The Sagebrusher by Emerson Hough (first ebook reader txt) 📖

were wide open, dark, beautiful. Sim Gage's heart stopped in his bosom. She was a woman. She had come, of her own volition. They were utterly alone.

CHAPTER X NEIGHBORS

Sim Gage, hesitant at the door of his bare-floored tent in the cool dawn, saw smoke arising from the chimney of Wid Gardner's house. From a sense of need he determined to pay Wid a visit. His leg was doing badly. He needed help, and knew it. He hobbled over to the cabin door, where all was silent; knocked, and knocked again, more loudly. She still slept—slept as she had not dreamed she could.

"Who's there?" she demanded at length. "Oh yes; wait a minute."

He waited several minutes, but at length heard her at the door. His eyes fell upon her hungrily. She was fresher, her air was more eager, less pitiful.

"Good morning, ma'am," said he. "I've come to get the breakfast." All she could do was to stand about, wistful, perplexed, dumb.

"Now, ma'am," said he, after he had cooked the breakfast—like in all ways to the supper of the night before—"I'm a-going to ask you to stay here alone a little while to-day. You ain't afraid, are you?"

"You'll not be gone long? It's lonesome to me all the time, of course." In reality she was terrified beyond words at the thought of being left alone.

"I know that. But we got to get a dog and some hens for you. I just thought I'd go over and see Wid Gardner, little while, and talk over things."

"How is your knee now?" she asked. "It seemed to me you sounded rather limpy, Mr. Gage."

"Is that what you want to call me, ma'am?" said he at last—"Mr. Gage? It sounds sort of strange to me, but it makes me feel taller. Folks always called me Sim."

She heard him turn, hesitant. "You'll not be gone long?" said she.

"I reckon not."

"Then bring me the pan of potatoes in here, so that I can peel them."

"You're mighty helpful, ma'am. I don't see how I kept house here at all without you.

"Ma'am," he went on, presently, hesitating, after his bashful fashion. "This here is a right strange place, way you and me is throwed in here together. I only wish't you wouldn't git scared about anything, and you'd sort of—believe in me, till we can shape things out somehow, fairer to you. Don't be scared, please. I'll take care of you the best I can. The only trouble is I'm afraid about folks, that's all."

"What do you mean—about folks?"

"If there was a woman within fifty miles of you knowed you wasn't married to me, she'd raise hell sure. All women is that way, and some men is, too. There ain't been no room for talk—yet."

"Yet?" she said. "What do you mean?"

But this was carrying Sim Gage into water too deep for him. He only stepped closer to the door. "Don't you be scared to be alone a little while. So long," he added, and so he left her.

She heard his hobbling footfalls across the boards at the end of the house, heard them pass into silence on the turf. What had he meant? How long could she maintain her supremacy over him, here alone in the wilderness, helpless, blind? And those other women? What, indeed, was her status to be here? When would he tire of this? When would he change?

Questions came to Sim Gage's mind also. Now and again he paused and leaned against the fence. He was in much pain alike of body and of mind.

He saw Wid himself turn out at his gate and approach him; dreaded the grin on Wid's face even before he saw it.

"Well, there, neighbor," said the oncomer. "You're out at last. How's everything?"

Sim looked down at his bandaged leg with a gesture.

"How come that?"

"One of them damn broncs cut me with his forefoot when I was unhitching. Did you git track of them anywhere? They run off."

"They're hanging around here," said Wid indifferently. He bent over the wounded member. "So struck you with his front hoof? That's a bad leg, Sim. It's getting black; and here's some red streaks."

"I'm some scared about it," said Sim. "Seems to me I'd better get to a doctor. I got to get me a dog first, and some hens."

Wid Gardner took a hasty but careful inventory of his friend's appearance, his shaven face, his clean hands, his new clothing.

"How's your wife, Sim?" he said, grinning.

"That lady, she's all right. Left her paring spuds. And I want to say to you, Wid, while I'm away from there, everybody else stays away too."

"What, not get to see the bride? That ain't very friendly, seems to me."

"Well, what I said goes."

"You're a jealous sort of bridegroom?" said Wid, laughing openly.

The dull color of Sim's face showed the anger in his heart. "That lady, she's there at my house," said he, "and she's going to be left alone there. She's sort of shy. This country's plumb new to her."

"But honest, Sim"—and his neighbor's curiosity now was apparent—"what sort of a looker is she?"

"Prettier'n a spotted pup!" said Sim succinctly.

"She like the country pretty well?"

"Says it's the prettiest she ever seen," replied Sim. "That's what she said."

"And you owe all this to me, come to simmer it down."

"I ain't simmering nothing down," said Sim. "Here's your gate. Down there is mine. Don't none of you go in there until I tell you it's time, that's all."

"Well, I dunno as I care to," replied Wid.

"Better not," said Sim Gage. "I ain't a-going to have that girl bothered by nobody. Of course, you and me both knows we ain't married, and won't never be. It was a housekeeper I was after, and I got one, and a damn good one. But I don't want her bothered by no one fer a while. I've played this game on the level with her so far, anyways, and I allow to play it that way all the way through."

