Part 10
“Are you ready to accompany me now, Captain?”
“I’ll have to be. But our lunch is ready; and, by my beans and bacon, I must have something to eat first! There! I didn’t mean to swear. It was a sort of slip of the tongue.”
“I am free to admit that it isn’t polite to swear, Captain. But you didn’t take the name of God in vain; so you are forgiven. You will grant that swearing, even by beans and bacon, is a bad habit, though. Don’t set a bad example before the children, to say nothing of the rest of us,” she added, laughing.
They found the patient in a high fever.
“It is his impatience that does it,” said Mrs. Benson. “He fumes like a madman sometimes.”
Mrs. McAlpin deftly unbound, dressed, and rebandaged the unfortunate limb.
“We’re doing nicely,” she said, when her work was finished. “You mustn’t fret yourself into a fever again. A sick man should be as serene as a May morning.”
“How in the name o’ Melchizedek and the Twelve Apostles is a man going to keep cool when the thermometer is raging in the nineties, and one’s self-elected nurse is scolding like a sitting hen? If she’d ride in the other wagon and leave you to do the nursing, I’d stand a chance to recover.”
“Mamma is getting on famously,” laughed the Little Doctor. “You are so amiable and sweet-tempered yourself that I can’t see why she doesn’t fall down before your injured foot and worship you. I feel almost tempted to try it myself. You don’t think she is enduring all this for fun, do you?”
“I suppose I haven’t been acting the angel; but it was because I wanted the society of my doctor.”
“You allude to Mrs. McAlpin, of course,” said the Captain, smiling.
“Who else in thunder should I mean? There is but one woman doctor in the world, so far as I know. Didn’t she find me in that infernal hole, wedged in it like a rat in a trap? And didn’t she patch my broken bones, like a trained physician, when there wasn’t a man in a hundred miles that could have done it?”
“It is never wise to argue a point with a man in a fever, Mr. Burns. We can talk it out later on. See! Mamma has brought soap, fresh water, and towels. You couldn’t have a better nurse. You must let her bathe your face and hands and head.”
“Won’t you take her place, Daphne?”
Captain Ranger and Mrs. Benson were not listening or looking just then; and as for an instant their eyes met, the patient felt upon his fevered forehead the fluttering touch of a soft, cool hand.
“Delicious!” he whispered. “I shall get well now.”
“Allow me,” said Mrs. Benson, elbowing her daughter aside; “I am head nurse in this ward.”
The patient groaned.
“The Captain says you ought to have been a man, Daphne,” said Mrs. Benson, as her daughter yielded her place.
“If my father had lived to see this day, he would have rejoiced that I didn’t allow my usefulness to run to waste because of my femininity. Of that I am as certain as that my patient is better.”
“You are a disobedient and ungrateful girl, Daphne.”
“You are my mamma.”
“I am not to blame for that, Daphne.”
“Am _I_?” asked the daughter, seriously. “I don’t pretend to understand, and so of course cannot explain the cause that leads to individual being, mamma dear. I know, though, that I am; and if the time should ever come that I can know why I am, I shall understand why I am a woman. I cannot now see that anybody is to be blamed on account of the fact, or accident, of sex.”
“You are to blame for being a thankless child, Daphne.”
“I am neither a child nor thankless, mamma dear. I simply desire to be and act myself. You know I love and honor you; but I have learned, by sad experience, that each human being exists primarily for himself or herself; and not one of us can live for another. If I had been taught this truth in my childhood, we might both have been spared much suffering. But”—turning to her patient—“we have other duties. Your fever has fallen several degrees in the past fifteen minutes. I must go. When you want to rail at anybody just pitch into me and let mamma have a rest. Jean will bring you some broth. I’ll send Mrs. O’Dowd to sit with you sometimes, to give mamma a little liberty. You two have been forced to keep each other’s company till you are both as cross as a pair of imprisoned cats.”
“I believe I’ve been pursuing the wrong policy,” said Mrs. Benson to the Captain, as they walked together on the burning sand. “If Daphne had been compelled to endure that patient’s petulance for more than a week, as I have, she would have been as weary of the sight of him as I am.”
