you. But what’ll _this_ town do without you?” She smiled up at him,
forgetting her embarrassment. “Every baby in the place’ll miss ‘Doc’.”
Like a man who is summoning his courage he set his teeth together for a
moment and took a deep breath. Then: “The part of the town that I like
best I want to take with me,” he said, his tone significant.
There was a moment’s silence. She retreated a step, her face rosier
than before. He kept his eyes fixed earnestly on her lowered lashes,
waiting for them to rise.
“I’ve--I’ve wanted to ask you before, Letty--lots of times. But I
couldn’t as long as I knowed I’d have to take you to a boardin’-house;
I’ve waited till I thought I could see a home in sight. If this comes
true----” He reached out a big, sunburned hand and touched her slender
one where it hung at her side.
She raised her eyes and they were misty with hope. “Do your level best
at the mine!” she half-whispered.
“Letty--you care!” He let her hand fall, for his own was trembling.
“Oh, you bet I’ll do my best. This is my chance. I’m bankin’ on it.”
“Take my horse for the trip. Bobby wasn’t out of the barn yesterday,
and I’m pickling figs to-day. Please do.”
“All right, I’ll be glad to.”
A few minutes later, when he rode out of the corral, canvas case
tight-strapped to his back, he was mounted on a spirited little mustang
whose bright eyes watched through a bushy forelock. The gate was left
in a rushing gallop. And from down the street, where the doctor turned
into the Blue Top road, he waved a hand back to Letty. Then he cantered
on.
It was fifteen miles to the mine, all up grade and rough going. But
Bobby kept a quick pace; and his rider, fixing his look hopefully
ahead, gave no thought to the road. Two things ran constantly in the
doctor’s mind: “We want you up here” and “Come prepared for anything.”
The more he thought of the statements the more he felt certain about
the success of his trip. They surely meant him to remain at the mine.
That was why he had been asked to bring as much of his equipment as
possible.
“Halt!”
It was Bobby who obeyed the command. Out of the thick brush that lined
the grade had stepped three men, blocking his way. The trio carried
rifles across their arms.
“Who are you?” demanded one of the three. He was a smooth-shaven,
thick-set, middle-aged man with hard, milky-blue eyes and soft, fat
cheeks that pouched heavily, drawing his under lids down to show a
scarlet lining.
“Doctor.”
“Oh!--I see. Good work.” The thick-set man fell back a step and gave a
sidewise jerk of the head. It was permission to ride on. Then he led
his companions across the road and into the chaparral.
A moment later the doctor forgot the occurrence. The road divided, and
he turned into the less used one of the two. Rounding a sharp turn in
it he came in sight of a tiny, shingled bungalow built upon a spot that
had been made level by digging into the side of the mountain. This was
the residence of the regular physician at the mine. It was vacant now,
and through the uncurtained window he could see the pretty living room,
with its low, raftered ceiling and its great fireplace of stone.
“Oh, if this only comes true!” he said aloud. Already he pictured
Letty’s face at the window.
At the side porch of the superintendent’s house he dismounted quickly,
dropped the bridle reins to the ground and sprang up the steps,
unbuckling his case as he went.
A Chinese in spotless white answered his ring and, without a question,
went pattering away to a closed door at the end of a long hall, where
he paused and knocked softly.
A man opened the door. He was perhaps thirty-five, with the bearing
that marks the city-bred. But his dress was dishevelled, his haggard
face showed a one-day’s growth of beard, and his eyes were hollow,
as if from sickness, and bloodshot. “Is this Doctor Hunter?” he
questioned, whispering.
“Yas, sir.”
“My name is Eastman.” He motioned the doctor to enter.
In the darkened room there was discernible only the outlines of a bed,
upon which someone was tossing. The patient was moaning, too, and
hoarsely repeating a name: “Laurie! Laurie! Laurie! Laurie!” The tone
was insistent and full of anguished appeal.
The doctor went to the bedside. The face on the pillow was that of
a young woman--a woman of perhaps twenty-five. It was a face that
reminded him of Letty’s. There was the same delicate outline of cheek
and chin, the same full, sweet mouth and girlish throat. But the dark
head was moving from side to side with each repeating of the name, and
the dark eyes were staring wildly. As he leaned down she turned them
full upon him.
“Laurie! Laurie! Laurie!” she entreated.
“Nervous shock,” said the doctor. He lifted a white wrist. It was rigid
and the pulse hard. The hand was knotted, too, and shook with its very
tenseness. “What put her into this shape?”
