A SUDDEN CLOUD
Dr. Slavens went back to his camp, concluding on the way that it would
be wise to have a complete understanding with Governor Boyle in regard
to taking further charge of his son's case. If, after three days allowed
for infection to manifest itself, the wound remained healthy and clean,
there would be little need of a doctor in constant attendance. Young
Boyle would be able to express his preference in the matter then, and
Slavens did not want to act as physician to him against his will.
Governor Boyle was walking up and down like a sentry before the tent
when Dr. Slavens came up.
"He's asleep," said the father. "He seems to be pitifully weak for a man
suffering from a fresh wound; he dropped off as if he had fainted."
"When you consider that a bullet of that caliber, with the powder back
of it that this one had, strikes somewhere around a ton," said the
doctor, "it ceases to be a wonder that he is weak."
"It's Heaven's mercy that spared him!" declared the Governor, his voice
troubled with emotion.
Slavens wondered at the deep affection which this man of so hard a
repute could show for his son, and at the tie of tenderness which
plainly bound them. But precedent is not wanting, as the doctor
reflected, to establish the contention that some of the world's greatest
oppressors have been good fathers, kind husbands, and tender guardians
of the home.
"Yes; Shanklin shot twice," said Slavens. "It was his second one that
hit, after he had been mortally hurt himself."
"It was the hand of Providence that turned his aim!" said the Governor.
"The old one-eyed villain had the reputation of being the best shot in
the Northwest. He provoked my son to draw on him, or tried to at
least--for I can't believe that Jerry drew first--with the intention of
putting him out of the way."
"What do you propose to do about bringing another surgeon here?" asked
Dr. Slavens.
"Why, I hadn't given it any serious thought," answered Governor Boyle,
looking at him quickly.
"It would please me better to have you do so."
"But I have entire confidence in your ability to handle the case, sir.
Your conduct in the matter has been admirable, and I see no reason why
you should not continue to attend my son until--the end, one way or the
other."
"You understand, Governor," said Dr. Slavens gravely, searching the old
man's face with steady eyes, "that there is no ground for good feeling
or friendship between your son and me?"
The Governor nodded, averting his face, as if the acknowledgment gave
him pain or shame.
"And in case that everything should not turn out to the happiest
conclusion for him, I should not want to stand the chance of blame."
"Quite sensible, but unnecessarily cautious, I tell you," the Governor
replied.
"I have done all that a better surgeon could have done," pursued the
doctor, "and I am quite willing to go ahead and do all that can be done
until you can bring another physician here, to relieve me, or at least
satisfy you that I have not allowed any feeling of man to man to stand
between physician and patient."
"Very well; I will telegraph to Cheyenne for a physician," agreed the
Governor, "since it is your wish. But I am entirely satisfied with, and
trustful of you, sir. That I desire you to understand plainly."
Dr. Slavens thanked him.
"I shall send for the other physician to act merely in an advisory
capacity, and in no manner to relieve you of the case unless you desire
to be relieved. But I think it will be to your interest to stand by me.
I feel that I am under a certain obligation to you, more especially to
Miss Gates, for my son's----"
"We will not discuss that, if you please," Dr. Slavens interrupted.
"At least I will stand by what I said to you a little while back," the
Governor said; "that is, in the matter of remuneration, if you pull him
through."
"All of that in its proper place," said the doctor. "I am going back to
Comanche now to send for the boy's mother," the Governor announced, "and
telegraph to Cheyenne for the doctor of whom I spoke. I have known him
for many years. I'll have some more tents and camp-supplies sent out,
and anything that you stand in need of which can be procured in
Comanche."
Dr. Slavens gave him a list of articles needed in the patient's case,
and the Governor rode away. The undertaker from Comanche arrived a
little later, and took Hun Shanklin's body up from the ground. When his
wagon, on its return to Comanche, had passed the tent where Agnes was
trying to sleep, she got up and joined Dr. Slavens.
"I couldn't sleep," she explained. "Every time I shut my eyes I could
see that poor old gambler's body lying there with the coat over his
face!"
