PHANTOMS OF FEVER
"That was ten or twelve days ago," Dad explained, when Mackenzie found
himself blinking understandingly at the sunlight through the open end
of the sheep-wagon one morning. "You was chawed and beat up till you
was hangin' together by threads."
Mackenzie was as weak as a young mouse. He closed his eyes and lay
thinking back over those days of delirium through which a gleam of
understanding fell only once in a while. Dad evidently believed that
he was well now, from his manner and speech, although Mackenzie knew
that if his life depended on rising and walking from the wagon he
would not be able to redeem it at the price.
"I seem to remember a woman around me a good deal," he said, not
trusting himself to look at Dad. "It wasn't--was it----?"
Mackenzie felt his face flush, and cursed his weakness, but he could
not pronounce the name that filled his heart.
"Yes, it was Rabbit," said Dad, catching him up without the slightest
understanding of his stammering. "She's been stickin' to you night and
day. I tell you, John, them Indians can't be beat doctorin' a man up
when he's been chawed up by a animal."
"I want to thank her," Mackenzie said, feeling his heart swing very
low indeed.
"You won't see much of her now since you've come to your head, I
reckon she'll be passin' you over to me to look after. She's shy that
way. Yes, sir, any time I git bit up by man or beast, or shot up or
knifed, I'll take Rabbit ahead of any doctor you can find. Them
Indians they know the secrets of it. I wouldn't be afraid to stand and
let a rattlesnake bite me till it fainted if Rabbit was around. She
can cure it."
But Mackenzie knew from the odor of his bandages that Rabbit was not
depending on her Indian knowledge in his case, or not entirely so.
There was the odor of carbolic acid, and he was conscious all along
that his head had been shaved around the wound in approved surgical
fashion. He reasoned that Rabbit went about prepared with the
emergency remedies of civilization, and put it down to her schooling
at the Catholic sisters' hands.
"Was there anybody--did anybody else come around?" Mackenzie
inquired.
"Tim's been by a couple of times. Oh, well--Joan."
"Oh, Joan," said Mackenzie, trying to make it sound as if he had no
concern in Joan at all. But his voice trembled, and life came bounding
up in him again with glad, wild spring.
"She was over the day after you got hurt, but she ain't been back,"
said Dad, with such indifference that he must have taken it for
granted that Mackenzie held no tenderness for her, indeed. "I met
Charley yesterday; he told me Joan was over home. Mary's out here with
him--she's the next one to Joan, you know."
Mackenzie's day clouded; his sickness fell over him again, taking the
faint new savor out of life. Joan was indifferent; she did not care.
Then hope came on its white wings to excuse her.
"Is she sick?" he inquired.
"Who--Mary?"
"Joan. Is she all right?"
"Well, if I was married to her I'd give up hopes of ever bein' left a
widower. That girl's as healthy as a burro--yes, and she'll outlive
one, I'll bet money, and I've heard of 'em livin' eighty years down in
Mexico."
Dad did not appear to be cognizant of Mackenzie's weakness. According
to the old man's pathology a man was safe when he regained his head
out of the delirium of fever. All he needed then was cheering up, and
Dad did not know of any better way of doing that than by talking. So
he let himself go, and Mackenzie shut his eyes to the hum of the old
fellow's voice, the sound beating on his ears like wind against closed
doors.
Suddenly Dad's chatter ceased. The silence was as welcome as the
falling of a gale to a man at sea in an open boat. Mackenzie heard Dad
leaving the wagon in cautious haste, and opened his eyes to see.
Rabbit was beside him with a bowl of savory-smelling broth, which she
administered to him with such gentle deftness that Mackenzie could not
help believing Dad had libeled her in his story of the accident that
had left its mark upon her face.
Rabbit would not permit her patient to talk, denying him with uplifted
finger and shake of head when he attempted it. She did not say a word
during her visit, although her manner was only gentle, neither timid
nor shy.
Rabbit was a short woman, turning somewhat to weight, a little gray in
her black hair, but rather due to trouble than age, Mackenzie
believed. Her skin was dark, her face bright and intelligent, but
stamped with the meekness which is the heritage of women of her race.
The burn had left her marked as Dad had said, the scar much lighter
than the original skin, but it was not such a serious disfigurement
that a man would be justified in leaving her for it as Dad had done.
When Rabbit went out she drew a mosquito netting over the opening in
the back of the wagon. Mackenzie was certain that Dad had libeled her
after that. There was not a fly in the wagon to pester him, and he
knew that the opening in the front end had been similarly screened,
although he could not turn to see. Grateful to Rabbit, with the almost
tearful tenderness that a sick man feels for those who have ministered
kindly to his pain, Mackenzie lay with his thoughts that first day of
consciousness after his tempestuous season of delirium.
They were not pleasant thoughts for a man whose blood was not yet
cool. As they surged and hammered in his brain his fever flashed
again, burning in his eyes like a desert wind. Something had happened
to alienate Joan.
That was the burden of it as the sun mounted with his fever, heating
the enclosed wagon until it was an oven. Something had happened to
alienate Joan. He did not believe her weak enough, fickle enough, to
yield to the allurements of Reid's prospects. They must have
slandered him and driven her away with lies. Reid must have slandered
him; there was the stamp of slander in his wide, thin mouth.
It would be many days, it might be weeks, before he could go abroad on
the range again to set right whatever wrong had been done him. Then it
would be too late. Surely Joan could not take his blunder into
Carlson's trap in the light of an unpardonable weakness; she was not
so sheep-blind as that. Something had been done outside any act of his
own to turn her face and her sympathies away.
Consumed in impatience to be up, anxiety for the delay, Mackenzie lay
the throbbing day through like a disabled engine spending its vain
power upon a broken shaft. Kind Rabbit came frequently to give him
drink, to bathe his forehead, to place a cool cloth over his burning
eyes. But Dad did not come again. How much better for his peace if the
garrulous old rascal had not come at all!
And then with the thought of Joan there came mingling the vexing
wonder of the train of violence that had attended him into the
sheeplands. He had come there to be a master over flocks, not
expecting to encounter any unfriendly force save the stern face of
nature. He had begun to muddle and meddle at the outset; he had
continued to muddle, if not meddle, to the very end.
For this would be the end. No sheepman would countenance a herder who
could not take care of his flock in summer weather on a bountiful
range. His day was done in that part of the country so far as his
plans of becoming a sharing herdsman went. Earl Reid, a thin, anemic
lad fresh from city life, had come in and made much more a figure of a
man.
So his fever boiled under the fuel of his humiliating thoughts. The
wagon was a bake-oven, but there was no sweat in him to cool his
parching skin. He begged Rabbit to let him go and lie under the wagon,
where the wind could blow over him, but she shook her head in denial
and pressed him down on the bunk. Then she gave him a drink that had
the bitterness of opium in it, and he threw down his worrying snarl of
thoughts, and slept.