THE HOOKIN'-COUGH MAN
Billy Louise waited another minute or two, weighing the possibilities.
She saw Ward's fingers drop away from the gun, but they remained close
enough for a dangerously quick gripping of it again, if the whim seized
him. Still--surely to goodness, Ward would never get crazy enough to
hurt her! Perhaps her feminine assurance of her hold on him, more than
her courage, kept her nerves fairly steady. She bit the pencil
absently, watching him.
Ward turned his head restlessly on the pillow and coughed again. Billy
Louise got up quietly, went close to the bed, and laid her hand on his
forehead. His head was hot, and the veins were swollen and throbbing
on his temples.
"Brave Buckaroo got a headache?" she queried softly, stroking his
temples soothingly. "Got the hookin'-cough, too. Get every measly
thing he can think of. Even got a grouch against the Flower of the
Ranch-oh!" Her voice was crooningly soft and sweet, as if she were
murmuring over a sleepy baby.
Ward closed his eyes, opened them, and looked up into her face. One
hand came up uncertainly and caught her fingers closely.
"Wilhemina-mine!" he said, in his hoarse voice. His eyes cleared to
sanity under her touch.
Billy Louise drew a small sigh of relief and reached unobtrusively with
her free hand for the gun. She slid it down away from his fingers, and
when he still paid no attention, she picked it up quite openly and laid
it against the footboard. Ward did not say anything. He seemed
altogether occupied with the amazing reality of her presence. He clung
to her fingers and looked at her with that intent stare of his, as if
he were trying to hold her there by the sheer power of his will.
"Well, how am I going to doctor you and feed you and make you all
comfy, with one hand?" asked Billy Louise with quavering flippancy.
"Kiss me!"
"Ah--might catch the hookin'-cough," bantered Billy Louise, leaning a
bit closer.
"Kiss me!"
"Oh, well, I s'pose sick folks have to be humored." Billy Louise
leaned closer still. "Mighty few kissy places left," she observed with
the same shaky flippancy, a minute later. "Say, Ward, you look for all
the world like old Sourdough Williams!" Sourdough Williams, it may be
remarked, was a particularly hairy and unkempt individual who lived a
more or less nomadic life in the hills, trapping.
"You look like--" Ward groped foggily for a simile. Angel was
altogether too commonplace.
"Like the lady who's going to get busy right now, making you well.
What have you been doing to yourself? Never mind; I don't want you
talking yourself crazy again. Do you know you tried to shoot me up
when I came in? And you made me start in to write a record of my sins.
But that's all right, seeing you've got the hookin'-cough, I'll forgive
you this once. Lie still--and let go my hand. I want to put a wet
cloth on your head."
"Did I--"
"You did; and then some. Forget it. You've got a terrible cold; and
from the looks of things, you've had it for about six months." Her
eyes went comprehensively about that end of the cabin, with the
depleted cracker-box, the half-emptied boxes of peaches and tomatoes,
and the buckets that were all but empty of water. She was shocked at
the pitiful evidence of long helplessness. She did not quite
understand. Surely Ward's cold had not kept him in bed so long.
"Well, this is no time for mirth or laughter," she said briskly, to
hide how close she was to hysteria, "since it looks very much like 'the
morning after.' First, we've got to tackle that fever of yours." She
picked up a water-pail and started for the door. As she passed the
foot of the bunk, she confiscated the two revolvers and took them
outside with her. She had no desire to be mistaken again for Buck
Olney.
When she came back, Ward's eyes were wild again, and he started up in
bed and glared at her. Billy Louise laughed at him and told him to lie
down like a nice buckaroo, and Ward, recalled to himself by her voice,
obeyed. She got the wash-basin and a towel and prepared to bathe his
head. He wanted a drink. And when she held a cup to his lips and saw
how greedily he drank, a little sob broke unexpectedly from her lips.
She gritted her teeth after it and forced a laugh.
"You're sure a hard drinker," she bantered and wet her handkerchief to
lay on his brow.
"That's the first decent drink I've had for a month," he told her,
dropping back to the pillow, refreshed to the point of clear thinking.
"Old Lady Fortune's still playing football with me, William. I've been
laid up with a broken leg for about six weeks. And when I got gay and
thought I could handle myself again, I put myself out of business for
awhile, and caught this cold before I came to and crawled back into
bed. I'm--sure glad you showed up, old girl. I was--getting up
against it for fair." He coughed.
"Looks like it." Billy Louise held herself rigidly back from any
emotional expression. She could not afford to "go to pieces" now. She
tried to think just what a trained nurse would do, in such a case. Her
hospital experience would be of some use here, she told herself. She
remembered reading somewhere that no experience is valueless, if one
only applies the knowledge gained.
"First," she said cheerfully, "the patient must be kept quiet and
cheerful. So don't go jumping up and down on your broken leg, Ward
Warren; the nurse forbids it. And smile, if it kills you."
Ward grinned appreciatively. Sick as he was, he realized the gameness
of Billy Louise; what he failed to realize was the gameness of himself.
"I'm a pretty worthless specimen, right now," he said apologetically.