Eastman did not reply at once. He began to walk the room. Presently he
halted behind the doctor. “Mrs. Eastman is--is worried,” he explained.
“Wal, I should judge so,” remarked the doctor coldly. He laid an open
hand upon the sick woman’s forehead to quiet the constant wagging. “How
long’s she been like this?”
“Twenty-four hours. Give her something to make her sleep. She’ll go
crazy.”
“In a case like this you got to remove the cause.” The doctor spoke
severely. The whole thing looked bad to him.
Eastman made no answer, but left the room, for the Chinese had summoned
him noiselessly from the door.
Left alone, the doctor prepared an opiate and administered one draught
of it, after which he took a chair beside the bed and again lifted a
tense wrist. Presently Mrs. Eastman ceased to murmur her heart-broken
plaint. Her clenched fingers relaxed their hold on the counterpane.
Then the strained lids of the sufferer fluttered down.
When she was breathing deep and regularly, with a peaceful smile on
the sweet mouth and her hands folded on her breast, he leaned back.
And, looking at her, his thoughts returned to Letty and to the tiny
bird’s-nest of a house perched below in a niche of the mountain. He
could see a strong young figure going to and fro through the cozy
rooms; himself beside a wood fire, with his books about him. Spring
came a trifle later here on the tilted crown of Blue Top, fall arrived
a little early, which meant many evenings cool enough for a cheery
blaze. And if the mine was off the line of the railroad, that did
not----
Eastman entered hurriedly, leaving the door open behind him.
The doctor rose, the look of day-dreaming still in his eyes. “She’s
quiet,” he said in a low voice. “What else can I attend to up here?”
“This is all.” As Eastman answered his own look was averted. “Our new
physician’s due to-day--Doctor Fowler, of San Francisco.”
“I--I see.” A surge of red deepened the tan on the doctor’s face. “I
s’pose you won’t need me no more.”
“How much do I owe you?” There was dismissal in Eastman’s tone.
The other closed the canvas case and picked up his hat. Then he leaned
over the sleeper for a moment. When he started slowly toward the door
the spring was gone from his step. He seemed not to have heard the
question.
“Will ten be satisfactory?” Eastman had run a hand into a pocket. Now
he held a goldpiece.
The doctor turned. A troubled light was in the grey eyes. “Five’d be a
fair charge for Blue Top,” he said. As the smaller coin was proffered
him he took it, bowed and went out.
Someone followed him--he did not look back to see who. But as he
reached the front door his eyes fell upon a photograph that lay on a
table beside the hatrack. It was the photograph of a child--a handsome,
fair-haired little boy in gingham rompers, standing on a garden path
amid chrysanthemums that reached above his tumbled curls. “Is that
your baby?” asked the doctor, and, with the inquiry, turned to the one
behind.
It was not Eastman, but the Chinese servant who had followed him out.
As he opened the door he made no reply.
Bobby was waiting dutifully at the steps; and when he was headed down
the mountain he went single-footing away eagerly, his bit-chains
rattling with his swaying gait. But the doctor rode with his chin on
his breast and his soft hat pulled to his brows. And when a bend in the
road brought the shingled bungalow near, instead of looking at it he
turned his face toward the long, level valley. In the distance, on the
tree-strewn river-bottom, was a cluster of white specks--the town he
had left in the early afternoon. He had come from it hopefully: he was
returning unsuccessful. But his jaw was set resolutely.
It was past sundown when he reined at the gate leading to Bobby’s
corral. Letty had seen him ride up. Now she came hurrying across the
garden toward him. “Is it good news?” she called.
He was down and standing beside his horse. “I counted my chickens ahead
of time,” he answered, and smiled ruefully. “They’re gittin’ a city doc
for Blue Top.”
As he slipped off saddle and bridle she stood in silence, her eyes on
the ground. But when he came over and paused beside her she looked up
at him bravely, for all the tears on her lashes. “Never mind about Blue
Top,” she said. “Think what a fine doctor you are now. And you’re so
young. If you go on with your studying----”
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter with me,” he said very earnestly.
“I cure, don’t I? But I don’t dress good enough. I don’t know how
to talk. And I ain’t one of them stylish, top-buggy physicians.” He
looked up the street to his own gate. A man had pulled up before it--a
queer-looking individual mounted on a raw-boned mule and wearing a
long, tan linen duster and a black slouch hat. “The fact is,” he went
on, “I’m not Doctor Hunter. That’s it. I’m just ‘Doc.’”
