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

slowly. "It's what I told her. But she always said she didn't have no place to go back to. She could stay here as long as she liked, but now I ain't got much."

"But it can't run on this way, Gage," said Doctor Barnes. "That girl's clean as wheat. Something's got to be done about this."

"Well, good God A'mighty!" said Sim Gage, "ain't that what I know? If only you'll tell me what's right to do, I sure will do it. In one way it ain't just only my fault she come out here, nor it ain't my fault if she don't go back."

Doctor Barnes engaged for some time in breaking up bits of bark and casting them from his thumb nail. "Have you ever had any talk with her about this?" said he.

"Some," said Sim honestly; "yes, some."

"What was it?"

"She told me, when she answered that ad, she was getting plumb desperate, account of her eyes. She was out of work, and she was broke, and she didn't have no folks on earth, and she'd lost all her money—her folks used to be rich, I reckon, like enough. That's the only reason she answered that fool ad about me being in the market, so to speak, fer a wife. That's how she come out. She must of been locoed. You cain't blame her. She was all alone in the whole world, but just one girl that knowed her. We got a letter from that girl—I got it here in my pocket. We opened it and read it, Wid and me did, yesterday. Her name's Annie Squires. But she's broke too, I reckon. Now what are we a-goin' to do?"

"Have you ever talked the whole business over—you two—since she came out?"

"Doc," said Sim Gage, "I told you, I tried my damnedest, and I just couldn't. I says to myself, lady like she was, it wouldn't be right fer a man like me to marry her noways on earth."

"And what did she say?"

Sim Gage began to stammer painfully. "I don't know what she would say," said he. "I ain't never asked her none yet."

"Well, I reckon you'll have to," said Doctor Barnes slowly, after a long time in thought; "if she lives."

"Lives? Doc, you don't mean to tell me she's that sick?"

"She isn't trying to fight very hard. When your patient would rather die than live, you've got hard lines, as a doctor. It's hard lines here more ways than one."

"Die—her!—What would I do then, Doc?" asked Sim Gage, so simply that Doctor Barnes looked at him keenly, gravely.

"It's not a question about you, you damn sagebrusher," said he at last, gently. "Question is, what's best for her. If I didn't feel such a woman was too good to be wasted I'd say, let her go; ethics be damned out here. If she gets well she'll have to decide some time what's to do about this whole business. That brings you into the question again. It was a bad bet, but deceived as she was, she's put herself under your protection. And mine!"

"You see," he added, "that's something that really doesn't come under my profession, but it's something that's up to every decent man."

Mrs. Jensen came to the door, broom in hand. "You, Sim," said she, "come in here!" She accosted him in hoarse whispers when he had obeyed.

"Look-a-here at this place!" said she. "Is this where a hog or a human has been living? I've got things straightened around now, and don't you dare muss 'em up. When that pore girl is able to get around again I'm a-going to take her and show her where everything is—she'll keep this house better blind than you did with your both eyes open. I've got a aunt been blind twenty year, and she cooks and sweeps and sews and knits as good as anybody. She'll do the same way. She's a good knitter, I know. The pore child."

Sim reached out a hand gently to the work which he found lying, needles still in place, on the table where Mary Warren had left it the day before.

"She'll learn soon," said Karen Jensen. "Ain't she pretty enough to make you cry, laying there the way she is." The keen gray eyes of Karen Jensen softened. "She's asleep," she whispered. "Doctor doped her."

"If only now," said Sim Gage, frowning as usual in thought, "if only I could get some sort of woman to come here and stay a while, until she gets well. It ain't right she should be in a place like this all alone."

"You pore fool," said Karen Jensen, "did you think for a minute I'd go away and leave that girl alone with you? Go out and get some wood! I'm a-going to get supper here. Tell Nels he can go back home after supper, and him and Minna and Theodore 'll have to keep house until I get back. The pore thing—you said she was right blind?" she concluded.

"Plumb blind," said Sim Gage. "What's more, she can't see none a-tall. It ain't no wonder she's scared sick."

"I'm mighty glad you're a-goin' to get supper here to-night," he continued. "I'm that rattled, like, I couldn't make bread worth a damn."

He edged out of the cabin and communicated his news. "Mrs. Jensen says she'll take care of her till she gets better," he said.

"That's the best thing I've heard," commented Doctor Barnes. "That'll help. I'll stay here to-night myself. Gardner, can you run my car down to the dam?"

"I might," said Wid. "I never did drive a car much, but I think I could. Mormons does; and I've had a lot to do with mowing machines, like them."

"Well, get down to the dam and tell the people I can't be back until to-morrow afternoon. Here's where I belong just now. Where do I sleep, Gage?"

"Out here in the tent, I reckon," replied Sim, "though most all my blankets is in there on the bed. Maybe I kin find a slicker somewheres. Wid, he ain't got nothing left over to his place, neither."

"Don't bother about things," said Nels Jensen. "I'll go over and bring some blankets from my place. The woman'll take care of that girl until she gets in better shape."