“I am not so sure of that,” replied the Captain, “seeing they’re not married yet. Two cats will agree together like two doves, as long as they have their individual freedom; but if you tie ’em together, they’ll fight like dogs and tigers.”
“Poor little mamma! She’s all tired out, so she is!” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin, as she and her mother were walking out together after they had stopped for the night. “You must change places to-morrow with Mrs. O’Dowd. Then you can ride in Captain Ranger’s big family wagon with the children and me, and get your much-needed rest.”
“Do you mean to say that I shall ride in that widower’s wagon, Daphne, and his wife only just buried? What would people say?”
“Why should you think or care what anybody says, so long as you do your duty, mamma? Captain Ranger is a gentleman. His heart is buried with his wife. Don’t be a silly! Beg pardon, mamma. I didn’t mean to be slangy or saucy. We’ve other troubles in store, and ought not to be quarrelling between ourselves. Do you know that Donald McAlpin is following, or at least shadowing, this train?”
Mrs. Benson blanched.
“Why do you think that, Daphne?”
“I’ve seen him twice since we met that colony of freighters. If he persists in his persecutions, I’ll kill him!”
“Do not talk that way, child. People have been made innocent victims of the scaffold for having made threats which they never meant to and never did fulfil.”
“I have nothing to say against him as a man. But before God he is not my husband, no matter what the law may have decreed, and I am living a lie when I permit the outrage. He would make you an agreeable husband, because you love him. I’ve known this for many a day. If I were dead or divorced, you could become his wife, and then you would both be happy. We are all miserable as it is.”
“But think of the looks of it, daughter! What would people say?” Her eyes grew suddenly aglow with a newly awakened hope, in spite of her demurrer, and her heart beat hard.
“Do you intend to do what you know to be right in the sight of God? or do you mean to remain a slave all the days of your life to the idle words of men and women who care nothing for you, and to whom you owe no allegiance? Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. At least, I so read the Scripture, which you say is your rule of faith and practice.”
“But we owe allegiance to the English Church and to human law, my child.”
“That is true; and I for one intend to obey the laws of man till they are amended, although I was allowed no voice in their construction. But, thanks to the progressive spirit of the age, we have divorce courts established almost everywhere throughout the civilized world, so anybody can obey the law and still ‘to his own self be true.’”
“No divorce can be had in our church, Daphne, except for a nameless crime.”
“That ruling is a relic of barbarism. I will see that the way is opened for both you and Donald to obey the law and be honest with yourselves also.”
“But how about Mr. Burns? Does your rule apply to him?”
“We won’t discuss that matter, mamma. Mr. Burns fully understands that I am not a free woman, and he has no right to discuss with me a question that I am not at liberty to consider. Although I despise the law that holds me in its thrall, I will obey it till it is annulled.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, child.”
“Yes, I do, mamma. I have studied the law carefully. I shall obey it in everything I undertake.”
“Don’t you know that Rollin Burns is a pauper?”
“That’s neither here nor there. The possible future relations between Mr. Burns and myself are neither supposable nor discussable under present conditions. What a glorious world we live in!” she exclaimed, clinging to her mother’s arm and pulling her along. “How happy everybody might become if everybody could afford to be honest!”
“But public opinion is a moral safeguard, my child.”
“It has wellnigh made a lunatic of me,” exclaimed the daughter, with a sigh. “I should have been in an insane asylum if I had not grown strong enough to defy the thing you call public opinion. Now please remember, mamma, you may meet Donald McAlpin at any time. I have told you that he was shadowing us. But you are not to recognize him so long as I am his lawful wife, or it will be the worse for all of us. God knows, I am anxious enough to set him free; and I’ll do it as soon as the law will let me. ‘All things come to him who waits.’ Be hopeful, be trustful, be patient, mamma dear; and be sure ‘your own will come to you.’”
A solitary horseman galloped past them and halted at the camp.