The man on the mule was advancing toward them. Letty hastened to
inquire about Blue Top. “You didn’t tell me who was sick at the mine,”
she reminded.
“Mrs. Eastman. But--she wasn’t sick.”
“She wasn’t sick?” Letty raised a puzzled face.
“Just unhappy. Eastman didn’t say what about. But her poor heart’s
a-breakin’.”
The man on the mule pulled up for a second time, near by. “Are you Doc
Hunter?” he demanded. The voice sounded muffled.
“I’m the Doc.”
“A friend of mine is sick--out of town here a little ways.”
“Take Bobby again,” Letty urged in an undertone. “You know how tough he
is. He won’t mind, if the trip is short.”
“But he ain’t had his feed,” said the doctor.
“I’ll tie some oats to the saddle.”
As she hurried off the doctor went up to the man on the mule. “What
kind of a case is it?” he inquired, and noticed that the stranger had a
handkerchief tied under his jaws and over his ears.
“That’s what I expect you to tell me.” There was a note of sneering in
the retort.
“I mean, is it surgical?” explained the other.
“Well, suppose you come fixed so’s you’ll be ready for any kind of a
case.”
The doctor stared. It was Eastman’s reply--with a different wording.
And the coincidence seemed a strange one. Then: “You’d better let me
do somethin’ for that toothache,” he said kindly.
“Oh, it don’t amount to anything,” was the short answer.
The doctor had not unbuckled his case. Now he crossed the corral to
Bobby and picked up bridle and saddle.
The stranger led the way out of town, hurrying his mule forward with
voice, switch and heels, and taking the main traveled road that led
south beside the railroad track. Night was already settling, and to
the left the scattered shafts of a cemetery gleamed white through the
gathering dusk. Beyond the cemetery, where a dim road branched eastward
across the rails toward the river, the guide drew up and dismounted and
busied himself for a moment with the bridle of his mule. The doctor
also reined and waited.
Presently his companion came walking back, leaving the mule tied to the
railroad fence. “Doc,” he began, putting one hand on Bobby’s bridle and
the other on the doctor’s knee, “don’t misunderstand what I’m going to
say to you.”
“Yas? What’s that?” Of a sudden the doctor felt dislike and suspicion.
“Where I’m going,” continued the man deliberately, “you’ll have to
travel blindfolded.”
The doctor did not speak for a moment. Again he was staring at the
other, not so startled as he was amazed at this, the second queer call
in a single day! Before he had finished puzzling over the half-crazed
woman at Blue Top and the trio of armed men who had halted him, here
was another mystery. Was the county gone mad?
“You’ve barked up the wrong tree, Mister,” he said finally, looking
into the small eyes that were glinting up at him. “I’ve got just five
dollars with me. Let me show y’.” He reached into a pocket. “That ain’t
worth cuttin’ my throat for.”
A boisterous laugh greeted this. Then: “Cut your throat! Why, I’m not
after money. I want a doctor. And I’m going to have a doctor.” Still
holding to Bobby’s rein the stranger reached down and patted his right
thigh. “I’ve never heard of taking a doctor to a sick man at the end of
a gun,” he added, “but if you hold back that’s the way I’ll take you.
Get down.”
The doctor dismounted.
“Turn around,” was the next order.
As the doctor obeyed a large, soft handkerchief was laid across his
eyes and bound tight.
He climbed back into his saddle then, and found his stirrups. But as he
picked up his rein once more he felt his hands gripped in a firm hold
and brought forward to the pommel.
“I’ll tie your wrists now,” said his companion.
The doctor straightened and jerked his arms to his sides. “You don’t
need to,” he declared. “I’ll let my eyes alone.”
“Put out your hands!” came the stern command.
There was nothing to do but comply.
When they moved on again the doctor sat with every faculty on the
alert, determined to discover which way they were travelling. But first
they circled two or three times, then took a zigzag course. And after
so much forethought on his guide’s part the doctor was completely
turned around. So that, starting forward finally along a comparatively
straight course, he did not know in what direction they were headed.
Soon he forgot to note any veering to right or left. A feeling of
intense nausea came over him, caused by the sway of his horse and his
inability to see.
The going was smooth enough for the first half-hour. Afterward it
became rough, when they ceased to canter, even over short distances. At
the end of the first long hour they wound down a steep and evidently
narrow path. This brought them to rushing water, which they crossed
when the mule and Bobby had drunk. Then a long climb began--to level
ground again. At last a sharp turn was made to the left. Once more they
descended. Then came a halt.
“Get down,” said the guide.
“I will when you let loose my hands,” returned the doctor crossly.
