CHAPTER XV.

A HOSPITAL AND A BOARDING HOUSE.

Long rows of windows in a massive building gave light to thousands within, who in turn looked out upon the thousands plodding their way to and from toil. It was in one of the hospital zones of the second city in the United States and the building was one of the largest hospitals in the city. Within the memory of the present generation the word "hospital" was fraught with weird and uncanny dark rooms, bloody floors, shrieking victims of accident or disease undergoing the torture of the knife, muffled rumbles of iron-wheeled trucks rolling in new patients or wheeling the lifeless form of the dead to the morgue. Over the door, unseen by mortal man, an ominous inscription, "He who enters here leaves all hope behind."

By the onward, irresistible advance of that flickering flame which penetrates the darkest corner of bigotry and ignorance, science has groped its way beyond the portals of death and snatched many from the very coffin after being prepared for the grave. This is civilization. Even today thousands look askance at the uncompromising brick and stone walls, shuddering as the ambulance gong warns them of its approach, bearing the victim, perchance, of some terrible disaster. To the unsophisticated who visit for the first time one of these institutions a surprise is in store. The awful gloom is penetrated by sunlight. In place of bespattered walls and crimson stained operating table are snow white tiling and glass slabs mounted on iron frames. The sickening offensive odor of the old "slaughter pens" has been relegated to the dark ages, and nothing worse than a whiff of carbolic acid or a possible suspicion of iodoform greets the most sensitive nostrils.

Within such an institution Chiquita found herself face to face with the "medicine" man of the paleface, and her white sister in "medicine" clothes. Arrayed at last in the oriental blue and white striped uniform, white apron with strings crossed at the back and jaunty little white cap, Chiquita began the task of familiarizing herself with the calling which so recently has placed woman in a sphere entirely her own, and made her the subject of hero worship on battlefield and in peaceful home. Faithfully she performed the laborious work of smoothing the rumpled clothing of a fever-racked patient, or adjusting the uncomfortable bandages of another, crushed and maimed. In the operating room she administered anesthetics or assisted with sponge and basin, and at clinics she listened intently to all the specialists, while in other channels she learned the necessary business methods needed for successfully carrying on the expensive undertaking which she proposed to inaugurate for the good of her own people.

The last half of the second year of hospital life had commenced. It was summer, and Jack, with Hazel, was returning from his annual trip to the Blazing-Eye-by-the-Big-Water mine.

Chiquita had enjoyed an afternoon with them, driving about the city, and observed that Jack was not as bright and cheerful as usual.

"No," said he, "I don't feel at all well. I think I over-exerted myself at the mine."

Hazel and Chiquita insisted upon his consulting a physician, but Jack contended that it was "nothing; I will be all right in the morning."

His malady, however, grew more pronounced, the third day finding him with a high fever and in great bodily pain. A surgeon was called, who discovered that an immediate operation was imperative.

Jack protested, but finally yielded to the pleadings of his wife, and arrangements were made to take the then almost helpless patient to the hospital.

The carriage was driven to where Chiquita in great anxiety awaited their coming. The surgeon had preceded them, informing the matron that it was a case of blood poisoning, and arranged for the admission of his patient.

At 9 o'clock that evening the affected part was lanced, giving temporary relief, but this disclosed a dangerous complication which would require a tedious operation and a prolonged stay in the hospital.

The next morning, as Chiquita prepared Jack for the operating table, they joked about the medicine tepee and dwelt long upon the singular coincidence that should bring them together under such circumstances. Chiquita administered the anesthetics. While Jack was losing consciousness, struggling vainly to gasp a breath of fresh air, she recalled the vivid description of hospital life which he had so long ago on Rock Creek depicted to her. As the surgeon skillfully wielded his various instruments, and with the electric wire burned the sensitive flesh along the track of the affected part, Chiquita for the first time felt a sinking, gaping, craving of her heart.

She realized in that one moment what it meant. She felt that if Jack should die her heart would cease its tumultuous beating, that if he lived she should forever have to keep her secret and stifle the emotions which her love for him revealed.

A sudden thought surged within her. "No one would know; should she"-- "He is not for me--I am a Ute's daughter, a degraded Indian. Can I live and see him the husband of another and not betray my secret? Oh, Jack! perhaps it had been better that Chiquita had never become a medicine tepee queen! Were it not better that the sister of the forest should never have been educated?

'A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.'

"I can not turn back. I will stifle my love for the one who lies there helpless. I will consecrate my life to the customs of his people, that I may leave a legacy to my people--the inheritance which civilization brings."

Mechanically she performed the rest of her duties; nurses had taken the unconscious form away in its swaths of bandages, while she remained to administer to other patients and begin the long siege of love's starvation, until her heart should capitulate and turn to stone.

The day following the operation, Chiquita's first duties were to take Jack's temperature and respiration, and note other conditions. She performed the latter with perfect composure, but when she essayed the counting of those "little blood knocks upon the wrist," her own heart beat so furiously that she was fearful of making an error, and was obliged to ask another nurse to take that record. Afterward, however, she was able to control her feelings, and take Jack's temperature with composure.

Upon the fifth day, when the internes were dressing Jack's wound, it was discovered that another operation would have to be performed. The surgeon had overlooked a portion of the affected tract, and the wound would again have to be reopened and rescarified with a burning white hot electric wire. This discovery was made Saturday, and Jack was at once informed.

