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 shoulder
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 laboured 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.