"I don't feel either pity or pain in his case," said the doctor; "or,
when it comes to that, for the other one, either."
"Well, you couldn't have prevented it, anyway," she sighed.
"And wouldn't have if I could," he declared. "I looked on them as one
poison fighting another, as we set them to do in the human system. When
one overcomes the other, and the body throws them both out, health
follows."
"Do you think Jerry will recover?"
"There's a chance for him," he replied.
"For his mother's sake I hope he will," she said. "I went to see her,
remembering in the midst of my distress her kind face and gentle heart.
I'm glad that I went, although my mission failed."
"No, nothing fails," he corrected gently. "What looks to us like failure
from our side of it is only the working out of the plan laid down a long
time ahead. We may never see the other side of the puzzle, but if we
could see it we'd find that our apparent failure had been somebody
else's gain. It's the balance of compensation. Your thought of Boyle's
mother, and your ride to appeal to her in my behalf, worked out in
bringing his father here at a time when Jerry needed him as he never may
need him in his life again."
"It was a strange coincidence," she reflected.
"We call such happenings that for want of a better name, or for the
short-sightedness which keeps us from applying the proper one," said he.
"It's better that you have concluded to give up the City of Refuge.
You'll not need it now."
"It was a foolish undertaking, romantic and impossible, from the very
beginning," she owned. "I never could have put it through."
"It would have carried many a heartache with it, and many a hard and
lonely day," said he. "And so we are both back where we were, so far as
landed possessions go in this country, at the beginning."
"I've lost considerable by my foolish dream," she confessed with
regret.
"And I have gained everything," he smiled, taking her hand in his.
The world around them seemed to be too grave to look kindly on any
love-passages of tenderness or kisses, or triflings such as is the
common way of a man with a maid. In that moment when hand touched hand
she looked up into his eyes with warm softness glowing in her own, and
on her lips stood an invitation which his heart sprang to seize, like an
eager guest leaping through the portal of welcome.
At that moment, when eye drew eye, heart warmed to heart, and lips
trembled to meet, Jerry Boyle coughed as if blood were mounting to his
throat and cutting off his life.
Dr. Slavens was at his side in a moment. It must have been the
strangulation of an uneasy dream, for there was no symptom of
hemorrhage. The wounded man still slept, groaning and drawing the lips
back from the teeth, as he had drawn them in his passion when he came on
that morning to meet his enemy with the intention in his heart to slay.
But love shuddered and grew pale in the cold nearness of death. The kiss
so long deferred was not given, and the fluttering pulse which had
warmed to welcome it fell slow, as one who strikes a long stride in a
journey that has miles yet to measure before its end.
Governor Boyle was back in camp in the middle of the afternoon, and
before night the tents and furnishings for lodging the party comfortably
arrived from Comanche. The Governor pressed Agnes, who was considering
riding to Comanche to find lodging, to remain there to assist and
comfort his wife when she should arrive.
"We need the touch of a woman's hand here," said he.
They brought Jerry's tent and set it up for her. She was asleep at
dusk.
* * * * *
Mrs. Boyle arrived next morning, having started as soon as the messenger
bearing news of the tragedy reached the ranch. She was a slight,
white-haired woman, who had gone through hardships before coming to
prosperity on that frontier, so the fifty-mile ride in a wagon was no
unusual or trying experience for her.
Whatever tears she had for her son's sad plight she had spent on the
rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back
from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting
anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its
pangs to those of the present.
Her presence in camp, and her constant ministrations at her son's side,
relieved Dr. Slavens of considerable professional anxiety, as well as
labor. It gave him time to walk about among the gigantic stones which
cast their curse of barrenness over that broken stretch, Agnes with him,
and make a further investigation of the land's mineral possibilities.
"Ten-Gallon was telling the truth, in my opinion," said he. "I have
explored these rocks from line to line of this claim, and I reached the
conclusion a good many days ago that somebody had been misled in
supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle's persistent
determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my
mind."
"Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you
expected to get out of it at the first," she suggested.