“It’s Donald!” cried Mrs. Benson, nervously clutching her daughter’s arm. “Why can’t we speak to him, Daphne?”
“Come this way.”
Reluctantly Mrs. Benson followed.
“Let’s sit behind these rocks,” said the daughter. “It is fortunate that I gave Captain Ranger his latest name. He knows him only as Donald McPherson.”
They watched the two men parleying. Captain Ranger pointed toward the distant hills with one hand, and with the other was gesticulating vigorously.
“Will you promise not to let him recognize you while we are on this journey, mamma dear?”
“It would be an easy promise to make, my child, if I could know when, where, and under what circumstances we might meet again in the future.”
XIX
_A BRIEF MESSAGE FOR MRS. BENSON_
“We’ll not be able to advance another mile unless something can be done to cure the cattle’s feet,” exclaimed the Captain the next morning, when his teamsters came together for consultation.
“I have been studying the case during the night,” said Mrs. McAlpin, who was preparing breakfast. “It is cool and pleasant now, but it will be terribly hot by nine o’clock. We must treat the sore feet of our sufferers to a heroic cure, and get them out on the range, away from the sand of the public road, before the sun gets over the hills. We can’t drive a hoof over the road to-day.”
“I’d like to know how in blazes we’re going to doctor the cattle’s feet without medicine,” cried Hal. “We haven’t even enough o’ ‘Number Six’ on hand to give my off-leader’s left foot a thorough treatment.”
“I guess we have everything we need,” replied the Little Doctor. “Bring me your fullest tar-bucket. There, that’s encouraging. Got any turpentine, Captain? That’s good. Now bring me an iron pot, Susannah. Here’s a good bed of glowing coals. There,” she cried, as she emptied the liquid tar into the iron kettle. “Now let’s add the turpentine, and I’ll heat the mixture as slowly as possible over these red-hot coals. It is fortunate that the flames are dead, otherwise we might set our dish on fire and spoil our broth. Have you any oakum?”
“Not a bit. Who’d ’a’ thought we’d need oakum on a land-lubbers’ journey like this?” said the Captain.
The Little Doctor knitted her brows. “Have you some Manila rope and a big pan?” she asked.
“We have mother’s clothes-line, if that will do,” said Jean.
“Yo’ uns not gwine to empty dat stuff in my dish-pan, honey?” exclaimed Susannah, in indignant protest, as Mary was fetching the pan.
Mrs. McAlpin laughed.
The seething mixture was lifted dexterously from the coals in the nick of time to prevent an accident by fire. It was then emptied into the dish-pan and stirred to the consistency of blackstrap,—a commodity with which the wayfarers were familiar,—and pieces of the tarred rope were made ready for placing between the doctored hoofs.
“We’ll try our Little Doctor’s remedy on Scotty’s off-leader first,” said Hal. “If it should kill him, there will be only one dead, and he’s nearly dead anyhow.”
The poor beast bellowed pitifully as his hoof was plunged into the almost scalding mixture; but like the lassoed victim of a branding iron, he could not get away, and each hoof received its treatment in its turn.
By the doctor’s order, a tent had been cut into convenient patches; and the seared feet of the afflicted brute, after a liberal supply of the flour of sulphur had been added to the tar and turpentine, were securely wrapped with the pieces and bound with rope, to protect them from the dust and gravel of the roads.
By the time that each disabled animal had been subjected to this heroic treatment, it was long past noon, and the Captain decided to turn the teams back upon the range for the remainder of the day.
* * * * *
“May I take a ride on Sukie, daddie dear?” asked Jean. “I’ll find good grass for her, and plenty of it.”
“Yes, Jean. Take her to yonder ravine, where you see a clump of cottonwoods. You’ll be pretty sure to find some tender grass at their roots.”
Jean leaped nimbly to the saddle and cantered leisurely away.
Suddenly a bronzed and handsome horseman rode up beside her and lifted his hat,—a large sombrero, surmounting a pair of square shoulders that sported a gay serape.
“Good-morning, little miss. Or would you call it afternoon? I had stopped under the cottonwoods to graze my horse, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to accost you. Going to California?”
