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

he hung up the rod on the nails at the rear of the small porch, and sighing, entered the office for his surgical case.

"Where is that fellow?" he demanded of Flaherty, who had followed him in.

"That's him settin' on the wagon seat up with Wid Gardner, in the road," replied the messenger. "He's got his foot up on the dash board like it was sore, ain't he?"

Grumblingly Dr. Allen Barnes passed on up the road to the wagon where two passengers awaited his coming.

"Are you the man that wants me?" he asked, looking up at Sim Gage.

"Why, yep," said Sim Gage, his face puckered up into his usual frown of perplexity. "I reckon so, Doc. I got my leg hurt."

"Well, come on over to the hospital."

"Hospital? I can't go to no hospital. I can't afford it, Doc."

"Well, I can't cut your leg off right out here in the street, can I, man? I'm offering you the hospital free—the Company takes care of those things. Not that I've got any business taking care of you, but I will."

"Why, this ain't nothing," said Sim Gage, pointing a finger towards his swollen knee, "just a leetle kick of a bronc, that's all. I got to be getting right back, Doc—I ain't got much time."

"It don't take much time to cut off a leg," said Dr. Barnes. "Do it in three minutes." His face, professionally grim, showed no token of a smile.

"Well, I left my folks all alone up there," began Sim.

"You did, eh? Well, they'll be there when you get back, won't they?"

"I dunno, Doc——"

"Well, I don't know anything about it, if you don't. But tell me, how's the fishing up in there? Any grayling?"

"All you want," said Sim Gage. "Come along up any time, and I'll take you out. But no, I guess maybe——"

Dr. Barnes looked at him curiously, and Wid Gardner went on to explain for his neighbor.

"You see, Doc, Sim, he's just newly married," said he, "or else he's going to be right soon. Sim, he's kind of bashful about having you around."

"Thanks! But come—I haven't any time. Come into the office, and we'll have a look at the leg."

Wid drove after the stalking figure, which presently drew up in front of the little office. In a few moments they had Sim Gage, the injured member bared, sitting up in a white chair in a very white and clean miniature hospital which Dr. Barnes had installed.

"This wound hasn't been cleaned properly," commented the doctor at once. "What did you put on it?"

"Why, whiskey. I didn't have nothing else."

"Try water the next time," said Dr. Barnes with sarcasm. "We'll have to paint it up with iodine now. Lockjaw, blood poison and amputation is the very least that will happen to you if you don't look out."

"Amputation?" Sim turned with curiosity to his neighbor.

"It's where they cut off your leg, Sim," said Wid, explaining.

"Oh, well, maybe we'll save his leg," said Dr. Barnes, grinning at last. "But don't let this occur again, my Christian friend. This will lay you up for two or three weeks the best way it can happen, in all likelihood. Well, I'll swab it out and tie it up, and give you some iodine. Keep it painted. How big do the grayling go up in your country?"

"I've seen plenty over three pounds," said Sim Gage.

"I don't like to doubt your word, my friend, but if you'll show me one three-pound grayling, you won't ever owe me anything for fixing up your leg."

"I sure can, Doc," said Sim Gage. "Grasshoppers is best."

"For you, maybe. If you please, I'll try Queen of the Waters, or Professor, long-shanked, and about Number 8. And I say again, if you'll put me up to a three-pound grayling I'll cut off your leg for nothing any time you want it done!"

"Well, now," said Sim Gage, his forehead puckering up, "I don't want to put you under no obligations, Doc."

"He won't, neither, Doc," interrupted Wid Gardner, while the surgical dressing was going forward. "There's holes in there twenty feet deep, and I've see two or three hundred grayling in there dang near as long as your arm."

"Ouch, Doc!" remarked Sim Gage, "that yellow stuff smarts."

"It's got to, my man. A couple of days more and you might really have lost that leg, sure enough. I've seen plenty of legs lost, my man. I don't think it'll go much further up—I hope not. But blood poisoning is something bad to have, and I'll tell you that."

"You ain't been in this country long, have you, Doc?" queried Wid Gardner. "You come on up and go fishing with us fellers. A few weeks from now it'll be better. I ain't got no woman at my place, but I can cook some. Sim's got a woman at his."

"What's that?" inquired Dr. Barnes. "Oh, the woman that's waiting? What do you mean about that?"

"Well," replied his patient, his forehead furrowed, "that is, we ain't rightly married yet. Just sort of studying things over, you know, Doc. We're waiting for—well, until things kind of shapes up. You understand, Doc?"

"I don't know that I do," said the Doctor, looking at him straightly. "You understand one thing—there can't any funny business go on in this valley now. The administration's mighty keen. You know that."

"There ain't, Doc. She's my housekeeper. I'd ask you in all right, only she can't cook, nor nothing."

"A housekeeper, and can't cook? How's that?"