He looked at her questioningly.
"I mean the Governor's declaration yesterday morning that he would pay
you twice what you expected to get out of it if you would save Jerry's
life."
"Oh, _that_!" said he, as if he attached little importance to it.
"He's a millionaire many times over," she reminded him. "He can afford
to do it, and he should."
"I may be out of the case entirely before night," he told her,
explaining that another physician would arrive on the first train from
Cheyenne.
"You know best," said she, resigning hope for his big fee with a sigh.
"Smith will come over with your tent and goods today, very likely," said
he, "and then we can leave. I had planned it all along, from the time we
used to take those moonlight walks to the river, that we should leave
this country together when it came our time to go."
"It would be wrong for you to waste your life here, even if you could
make more money than elsewhere, when the world with more people and more
pain in it needs you so badly," she encouraged him.
"Just so," he agreed. "It's very well for Smith to stay here, and men of
his kind, who have no broader world. They are doing humanity a great
service in smoothing the desert and bringing the water into it."
"We will leave it to them," she said.
They tramped across the claim until they came in sight of Hun Shanklin's
tent. Its flap was blowing in the wind.
"The old rascal came over to make friends with me," said Slavens. "He
claimed that he never lifted his hand against me. There's his horse,
trying to make it down the slope to the river. I'll have to catch the
beast and take that rope off.
"There's a man over there!" Agnes exclaimed. "Look! There among the
rocks to the right of the tent! I wonder who it is?"
Slavens looked where she pointed, just as the man disappeared among the
rocks.
"It's the Governor!" she whispered.
"Looked like his coat," he agreed.
"Do you suppose he's----"
"Trying to locate old Shanklin's mine," he said. "That's what he's
after. If there's copper on that piece the Governor will get it, even if
his son doesn't live to share with him. The difference of a figure or
two in the description of a piece of land might be revised on the books,
if one had the influence."
The doctor for whom Governor Boyle had sent arrived on the afternoon
train from Cheyenne and reached the camp before sunset. He spoke in the
highest terms of the manner in which Dr. Slavens had proceeded, and
declared that it would be presumptuous meddling for him, or anyone else,
to attempt to advise in the case.
Agnes heard his commendation with triumph in her eyes, and Mrs. Boyle
gave Dr. Slavens her blessing in a tearful look. The doctor from
Cheyenne took up his instrument-case and held out his hand with a great
deal more respect in his bearing toward the unknown practitioner than he
had shown upon his arrival.
"On vacation here?" he asked, puzzled to find any other excuse for so
much ability running wild among the rocks in that bleak place.
"Something like that," answered Slavens noncommittally.
"When you're passing through Cheyenne, stop off and see me," giving
Slavens a respectful farewell.
Dr. Slavens advanced several points in the appraisement of Governor
Boyle, although, to do the Governor justice, he had seen from the
beginning that the wandering physician was a master. Boyle had been
weighing men for what they were worth, buying them and selling them, for
too many years to place a wrong bet. He told Slavens that unlimited
capital was back of him in his fight for Jerry's life, and that he had
but to demand it if anything was wanted, no matter what the cost.
Dr. Slavens told him bluntly that his son was in a fix where one man's
money would go as far as another's to get him clear, and that it had
very little weight in the other end of the scales against the thing they
were standing in front of, face to face.
"Save him to me, Doctor! For God's sake save him!" begged the old man,
his face bloodless, the weight of his unshored years collapsing upon him
and bowing him pitifully.
Again Slavens felt the wonder of this man's softness for his son, but
pity was tinctured with the thought that if it had been applied in
season to shaping the young man's life, and his conscience, and his
sense of justice, it might have commanded more respect. But he knew that
this was the opportunity to make the one big chance which the years had
been keeping from him. At the start Slavens had told the old man that
his son had a chance for life; he had not said how precariously it lay
balanced upon the lip of the dark cañon, nor how an adverse breath might
send it beyond the brink. The weight of the responsibility now lay on
him alone. Failure would bring upon him an avalanche of blame; success a
glorious impetus to his new career.