“No; to Oregon.”
“A God-forsaken country that. Rains thirteen months in every year.”
“Have you ever been there?”
The stranger shook his head. “I’ve had rain enough in England to do me for the rest of my life.”
“A little of the Oregon rains we’ve read about would be a godsend if we could have it now,” said Jean, mopping her perspiring face with the curtain of her sunbonnet, and glancing ruefully at the brazen sky.
“May I ride beside you for a little distance?”
“If we keep in sight of the wagons, sir.”
“You’re not afraid of me, I hope?”
He was close beside her now, so close he could have grasped her bridle-rein.
“Afraid? Of course not. I am not afraid of any gentleman.”
“Do you belong to yonder camp?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And there are two ladies travelling with you,—a widow and her daughter?”
“There are a grass widow and a nigger, sir.”
“Now see here, little one,” and his voice grew harsh and loud, “you’ve been coached; that’s evident. Don’t be frightened. I don’t mean to harm you. But I am no longer deceived. Will you do me a favor?”
He was reading her face anxiously.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“Will you carry a note for me to Mrs. Benson?”
“I don’t know, sir. See! They’re bringing in the cattle. I must hurry back to camp.”
“Wait a little, miss. I must write a note.”
“I haven’t promised to give it to anybody, sir.”
“But you’ll do it,” he said, thrusting a few hastily written, unsealed lines into her hand. “Give that to the young lady’s mother. I feel that I can trust you. Here’s a dollar. You will not read the note, nor say a word about it to any one?”
“You can trust me, sir, but I do not want your dollar.”
“Keep it, child.”
He wheeled and was gone. She watched him disappear in a cloud of dust, and hid the note away in the bosom of her dress.
“He trusted me, and I won’t read it, though I’d be glad to know its contents,” she whispered to herself. “Why does Fate make me the depositary of other people’s affairs and then burden me with secrecy? I’m only an ignorant girl; but I know enough about the secrets of more than one of our fellow-travellers to explode bombs in several directions if I’d tell!”
* * * * *
“I am overjoyed at the success of my first practice as a veterinary doctor,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next day.
“We’re all glad,” said the Captain. “Small use any man would have for this world if it weren’t for the women to help him out under difficulties.”
“Poor Captain! How he misses his wife!” she thought, as she sought the wagon where Scotty lay.
“I’d get well a great deal faster if I had you for a nurse, Daphne,” he said appealingly.
“Nature is doing her best for you. She’s mending your bones thoroughly. If we patched you up in too big a hurry, we’d soon be in trouble again.”
“But I feel like a chained eagle, lying here.”
“Captain Ranger is making you a pair of crutches, Mr. Burns. You’ll soon be out again on your well foot, if you obey orders. Where’s mamma?”
“In the shadow of the wagon, yonder.”
Mrs. Benson was resting in the shade, indulging in a silent reverie. “Are all the teachings of my life to be overthrown?” she said, as she thrust a note into her pocket and buried her face in her hands. “Can it be true that Daphne was right and I was wrong? What will people say? Daphne has good principles, but she’s as unsentimental as a Mandan squaw. She has no more romance in her make-up than black Susannah. Yet,” and a fluttering hope welled up in her heart, “she’s a true and faithful daughter. I would to Heaven that all the people in the world were as good.”
She produced her treasured note again, and read it stealthily.
“Yes, yes! it can be managed, and none of the curious will ever be the wiser,” she said, after due reflection. “It is indeed fortunate that he’s been compelled by the law of entail to take his mother’s name. Nobody will know him in Oregon.”
Mrs. McAlpin found Scotty at camping time with a voracious appetite and a temper like a caged bear.
“Where have you kept yourself through all this blistering afternoon?” he asked, munching his food heartily.
“I can’t stay with all my patients all the time, Mr. Burns, especially as so many of them are quadrupeds, with the hoof-ail.”
“I suppose, then, that I am to be classed as a biped, with the leg-ail.”
“Exactly.”