Sim Gage wiped off his face, finding the temperature high for him. "Well," said he, "Wid there and me, we advertised fer a housekeeper. This girl come on out. And when she come she was blind."

"Blind!"

"Blind as a bat. So she says she's fooled me. I sort of felt like we'd all fooled her. She's a lady."

"Why don't you send her back, man?" asked the doctor, with very visible disgust.

"I can't. How can I, when she's blind? She wasn't born that way, Doc, far's I can tell, but she was blind when she come out here. Now, leaving her setting there alone, it makes me feel kind of nervous. You don't blame me, now, do you, Doc?"

"No," said Dr. Barnes gravely, "I don't blame you. You people out here get me guessing sometimes. But you make me tired."

He swept a hand across his face and eyes, just because he was tired. "That's all I'm going to do for you to-day, my man," said he in conclusion. "Go on back home and fight out your own woman problems—that isn't in my line."

"She—I reckon she'd be glad to see you—if she could. You see, she's a lady, Doc. She ain't like us people out here."

The physician looked at him with curious appraisal in his eyes, studying both the man and this peculiar problem which all at once had been brought to view.

"A lady?" said he at last, somewhat disgusted. "If she was any lady she'd never have answered any advertisement such as you two people say you have been fools enough to print."

"Look here! That ain't so," said Sim Gage with sudden heat. "That ain't so none a-tall. Now, she is a lady—I won't let nobody say no different. Only thing, she's a blind lady, that's all. She falls over things when she walks. She got her eyes plumb full of cinders on the train, I expect. Cinders is awful. Why, one time when I was going out to Arizony I got a cinder in my eye, and I want to tell you——"

"Listen at him lie, Doc!" interrupted Wid Gardner. "He never was nowhere near Arizony in his life. That's his favoright lie. But he's telling you the truth, near as I know it, about that woman. She did come out to be a housekeeper, and she did come out here blind. Now, couldn't she be a lady and that be true?"

"How can I tell?" said Dr. Barnes. "All I know; is that you people came down here and made me break loose from the best fish I've seen since I've been out here. My best fish of a lifetime—I'll never get hold of a trout like that again."

Sim Gage was experiencing at the moment mingled gratitude and resentment, but nothing could quench his own hospitable impulses. "Aw, come on up, Doc," said he, "won't you? We can figure out some way to take care of you right at my place. You and me can sleep in the tent."

"So you live in the tent?" inquired Dr. Barnes.

"Why, of course. She stays in the house. And she's there all alone this very minute."

"Hit the trail, men," said Dr. Barnes. "Go on back home, and stay there, you damn sagebrushers!"

CHAPTER XII LEFT ALONE

Mary Warren, alone in the little cabin, found herself in a new world whose existence she had never dreamed—that subjective and subconscious land which bridges the forgotten genesis of things to the usual and busy world of the senses, in which we pass our daily lives. Indeed, never before had she known what human life really is, how far out of perspective, how selfish, how distorted. Now, alone in the darkness, back in the chaos and the beginning, she saw for the first time how small a thing is life and how ill it is for the most part lived. A fly buzzed loudly on the window pane—a bold, bronzed, lustrous fly, no doubt, she said to herself, pompous and full of himself—buzzed again and again, until the drone of his wings blurred, grew confused, ceased. She wondered if he had found a web.

The darkness oppressed her like a velvet pall. She strained her eyes, trying in spite of all to pierce it, beat at it, picked at it, to get it from around her head; and only paused at length, her face beaded, because she knew that way madness lay.

Time was a thing now quite out of her comprehension. Night and day, all the natural and accustomed divisions of time, were gone for her. She felt at the hands of her little watch, but found her mind confused—she could not remember whether it was the stem or the hinge which meant noon or midnight.

A thousand new doubts and fears of her newly created world assailing her, she felt rather than saw the flood of the sunlight when she stepped to the door gropingly, and stood, stick in hand, looking out. Yes, that was the sun. But it was hard to reason which way was north, which way lay the east, which was her home.

Home? She had no home! These years, she had known no home but the single room which she had occupied with Annie Squires. And now even that was gone. And even if it were not gone, she had no means of going back to it—her money was almost exhausted. And this black world was not the earth, this new covering of her soul was not life. Oh, small enough seemed Mary Warren to her own self now.

She stumbled back to her seat behind the table, near the bunk, and tried to take up her knitting again. The silence seemed to her so tremendous that she listened intently for some sound, any sound. Came only the twitter of a little near-by bird, the metallic clank of a meadow lark far off across the meadows. They at least were friendly, these birds. She could have kissed them, held them close to her, these new friends.

But why did he not come back—the man? What was going to happen if he did come back? How long would all this last? Must it come to death, or to the acceptance of terror or of shame, as the price of life?

She began to face her problem with a sort of stolid courage or resolution—she knew not what to call it. She was at bay—that was the truth of it. There must be some course of action upon which presently she must determine. What could it be? How could she take arms against her new, vast sea of