He took a walk down to the river to think about it, and breathe over it,
and get himself steadied. When he came back he found Smith there,
unloading Agnes' things, soaking up the details of the tragedy with as
much satisfaction as a toad refreshing itself in a rain.
Smith was no respecter of office or social elevation. If a man deserved
shooting, then he ought to be shot, according to Smith's logic. As he
made an excuse to stay around longer by assisting the doctor to raise
Agnes' tent, he expressed his satisfaction that Jerry Boyle had received
part payment, at least, of what was due him.
"But I tell you," said he to the doctor in confidence, turning a wary
eye to see that Agnes was out of hearing just then. "I'm glad he got it
the way he did. I was afraid one time that girl over there was goin' to
let him have it. I could see it in her eye."
"You can see almost anything in a woman's eye if your imagination is
working right," the doctor told him, rather crabbedly.
"You don't need to believe it if you don't want to," returned Smith,
somewhat offended, "but I tell you that girl'd shoot a man in a minute
if he got too fresh!"
"I believe you're right about that, Smith," agreed the doctor, "so let's
you and I be careful that we don't get too fresh."
Smith said no more, but he kept turning his eye upon the doctor as he
got his wagon ready to set off on his return, with a good deal of
unfriendliness in it. Evidently it had come into his mind only then that
Dr. Slavens was assuming a sort of proprietary air around Agnes.
With his foot on the brake and his lines drawn up, Smith looked down and
addressed her.
"Well, I don't suppose you'll be back on the river for some time?"
"I expect it will be a long time," she replied, evading exposition of
her plans.
"I'll keep my eye on the place for you, and see that them fellers don't
cut down your timber," he offered.
She thanked him.
"When you come over that way, take a look at that sign on the front of
my store," said Smith, giving her a significant, intimate glance. "The
more you see that name in print the better you like it."
With that Smith threw off his brake so suddenly and violently that it
knocked a little cloud of dust out of his wagon, laid the whip to his
team, and drove off with almost as grand a flourish as he used to
execute when setting out from Comanche on the stage.
Mrs. Boyle left her son's side, her husband relieving her, to see that
Agnes was supplied with everything necessary. She had pressed Agnes to
remain with her--which was well enough in accord with the girl's own
inclination--and help her care for her "little boy," as she called him
with fond tenderness.
"Isn't she sweet?" whispered Agnes, as Mrs. Boyle went to her own tent
to fetch something which she insisted Agnes must have. "She is so gentle
and good to be the mother of such a wolf!"
"But what did she think about her precious son going to turn the whole
United States out after you because you wouldn't help him pull the plank
out from under an unworthy friend?"
"I didn't tell her that," said Agnes, shaking her head. "I told the
Governor as we came over, and she isn't to know that part of it."
Their tents made quite a little village, and the scene presented
considerable quiet activity, for the Governor had brought a man over
from Comanche to serve the camp with fuel and water and turn a hand at
preparing the food. Agnes was cook-in-extraordinary to the patient and
the doctor. She and Slavens took their supper together that night,
sitting beside the fire.
There they talked of the case, and the prospect of the fee, and of the
future which they were going to fix up together between them, as
confidently as young things half their age. With the promised fee, life
would be one way; without it another. But everything was white enamel
and brass knobs at the poorest, for there was confidence to give hope;
strength and love to lend it color.
Striking the fire with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of
the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take
in his shingle--which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that
time--and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as
faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain
each other's hands in the bitter and the sweet of life.
"It would mean a better automobile," said he.
"And a better surgery, and a nicer chair for the consulting-room," she
added, dreaming with wide-open eyes upon the fire.
"And a better home, with more comfort in it for you."
"Oh, as for that!" said she.
"I've got my eye on a place with old elms in front of it, and moss on
the shingles, and a well where you pull the bucket up with a rope over a
pulley," said he. "I've got it all laid out and blooming in my heart for
that precious mother of yours. It is where mine used to live," he
explained; "but strangers are in it now. We'll buy them out."