“This is a dickens of a way to treat a white man!”
When he was down and his eyes were unbound he saw that they were in
the bottom of a deep cañon, for on either side of him, against the
lighter background of the sky, was the black, pine-topped line of a
ridge. There was a small clearing in the cañon, circled by a wall of
underbrush, and at the centre of the clearing a squat shanty, beyond
which showed a patch of light from a window on its farther side.
Bridles were taken off and girths loosened. Then the doctor folded down
the top of the feed-sack so that Bobby could eat, and left the little
horse devouring his oats.
Now the two men made toward the shanty and silently entered a small,
low room lighted by a single kerosene lamp. The walls of the room were
of rough pine boards, smoke-stained; the ceiling was of blackened
cheesecloth that sagged low overhead. There was a rough board table
beside the door, and two benches, as unplaned as the table, for seats.
A small stove stood in one corner, rusted by the rain that had trickled
down upon it from the pipe-opening in the roof; against a wall stood a
bed of boards--a bed only wide enough for one person. Upon it, under a
grey blanket, lay a figure.
The doctor picked up the lamp, crossed to the bedside, and let the
light shine down upon his patient--a man not more than twenty-eight
years of age. The fevered face was ugly, almost apelike; the forehead
bulged, the cheek-bones were high, the nose so flat that the nostrils
were two wide, black holes; and the mouth was full and coarse. The
doctor recoiled as he looked, and turned to the man standing at his
shoulder.
He saw a face that he liked still less--eyes small and deep-set, and
overhung with heavy, coarse brows; a nose lean and high and twisted
so far out of line that it made a left obtuse angle from forehead to
mouth; and long, thin lips that opened over small, uneven, discoloured
teeth. But the most striking feature of the face was a scar. It lay
across the left cheek from the corner of the eye to the point of the
heavy chin. It was a straight scar--as straight as if made by a keen
knife drawn along the edge of a ruler. And it was old, and a dead
white that contrasted sharply with the liquor-reddened skin of the
cheek.
“I’ll hold the lamp,” said the man with the scar.
The doctor unbuckled his case, threw off his coat and rolled up
his sleeves. He did not ask what was the matter, but laid back the
bedclothes and began his look for a wound. And he found it--a gunshot
wound in the right side, at the waist-line, and mortally deep.
“My! This oughta been ’tended to hours ago,” he said severely. “When
did it happen?”
“Yesterday. He’s been unconscious ever since.”
“Git me some hot water.”
Then, for an hour, not a word was spoken. The doctor worked with all
his energy, forgetting where he was, forgetting hunger and weariness.
The table had been moved close to the bed and the lamp placed upon it.
So the man with the scar had nothing to do. He walked the floor, his
head down and held a little sidewise, as if he were listening; and as
he walked his eyes continually shifted from side to side.
“I’m done,” announced the doctor at last. “This medicine you can give
him every three hours--one teaspoonful. It’s for the fever.”
The man with the scar came over to stand at the foot of the bed. “Leave
something that’ll make him sleep,” he said.
“All right.” The doctor had thought of asking for coffee. But now he
was eager to get away. There was that in the manner of his guide which
he did not like--an anxiety that seemed apart from concern for the sick
man.
Soon they were started on the return trip, the doctor blindfolded as
before and tied by the wrists to his pommel. As they went he marked as
well as he could ascents and descents, abrupt turns, level stretches
and rough. Bobby travelled slowly, being tired with all the long miles
he had covered since noon; and once or twice he stumbled, jerking at
his headline.
The man with the scar cursed him. “Why don’t you ride a mule?” he
called back. “A mule’s sure-footed, and he’s got more sense in a minute
than a horse’s got in a week.”
“Ain’t nothin’ the matter with this horse’s smartness,” retorted the
doctor. “Bobby knows as much as a man.”
“Oh, does he?” said the other with a mirthless laugh. “Well, you’d
better look out or I’ll blindfold him, too.”
When the animals were once more brought to a standstill the man with
the scar did not dismount, but rode close enough to untie the thongs at
the doctor’s pommel and to jerk away the handkerchief.
They were beside the railroad track where the dim road branched east.
The man with the scar addressed the doctor sharply. “Doc,” he said, “if
you know what’s good for you you’ll just forget all about to-night.”
Then: “So long.” But he stayed where he was in the road.
“So long,” returned the doctor. He headed north. When beyond the
cemetery he looked round, the mule and its scar-faced rider were gone.