"But now," he added, wincing with pain, "let's cut out all this sort of thing. I believe I got to get to a doctor."

"I'll tell you," said Wid Gardner, "I'll hitch up and take you down to the doctor at the big dam, twenty-five miles below. He's taking care of all the laborers down there—they're always getting into accidents; dynamite, you know. He's got to be a good doctor. I'll take you down."

"Wid," said Sim, "I wish't you would. I don't believe I'll go back home first. She'll be all right there alone, won't she?"

Wid still smiled at him understandingly. "Jealousest man I ever did see! Well, have it your own way. It'll take just so much time anyway—if we get back by nine or ten o'clock to-night we'll be lucky. She'll have to begin sometime to get used to things."

CHAPTER XI THE COMPANY DOCTOR

The Two Forks, below their junction, make a mighty stream which has burst through a mountain range. Across this narrow gorge which it has rent for itself in time immemorial, the insect, Man, industrious and persevering, has cast a great pile of rock and concrete, a hundred feet high, for that good folk some hundreds of miles away one day may bless the Company for electric lighting. In this labor toiled many man-insects of divers breeds and races, many of them returned soldiers, much as did the slaves of Pharaoh in earlier times. The work was on one of the new government projects revived after the war, in large part to offer employment to the returning men of the late Army.

But Pharaoh had not dynamite or rack-rock or TNT; so that in the total it were safer for an insect to have labored in Pharaoh's time. The Company doctor—himself a returned major—stationed there by reason of the eccentricities of dynamite, rack-rock and other high explosives, was much given to the sport of the angle, and disposed to be irritable when called from the allurements of the stream to attend some laboring man who had undertaken to attach a fuse by means of his teeth, or some such simple process. That is to say, Doctor Allen Barnes was irritable until he had reeled up his line and climbed the bank below the dam site, and betaken himself to the side of the last hospital cot where lay the last victim of dynamic and dynamitical industry. After that he was apt to forget angling and become an absorbed surgeon, and a very able one.

But on this particular day, when word came to him at the stream side that a stranger not of the force had arrived in town with a "bum leg"—so reported the messenger, Foreman Flaherty—Doctor Barnes was wroth exceedingly, for at that moment he was fast in a noble trout that was far out in the white water, and giving him, as he himself would have phrased it, the time of his life.

"Tell him I can't come, Flaherty!" he called over his shoulder. "I'm busy."

"I reckon that's so, Doc," said the foreman. "Why don't you haul him in? That pole of yours ain't no good, it's too limber. If I had him on mine I'd show you how to get him in."

"Oh, you would, would you, dad burn you," remarked Doctor Barnes, who had small love for the human race at many times, and less at this moment. "I wouldn't put it past you. Well, this is my affair and not yours. Who is the fellow, anyhow, and where did he come from, and what does he want? Has he been trying to beat the shot?"

"He ain't on our job," replied the foreman. "Come down from twenty mile up the East Fork. Got kicked by a horse."

"Huh! What's his name? Look at him jump!" remarked the doctor, with mixed emotions and references.

"Sim Gage. Come down with a feller name of Gardner that lives up in there."

"Oh, above on the East Fork? Say, how's the fishing up there?—Did they say there were any grayling in there?"

"I've saw Wid Gardner lots of times before, and he says a feller can always get a sackful of grayling any time he wants to, in there, come summer time."

"Look at him go! Ain't that fine?" inquired Dr. Allen Barnes. "Did he say they were coming good now, up there? Ain't he a peach?"

"Yes, Wid said the grayling was risin' right good now," said Flaherty. "But this feller, Sim Gage, his leg looks to me like you'd have to cut it off. Can I help, Doc?—I never seen a man's leg cut off, not in my whole life."

"How do I know whether it's got to come off or not, I'd like to know. See that?—Ain't he a darling, now, I'm asking you?"

"He is. Like I was saying, this feller's leg is all swoll up. Leave it to me, I'd say we ought to cut it off right now."

"Well, you go tell him not to cut it off till I get this fish landed," said Dr. Barnes. "Tell him I'll be up there in a few minutes. What's the matter with it, anyhow?"

"Been gone a couple of days," said Flaherty, breaking off twigs and casting them on the current. "Blood poison, I reckon."

"What's that?" The Doctor turned under the spur of his professional conscience. "Oh, well, dang it! Here goes!"

He began to lift up and reel in with all his might, so that his fish, very much obliged, broke the gear and ran off with joy, a yard of leader attached to his mouth.

"That's the way it goes," said the Doctor. "Get fast to a six-pound brown trout, and along comes a man with a leg that's got to be cut off. Dang such a job anyhow—I will cut his leg off, too, just for this!"

Fuming as usual, he climbed the steep bank below the white face of the dam and crossed the street to his own raw shack, which was office and home alike. He gazed resentfully at his parted leader as