Doctor Barnes looked at them all for a time, frowning in his own way. "You damn worthless people," said he with sudden sheer affection. "God has been good to you, hasn't he?"

"Now, ain't that the truth?" said Sim Gage, perhaps not quite fully understanding.

CHAPTER XVIII DONNA QUIXOTE

At ten of the following morning Mrs. Jensen had finished "redding up," as she called it, and had gone out into the yard. Doctor Barnes, alone at the bedside of his patient, was not professionally surprised when she opened her eyes.

"Well, how's everything this morning?" he said quietly. "Better, eh?"

She did not speak for some time, but turned toward him. "Who are you?" she asked presently.

"Nobody in particular," he answered. "Only the doctor person. I was up in the mountains with you yesterday."

"Was it yesterday?" said she. "Yes, I remember!"

"What became of him?" she asked after a time. "That awful man—I had it in my heart to kill him!"

Doctor Barnes made no comment, and after a while she went on, speaking slowly.

"He said so many things. Why, those men would do anything?"

"He'll not do any more treason," said Doctor Barnes.

"What do you mean?"

"A tree fell on him. I got there too late to be of any use."

"He's dead?"

"Yes. Don't let's talk of that."

"I've got to live?"

"Yes."

"Who are you?" she inquired after a time. "You're a doctor?"

"I'm your sort, yes, Miss Warren," said he.

"A gentleman."

"Relative term!"

"You've been very good. Where do you live?"

"Down at the Government dam, below here. I'm the Company doctor."

"Well, why don't you go? Am I going to live, or can I die?"

"What brought you out here, Miss Warren," said he at last. "You don't belong in a place like this."

"Where then do I belong?" she asked. "Food and a bed—that's more than I can earn."

"Maybe we can fix up a way for you to be useful, if you don't go away." He spoke so gently, she began to trust him.

"But I'm not going away. I have no place to go to." She smiled bitterly. "I haven't money enough to buy my ticket back home if I had a home to go to. That's the truth. Why didn't you let me die?"

"You ought to want to live," said Doctor Barnes. "The lane turns, sometimes."

"Not for me. Worse and worse, that's all.… I'll have to tell you— I don't like to tell strangers, about myself. But, you see, my brother was killed in the war. We had some money once, my brother and I. Our banker lost it for us. I had to work, and then, after he went away, I began to—to lose my eyes."

"How long was that coming on?"

"Two years—about. The last part came all at once, on the cars, when I was coming out. I've never seen—him—Mr. Gage, you know. I don't know what he looks like."

"They call him Sim Gage."

She remained silent, and he thought best to add a word or so, but could not, though he tried. Mary Warren's face had colored painfully.

"I suppose they've told you—I suppose everybody knows all about that—that insane thing I did, coming out here. Well, I was desperate, that's all. Yet it seems there are good people left in the world. You are all good people. If only I could see; so I could tell what to do. Then maybe I could earn my living, someway—if I have to live.

"Good-hearted, isn't he—Mr. Gage?" She nodded with a woman's confident intuition as she went on. "He didn't cast me out. What can I do to repay him?"

He could make no answer.

"Little to give him, Doctor—but of course, if he could—in any sort of justice—accept—accept——"

Doctor Barnes suddenly reached out a hand and pushed her hair back from her forehead. "I wouldn't," said he. "Please don't. Take things easy for a little while."

She turned her dark and sightless eyes upon him. "No!" said she. "That isn't the way we do in my family. We don't take things easy."

"Has he said anything to you?" asked Doctor Barnes after a long time. "I have very much reluctance to ask."

"He's too much of a man," she said. "No, not yet. It was a sort of bargain, even if we didn't say so outright. 'Object, matrimony!' I came out here with my eyes open. But now God has closed them.… Will you tell me the truth?"

"Yes."

"Does he—do you think he——"

"Cares for you?"

"Yes!"

Doctor Barnes replied with extreme difficulty. "We'll say he does care—that he cares immensely."

She nodded. "I wanted to be fair," said she. "I'm glad I can talk to some one I can trust."

"What makes you think you can trust me?" blustered Doctor Barnes. "And you're so Puritan foolish, you're going to marry this man? You think that is right?"

"He took me in, when I deceived him. I owe my life to him. He's never once hinted or laughed since I came here. Why, he's a gentleman."

She turned her head away. "Perhaps he would never know," she added.

"Something to take on," commented Doctor Barnes grimly.

"I'd try very hard," she went on. "I'd try to do my best. Mrs. Jensen says I could learn a great many things. She has an aunt that's—that has lost her eyesight. It may be my place in the world—here. I want to carry my own weight in the world—or else I want to die."

"He seems hard to understand—Mr. Gage," she went on slowly, the damp of sheer anguish on her forehead now at speaking as she never could wish to speak, thus to a stranger, and of the most intimate things of a gentlewoman's life. "As though I didn't know he couldn't ever really love a woman like me! Of course it isn't right either way. It's awful.… But I'd do my best. Life is more of a compromise than I used to