A milk wagon was rumbling through the town as the doctor dismounted at
the wide gate which led to Bobby’s stable, and a boy on a bicycle was
wheeling from house to house along the street, throwing San Francisco
papers of the previous afternoon into each yard. The morning of another
day had come.
There was a light still burning, however, in the kitchen of the little
flower-covered cottage. And soon Letty came hurrying out. “Have you had
any rest?” she asked. “I’ve got some hot coffee ready for you.”
He gave a tender smile. “You’ll make a fine doctor’s wife!” he declared.
“Not if I worry, though. And I have worried--all night.” She tried to
smile back at him, but her lips trembled. “Because I didn’t like the
looks of the man that came here after you. Where was the case?”
“I’m afraid you’ll worry worse when I tell you,” he answered. “I don’t
know where I’ve been.”
“You don’t _know_!”
Briefly, over a cup of steaming coffee in the kitchen, he related the
happenings of the night just gone. Letty listened, wide-eyed and pale.
“How do you figger it out?” he asked her as he concluded his story.
“The Blue Top call was funny, but this was worse.”
The next moment she rose to her feet and let her cup and saucer fall
with a clatter. “That’s who they are!” she cried. “Why didn’t I think
of it before! The whole thing’s out at the mine.” Then she ran from the
kitchen into the dining-room and came running back again, a newspaper
in one hand. “Read it!” she bade in the wildest excitement. “Oh, read
it!”
He took the paper from her. It was the local publication of the day
before, and the article she indicated occupied the upper half of the
front page. “Laurence Eastman Kidnapped,” read a line that reached from
one side of the sheet to the other. Under this, in smaller type, was a
subhead: “Outlaws Demand Five Thousand Dollars of Millionaire Father.
Threaten to Kill Child if Theft is Made Public.”
The doctor read no further. “That’s what was the matter with Mrs.
Eastman,” he said in a low voice. “The boy’s out in that cañon!”
Astounded, each gazed into the face of the other for a moment. “You
didn’t hear him?” ventured Letty. “Maybe he was hid in the brush.”
“The shanty was pretty good-sized--lookin’ at it from the outside,”
returned the doctor. “Inside, the room was awful small. If that man
comes after me again----”
“Don’t go out alone with him,” she pleaded. “Let somebody trail you.”
He shook his head. “He’d find it out and shoot. No, I’ve got to take
the chance. Oh, Letty, if I could only bring that little woman her kid!”
Letty’s dark eyes were misty. “You couldn’t telephone her, could you?”
she asked.
He shook his head. “So far, everything’s guesswork. I dassent raise her
hopes on that. It’s awful when a person’s hopes’re raised--and then go
smash. I’ve got to find out where I was. There’s a scheme I heard of
once----”
“Is it scattering beans?”
“No.” He laughed and reached across the kitchen table to cover a
slim hand with one of his. “No”--more soberly--“it’s something
different--it’s about Bobby. You’d have to let me take care of him for
a few days and treat him real bad. I won’t tell you what I’d do to him,
then it won’t fret you.”
“Take Bobby,” she urged. “But oh, don’t have any trouble out there with
that man!” And she grew white and clung to his hand as she had never
done before.
He stayed only long enough to reassure her, and went when the sun shone
against the kitchen window. He had been twenty-four hours without sleep.
It was an anxious day for Letty. The doctor spent it in work after he
had had his rest, and at six o’clock opened his medicine-case to put
into it one or two things that had been lacking the previous night.
When sundown came and the long, grateful twilight, he paid a visit to
Bobby. Then he lighted the lamp in his office and sat down to wait.
Dark brought the looked-for summons. The front gate squeaked on its
hinges. Heavy steps sounded along the narrow boardwalk leading up to
the porch. Next, following a short pause, came a knock.
The doctor opened the door. The man with the scar was in waiting. He
kept out of range of the light that fell through the door, but the
doctor could see that the face of his visitor was again half hidden by
a handkerchief and that the slouch hat was worn low to shadow it.
“My friend’s suffering awful,” he said by way of greeting. “All over
the place, Doc. I felt almost like putting him out of his misery.”
At once the doctor went for Bobby. An eager whinny hailed the opening
of the stable door. But when the little horse was led out of his stall
he hung back and all but refused to leave it. “You’ll have some supper
out yonder,” promised his rider, and tied a generous feed of oats to
the thongs of the big stock saddle.
A slender figure came swiftly across the corral. It was Letty, and
she lifted her face to the doctor’s in mute anxiety. He whispered
encouragement and bent to kiss her, then rode out to join his waiting
guide.