"It will be such a burden on you. And just at the beginning," she
sighed. "I'm afraid, after all, that I'll never be coward enough to
consent to it at the last."
"It's out of your hands now, Agnes," said he; "entirely out of your
hands."
"It is strange how it has shaped out," she reflected after a little
silence; "better, perhaps, than we could have arranged it if we had been
allowed our own way. The one unfortunate thing about it seems to be that
this case is isolated out here in the desert, where it never will do you
a bit of good."
"Except the fee," he reminded her with a gentle smile.
"Oh, the fee--of course."
"But there is a big hurdle to get over before we come to even that."
"You mean----"
She looked at him with a start, the firelight catching her shining
eyes.
"The crisis."
"Day after tomorrow," said she, studying the fire as if to anticipate in
its necromancy what that day offered to their hopes.
The shadow of that grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the
plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and
grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the
crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big _if_
in the life of every man and woman at some straining period of hopes and
schemes.
Words fell away from them; they let the fire grow pale from neglect, and
gray ashes came over the dwindling coals, like hoarfrost upon the bright
salvia against a garden wall. Silence was over the camp; night was deep
around them. In Jerry Boyle's tent, where his mother watched, a dim
light shone through the canvas. It was so still there on that barren
hillside that they could hear the river fretting over the stones of the
rapids below the ford, more than half a mile away.
After a while her hand sought his, and rested warm upon it as she
spoke.
"It was pleasant to dream that, anyway," said she, giving up a great
sigh.
"That's one advantage of dreams; they are plastic material, one can
shape them after the heart's desire," he answered.
"But it was foolish of me to mingle mine with yours so," she objected.
"And it was wrong and selfish. I can't fasten this dead weight of my
troubles on you and drag you back. I can't do that, dear friend."
He started at the word, laying hold of her hand with eager grip.
"Have you forgotten the other word--is that all there is to it?" he
asked, bending toward her, a gentle rebuke in his trembling voice.
"There is so much more! so much more!" she whispered. "Because of that,
I cannot be so selfish as to dream those splendid dreams again--wait,"
she requested, as she felt that he was about to speak.
"If I thought only of myself, of a refuge for others and myself, then I
would not count the penalty which would attach to you to provide it. But
unless we win the Governor's fee, my dear, dear soul, don't you see how
impossible it will be for us to carry out even the most modest of our
fond schemes?"
"Not at all," he protested.
"It would drag you back to where you were before, only leaving you with
a greater burden of worry and expense," she continued, unheeding. "I was
rapt, I was deadened to selfish forgetfulness by the sweet music of
those dreams. I am awake now, and I tell you that you must not do it,
that I shall never permit you to ruin your life by assuming a load which
will crush you."
"Agnes, the chill of the night is in your heart," said he. "I will not
listen to such folly! Tomorrow, when the sun shines, it will be the same
as yesterday. I have it all arranged; you can't change it now."
"Yes. You took charge of me in your impetuous generosity, and I was
thoughtless enough to interpose no word. But I didn't mean to be
selfish. Please remember above it all that I didn't mean to be
selfish."
"I have it all arranged," he persisted stubbornly, "and there will be no
turning back. Tomorrow it will not look so gloomy to you. Now, you'd
better go to bed."
He rose as he spoke, gave her his hand, and helped her to her feet. As
they stood face to face Agnes placed her hand upon his shoulder
gravely.
"I am in sober earnest about this, Doctor," said she. "We must not go on
with any more planning and dreaming. It may look as if I feared the
future with you for my own sake, putting the case as I do, all dependent
on the winning of that fee. But you would not be able to swim with the
load without that. It would sink you, and that, too, after you have
fought the big battle and won new courage and hope, and a new vision to
help you meet the world. Unless we weather the crisis, I must ride away
alone."
"I'd be afraid of the future without you; it would be so bleak and
lonesome," said he simply. He gave her good night before her tent.
"And for that reason," said he, carrying on his thought of a minute
before, "we must weather the crisis like good sailormen."