"But I'm yours to command, Bill-the-Conk. You're the doctor."
"Nope, I'm the cook, right now. I've got a hunch. How would you like
a cup of tea, patient?"
"I'd rather have coffee--Doctor William."
"Tea, you mean. I'll have it ready in ten minutes." Then she weakened
before his imploring eyes. "You really oughtn't to drink coffee, with
that fever, Ward. But, maybe if I don't make it very strong and put in
lots of cream-- We'll take a chance, buckaroo!"
Ward watched her as intently as if his life depended on her speed. He
had lain in that bunk for nearly six weeks with the coffee-pot sitting
in plain sight on the back of the stove, twelve feet or so from his
reach, and with the can of coffee standing in plain sight on the rough
board shelf against the wall by the window. And he had craved coffee
almost as badly as a drunkard craves whisky.
The sound of the fire snapping in the stove was like music to him.
Later, the smell of the coffee coming briskly to the boiling-point made
his mouth water with desire. And when Billy Louise jabbed two little
slits in a cream can with the point of a butcher knife and poured a
thin stream of canned milk into a big, white granite cup, Ward's eyes
turned traitor to his love for the girl and dwelt hungrily upon the
swift movements of her hands.
"How much sugar, patient?" Billy Louise turned toward him with the
tomato-can sugar-bowl in her hands.
"None. I want to taste the coffee, this trip."
"Oh, all right! It's the worst thing you could think of, but that's
the way with a patient. Patients always want what they mustn't have."
"Sure--get it, too." Ward spoke between long, satisfying gulps.
"How's your other patient, Wilhemina? How's mommie?"
"Oh, Ward! She's dead--mommie's dead!" Billy Louise broke down
unexpectedly and completely. She went down on her knees beside the bed
and cried as she had not cried since she looked the last time at
mommie's still face, held in that terrifying calm. She cried until
Ward's excited mutterings warned her that she must pull herself
together. She did, somehow, in spite of her sorrow and her worry and
that day's succession of emotional shocks. She did it because Ward was
sick--very sick, she was afraid--and there was so much that she must do
for him.
"You be s-still," she commanded brokenly, fighting for her former safe
cheerfulness. "I'm all right. Pity yourself, if you've got to pity
somebody. I--can stand--my trouble. I haven't got any broken leg
and--hookin'-cough." She managed a laugh then and took Ward's hand
from her hair and laid it down on the blankets. "Now we won't talk
about things any more. You've got to have something done for that cold
on your lungs." She rose and stood looking down at him with puckered
eyebrows.
"Mommie would say you ought to have a good sweat," she decided. "Got
any ginger?"
"I dunno. I guess not," Ward muttered confusedly.
"Well, I'll go out and find some sage, then, and give you sage tea.
That's another cure-all. Say, Ward, I saw Rattler down the creek.
He's looking fine and dandy. He came whinnying down out of that draw,
to meet us; just tickled to death to see somebody."
"Don't blame him," croaked Ward. "It's enough to tickle anybody." Her
voice seemed to steady his straying fancies. "How're--the
cattle--looking?"
"Just fine," lied Billy Louise. "You're the skinniest thing I've seen
on the ranch. Now do you think you can keep your senses, while I go
and pick some nice, good meddy off a sage bush?"
"I guess so." Ward spoke drowsily. "Give me some more coffee and I
can."
"Oh, you're the pesteringest patient! I told you coffee isn't good for
what ails you, but I suppose--" She poured him another cup of coffee,
weakened it with hot water, and let him drink it straight. After all,
perhaps the hot drink would induce the perspiration that would break
the fever. She pulled up the wolf-skins and the extra blankets he had
tossed aside in his feverish restlessness and covered him to his chin.
"If you don't move till I come back," she promised, "I'll maybe give
you another cup--after you've filled up on sage tea." With that
qualified hope to cheer him, she left him.
She did not spend all her time picking sage twigs. A bush grew at the
corner of the cabin within easy reach. She went first down to the
stable and led Blue inside and unsaddled him. Rattler was standing
near, and she tried to lead him in also, but he fled from her approach.
She found the pitchfork and managed to scratch a few forkfuls of hay
down from a corner of the stack; enough to fill a manger for Blue and
to leave a little heap beside the stable for Rattler.
When she was leaving the stable to return to the house, however, she
changed her plan a little. She went back, carried the small pile of
hay into the stable, and filled another manger. Then she took down the
wire gate of the hay corral and laid it flat alongside the fence.
Rattler would go in to the stack, and she would shut him in. That
would simplify the catching of him when he was needed. She would find
something in which to carry water to him, if he was too frisky to lead
to the creek. Billy Louise was no coward with horses, but she
recognized certain fixed limitations in the management of a snuffy
brute like Rattler. He was not like Blue, whom she could bully and
tease and coax. Rattler was distinctly a man's saddle-horse. Billy
Louise had never done more than pat his shoulder after he was caught
and saddled and, therefore, prepared for handling. She foresaw some
perturbation of spirit in regard to Rattler.
