, and had turned that
tart, irreverent old person's erring feet back into the way of the Lord.
[Illustration]
Night and day, and through wind and storm, she had travelled the hills,
healing the sick and laying out and helping to bury the dead. Apparently
there was not a man, woman, or child in Happy Valley who did not love her
or have some reason to be grateful, and when in the open-air meeting-house
Parson Small told of her work and prayed that her life be spared, there
were fervent "Amens," or tears and sobs, from all. Doctor Jim soon found
himself getting deeply interested in the people, and when he contrasted
the lives of those whom the influence of the Mission school had not yet
reached with the folks in Happy Valley he began to realize the amazing
good that St. Hilda was doing in the hills. What a place he was earning
for himself he was yet to learn, but through some mystification an inkling
came. To be sure, everybody spoke to him as though he were a fixture in
the land. He could pass no door that somebody did not ask him to come
in and rest a spell, or stay all night. He never went by the mill that
Aunt Jane did not have a glass of buttermilk for him and Uncle Jerry did
not try to entice him in for a talk. Several times the little judge of
Happy Valley had ridden down to ask after Juno and to talk with him.
Pleasant Trouble waved his crutch from a hillside and shouted himself
at Doctor Jim's disposal for any purpose whatever. But one sunset he
had stopped at Lum Chapman's blacksmith-shop just as a big, black-haired
fellow, with a pistol buckled around him, was reeling away. The men
greeted him rather solemnly, and he felt that they wanted to say
something to him, but no one spoke. He saw Jay Dawn nod curtly to
Pleasant Trouble, who got briskly up and walked up the road with him
until they were in sight of Juno's home. For three days thereafter
Pleasant was waiting for him at the shop and walked the same space
with him. The next day Jay Dawn spoke with some embarrassment to him:
"Have you got a gun?"
"No." Jay handed forth one.
"Oh, no!" said Doctor Jim.
"Go on!" said Jay shortly; "I got another un."
"But why do I need a gun?" Jay was distinctly embarrassed.
"Well," he drawled, "thar's some purty bad fellers 'bout hyeh, an' when
they gits drunk they might do somethin'. Now that Jerry Lipps you seed
hyeh t'other day a-staggerin' off drunk--he's bad. An' you do a heap o'
travellin' alone. This ain't fer you to kill nobody but jus' kind o' to
pertect yerself."
"All right," laughed Doctor Jim. "I couldn't hit a barn--" but to humor
Jay he took the weapon, and this time Pleasant Trouble did not walk home
with him.
Later he mentioned the matter to St. Hilda, who looked very grave.
"Yes, Jerry Lipps is a bad man. He's just out of the penitentiary.
Pleasant walked home with you to protect you from him. They won't
let him do anything to you openly. And Jay gave you that gun in case
he should attack you when nobody was around."
"But what has the fellow got against me?" The teacher hesitated.
"Well, Jerry used to be in love with Juno, but she would never have
anything to do with him and he never would let her have anything to
do with anybody else. He shot one boy, and shot at another, and he
has always sworn that he would kill the man she married."
"Nonsense!" he said, but going home that night Doctor Jim carried
the gun where he could get at it quickly.
"My God!" he muttered with grim humor; "no wonder Juno didn't want
me to come."
It was only a few days later that Doctor Jim came out of Lum Chapman's
house and paused in the path looking up Wolf Run. Jerry Lipps's sister
lived half a mile above and he had just heard that her little daughter
was down with the fever. Jerry might be staying with the sister, but
Doctor Jim's duty was now up there and, in spite of the warnings given
him, he did not hesitate. The woman stared when he told who he was and
why he had come, but she nodded and pointed to the bed where the child
lay. He put his pistol on the bed, thrust a thermometer into the little
girl's mouth and began taking her pulse. A hand swept the pistol from
the bed and, when he turned around, about all he could think was:
"How extraordinary!"
Jerry, red with rage and drink, was at the kitchen door fumbling at the
butt of his pistol, while his sister had Doctor Jim's gun levelled at her
brother's heart.
"You can't tech him," she said coolly, "an' if you pull that gun out an
inch furder I'll kill ye as shore as thar's a God in heaven." And at that
moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and
grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's
volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was
beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the
things Jerry had done and left undone, and wound up:
"You never was wuth Juno's little finger, an' you ain't wuth _his_ little
finger-nail now. Take his gun, Pleas. Take him to the State line, an' don't
you boys let him come back agin until he's stopped drinkin', got a suit o'
clothes, an' a job."
"Why, Mandy," said Pleasant, "hit's kind o' funny, but Lum an' Jay an' me
fixed hit up about an hour ago that we aimed to do that very thing. I seed
Doc a-comin' up hyeh, an' was afeard I mought be too late: but if I'd 'a'
knowed you was hyeh I wouldn't 'a' worried."
Again Doctor Jim was thinking, "How extraordinary!" but this time how
extraordinary it was that the man really meant to shoot him. Somehow
he began to understand.
Still grinning, Pleasant Trouble had swung across the room, whipped
Jerry's pistol from the holster, and with it motioned the owner toward
the door. Then Doctor Jim rose. "Hold on!" he said, and he took the
pistol from the woman's hands, strode straight up to Jerry and smiled.
Now, from the top of Virginia down through seven Southern States to
Georgia there are some three million mountaineers, and it is doubtful
if among them all any other three pairs of ears ever heard such words
as Professor James Blagden of New England spoke now:
"Jerry, I don't blame you for having loved Juno, or for loving her now.
I wouldn't blame anybody. I even understand now why you wanted to kill
me, but that would have been--silly. Give him back his gun, Pleasant,"
he added, still smiling, "and give this one back to Jay." He reached in
his pocket, pulled forth two cigars and handed one to each. "Now you two
sit down and smoke, and in a moment I'll go along with you, and we'll
help Jerry get a job." And thereupon Doctor Jim turned around to his
little patient. Dazed and a bit hypnotized, Jerry took the cigar and
thrust his pistol into his holster.
"I'll be gittin' along," he said sullenly, and made for the door. Pleasant
followed him. At the road Jerry turned one way and Pleasant the other.
"You heered whut Mandy and me said," drawled Pleasant. "If you poke yore
nose over the line 'bout three of us will shoot you on sight. We'd do it
fer Juno, an' if she ain't alive we'll do it fer Doctor Jim."
"I was a-goin' over thar anyways," said Jerry, "an' I'll come back when I
please. You one-legged limb o' Satan--you go plum'"--Pleasant's eyes began
to glitter--"back to him."
Pleasant laughed, and as they walked their separate ways the same question
was in the minds of both:
"Now, whut the hell did he mean by 'silly'?"