Hazel tried to encourage him, but despondency seemed to take possession of him, and all day Sunday, as the church bells clanged their discordant soul-racking peals, he tossed restlessly upon his bed. The terrific winds from the southwest blew their breath to the north in sweltering blasts, and poor humanity had to endure it. Tuesday, Chiquita once more was called upon to watch Jack as he succumbed to the influence of the anesthetic. Once more she counted his heart throbs as the surgeon scraped, burned and annihilated germs, bugs and septic tissue, and once more her heart wildly stampeded in its ecstatic throbbing of love for him whose life she literally held in her own hands, as his hallowed form reposed unconscious on the glass slab.

Oh, what joy to her! what an entrancing, ravishing hour! As she afterwards lived those minutes over and over again, allowing her stony heart to grow tender as the impulse swayed her, she was carried back in vivid memory to the camp on Rock Creek where she first learned of the medicine tepee queen.

The second operation was successful, and although Jack's convalescence was prolonged for months, he was fully cured of an ailment which in days of less scientific skill had invariably resulted fatally.

With the culmination of her hospital education, Chiquita turned her attention to the study of the economics of city life, and investigation of the details relating to her future enterprise.

She found herself domiciled in a rather pretentious establishment in a fashionable and aristocratic neighborhood.

"Yes, Senorita Chiquita, I shall be pleased to have you make your home with my family, as they call themselves, and we are a happy houseful." So spake the little black-eyed proprietor of the "Addington." She was Mrs. Pickett. Pickett was a speculator. The whole atmosphere in and about Pickett reflected the market; if he was on the right side of corn or wheat or provisions one could feel it, hear it, see it in Pickett's handshake, voice and clothes. If, however, he was "bull" on a "bear" movement, the Pickett barometer dropped accordingly.

"Pshaw! that wheat is worth a dollar any day. Buy five thousand at 72." But "puts" went to 68 cents at the close of the "privileges" and Pickett was glum.

Pickett was not a big plunger, only one of the ten million poor, hungry hangers on who watch the "ticker," listen to the reports made up for the masses by the master hand of manipulators, out of storm centers, visible supply, and world's consumption, and then gorge the bait.

Pickett was a winner one day on a pork deal and among other commodities in the "pit" which seemed a "good thing" was corn at 31 cents. He bought a small line and then forgot it in the strenuous circumstances which followed. At the close of the day's pork business he pocketed a big roll of bills and went out with the boys for a good time, only to fall down stairs and break his ankle. After three weeks' suffering he hobbled into the broker's office. Greetings were exchanged with the regulars, then he sought the cashier to draw the balance of his pork money. This account being settled the cashier said to him, "Pickett, what are you going to do with that corn?"

"What corn?"

"Why that corn you bought at 31 cents the day you broke your ankle."

"I did not buy any corn, did I?"

"Yes, you did, and there is to your credit $7,000."

"Seven thousand dollars!" shouted Pickett, and before any answer could be made he ordered the deal closed, then went out and bought a fast "hoss," a pair of checked trousers, a silk hat, and hunted up the girl who immediately became Mrs. Pickett as soon as the necessary formalities could be arranged. But the seven thousand dollars did not last long and the support of a wife was more than Pickett bargained for. Matters grew very serious and Mrs. Pickett found she had either to go to work in some clerkship capacity, or start a boarding house or peanut and candy store near some school house. She chose the boarding house, which soon merged into a swell private hotel, and it was in the "Addington" that Chiquita saw a phase of life so common to the man of the world and the bachelor girl charging full tilt into the twentieth century.

"Mrs. Pickett, please tell me a little of yourself, that I may understand why the white sister has no husband to care for her as other white sisters have."

It was about three months after Chiquita had taken up her residence at the "Addington." The two were on one of the porches which overlook the lake on the north shore in a most beautiful location near Sheridan drive.

"It is a long story, but I can make it very brief in words, although the years have been filled with events which handicap a woman of my age in looks and spirit, and that handicap will make the story seem longer to me than to a listener."

"Don't skip any of the incidents, will you? I mean those portions where the Christian spirit upheld you in your grief and sadness."

"I was young. Mr. Pickett's fast horse must share the blame for a portion of the admiration I became possessed of for Mr. Pickett. Then he was such a swell dresser, a good singer and at that time a Board of Trade man, at least I thought so, and when he showed me that pile of money and said 'Junie, let's get married,' I said, 'Pickett, give my father a home and I will marry you tomorrow.'

"We were married, but the money did not last long and poor Pickett lost all ambition save that of watching the 'ticker,' reading the market reports, and living in the fascinating atmosphere of 'bucket shops,' gambling in grain, stocks and provisions, as do an army of poor, deluded would-be speculators.

"There was but one course for me--a boarding-house, and here I have lived. My father died, and soon after, my husband was stricken with a lingering illness, which lasted six years ere death relieved him of his sufferings. It has been a bitter cup, but after all, as my good father often said, 'It is all for the best. He waters the corn and weeds alike, and burns up the roses as well as the thistles; trust in God, Junie,' and so I try to make the most of what I have."

"Mrs. Pickett, it is so hard for me, an Indian born girl, a daughter taught to pray to the wind, the sun, the rain as animate gods, capable of doing good or harm, to have that faith you possess--that beautiful faith in the hereafter, in a God whose heaven and home you know not of, yet where, you acknowledge, there are no flowers, no birds, no deer, no giving in marriage, no thirst, and no hunger. What, then, can my uneducated people be expected to relinquish--that great and Happy Hunting Ground, which is to be returned to us as it was before the white man drove us to the setting sun, drove the buffalo into the great sea and destroyed our homes, our villages, and killed our warriors? It is hard for Chiquita with all her learning and life among her palefaced sisters to say, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.' But I try to believe that your life is the better one for the world, for the human race, and that in the end there will be no more savages, no more heathens, no more unbelievers."