Ward was lying quiet when she went in, except that he was waving her
handkerchief to and fro by the corners to cool it. Billy Louise took
it from him, wet it again with cold water, and scolded him for getting
his arms from under the covers. That, she said, was no nice way for a
hookin'-cough man to do.
Ward meekly submitted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled
his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk
with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks
behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was
there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it
with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had
kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.
"Ward Warren, you're a perfectly awful hookin'-cough man! There. Now
that's going to be the very last one-- Oh, Ward, it isn't!" She knelt
and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again.
"I do love you, Ward. I've been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I'm
ashamed to the middle of my bones. You're my own brave buckaroo
always--always! You've done what no other man would do, and you don't
whine about it; and I've been weak and--horrid; and I'll have to love
you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She
kissed him again with a passion of remorse for her doubts of him.
"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an
arm, so that he could hold her closer.
"No, I'm just beginning. Just beginning right. I'm your pal for
keeps. But--"
"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When
are you going to--marry me?"
"Oh, when you get over the hookin'-cough, I s'pose." Once more Billy
Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe
flippancy--that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.
"Now it's up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to
get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make
some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately--to
once."
She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking
toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward's eyes worshiping her.
She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything
else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the
need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his
lungs.
She hunted through the cupboards and found a bottle of turpentine;
syrupy and yellowed with age, but pungent with strength. She found
some lard in a small bucket and melted half a teacupful. Then she tore
up a woolen undershirt she found hanging on a nail and bore
relentlessly down upon him.
"You gotta be greased all over your lungs," she announced with a
matter-of-factness that cost her something; for Billy Louise's innate
modesty was only just topped by her good sense.
Ward submitted without protest while she bared his chest--as white as
her own--and applied the warm mixture with a smoothly vigorous palm.
"That'll fix the hookin'-cough," she said, as she spread the warm
layers of woolen cloth smoothly from shoulder to shoulder. "How does
it feel?"
"Great," he assured her succinctly, and wisely omitted any love-making.
"Will your game leg let you turn over? Because there's some dope left,
and it ought to go between your shoulders."
"The game leg ought to stand more than that," he told her, turning
slowly. "If I hadn't got this cold tacked onto me, I'd have been
trying to walk on it by now."
"Better give it time--since you've been game enough to lie here all
this while and take care of it. I don't believe I'd have had nerve
enough for that, Ward." She poured turpentine and lard into her palm,
reached inside his collar and rubbed it on his shoulders. "Good thing
you had plenty of grub handy. But it must have been awful!"
"It was pretty damned lonesome," he admitted laconically, and that was
as far as his complainings went.
Billy Louise then poured the water off the sage leaves she had been
brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made
Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and
hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the
handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a
carefully dampened broom and wiped the dust off things and restored the
room to its most cheerful atmosphere of livableness.
"Wan' a drink," mumbled Ward, with a blanket over his mouth and a
raveled thread tickling his nose so that he squirmed.
Billy Louise went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell
whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little.
"What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't
mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing,
it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the
tormenting thread and threw it on the floor.
"Gimme--drink," Ward mumbled again.
"There's more sage tea--"
"Waugh!"
"I suppose that means you aren't crazy about sage tea! Well, I might
give you a teenty-weenty speck more of coffee. You can't have water
yet, you know. You've--you've got to sweat like a nigger in a cotton
patch first." (Billy Louise could talk very nicely when she wanted to
do so. The Billy of her could also be humanly inelegant when she felt
like it, as you see.)
Ward grunted something and afterwards signified that he would take the
coffee and call it square.
The next time she went near him, he was wrinkling his lean nose because
beads of perspiration were standing there and slipping occasionally
down to his cheeks.
"Fine! You're two niggers in a cotton patch now," she announced
cheeringly. "And Mr. Hookin'-cough will have to hunt another home, I
reckon. You weren't half as hoarse when you swore that last time."
It was physically impossible for Ward to blush, since he was already
the color of a boiled beet; but he looked guilty when she uncovered the
rest of his face and wiped off the gathered moisture. "I didn't think
you'd hear," he grinned embarrassedly.
"I was listening for it, buckaroo. I'd have been scared to pieces if
you hadn't cussed a little. I'd have thought sure you were going to
die. A man," she added sententiously, "always has a chance as long as
he's able to swear. It's like a horse wiggling his ears."
The comparison reminded her that she intended to shut Rattler in the
hay corral; she dried Ward's hands hastily, pulled the wolf-skins off
the bed, and commanded him to keep covered until she came back. She
ran down bareheaded to the stable, saw Rattler industriously boring his
nose into the stack, and put up the gate.
When she went into the cabin again, Ward gave a start and opened his
eyes like one who has been dozing. Billy Louise smiled with
gratification. He was better. She knew he was better. She did not
speak, but went over to the stove and pretended to be busy there,
though she was careful to make no noise. When she turned finally and
glanced toward the bed, Ward was asleep.
Billy Louise took a deep breath, tiptoed over to the bench beside the
table, sat down, and pillowed her head on her folded arms. She wanted
to cry, and she needed to think, and she was deadly, deadly tired.