“Ouch! oh!” he exclaimed with a grimace, as the knitting bones gave a sudden twinge, reminding him that they were awake and on duty. “These infernal bandages are loose again, I hope.”
“Your bandages are doing nicely, sir. The Captain will have your crutches ready in a day or two. Then you can take some exercise.”
“What have you done with those hideous black garments, Daphne?”
“Do you like these gray ones better?”
“Yes, I like the gray ones better.”
“So does this abounding dust. My black clothes were getting rusty, so I made a contribution of them to the water nymphs of the Platte.”
“Why did you wear those weeds?”
“They served my purpose, sir.”
“You almost provoke me into profanity, Mrs. McAlpin; you are so mysteriously non-committal.”
“Glad to hear it. Men don’t feel like swearing when death is staring them in the face.”
“Your supper is getting cold, and Mrs. Benson says you must hurry up.” The intruder, as usual, was Jean.
“I will see you later, Mr. Burns,” said Mrs. McAlpin, and she ran away, laughing.
“You seem very happy this evening, mamma,” she said, as with cup and plate in hand she seated herself on a wagon-tongue.
Mrs. Benson blushed. “Why don’t you eat?” she asked, evading her daughter’s question.
“I hardly know. But I am out of sorts. Just think of men coming out on a journey like this, with ailing wives and unborn children, with no adequate preparation for their needs! I left one woman, less than two hours ago, with newly born twins, and a yearling squalling like mad at the foot of her bed. The mother was as docile as a kitten, and a hundred times more helpless.”
“Where was the father?”
“Oh, he was shambling around, helpless and in the way. He was kindness personified; but he was as useless as a monkey. When woman’s true history shall have been written, her part in the upbuilding of this nation will astound the world. I’ve seen heroines on this journey who far outrank the Alexanders, Washingtons, and Napoleons of any of our school histories. Yonder’s a herald coming to announce another case! Will you accompany me, mamma? I can ask Captain Ranger to stay with Mr. Burns.”
“Not to-night, Daphne. I am very tired. And you know I have no patience with a woman doctor, anyway. Women were seen and not heard when I was a girl.”
XX
_THE TEAMSTERS DESERT_
“You seem to be in trouble, my little man. What can I do to help you?” asked the Little Doctor, as a shocky-headed, freckle-faced child, ragged, barefoot, and dirty, paused in her presence, balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other, and occasionally rubbing his eyes with a grimy shirt-sleeve, open at the wrist and badly out at elbow.
“I hearn tell that you was a doctor, mum. Can you come to see my mam? She’s sick, awful.”
The child led the way to a rickety wagon, which had halted at an inconvenient distance from the creek, in the blazing sunshine, though a friendly tree stood near that might have afforded a grateful shade for an hour or more if the head of the family had thought to stop the wagon in the right spot before unhitching his team. Three or four sallow, barefoot, and ragged little children were playing in the sand. The scant remains of a most uninviting repast littered the ground. A half-dozen hungry dogs, tied to the wagon-wheels, out of reach of the poor remains of food, whined piteously.
A loose-jointed man shambled aimlessly about, wiping his tear-stained face on the buttonless sleeve of a very dirty shirt. “She’s got the cholera, an’ she’ll die, an’ thar’ll be nobody left to keer fur her young uns!” he sobbed within hearing of the writhing patient.
“When did this suffering begin?” asked the Little Doctor, trying hard not to smile.
“Nigh on to half a day ago, mum. I druv like hell to git to this ’ere crick. I’d hearn of it afore I left the last camp.”
“Have you a tent?”
“Lawd, no! nor nothin’ else to speak of.”
“But dogs and children!” the visitor thought, as she ruefully surveyed the scene.
“The steers have got the foot-rot. Kin you kore ’em?”
“Yes, but we must first attend to the needs of your wife. Go to Captain Ranger. Tell him I sent you. Tell him I must borrow one of his tents and some physic and a bottle of ‘Number Six.’ Ask for Mrs. O’Dowd, and be sure to say that Mrs. McAlpin wants her badly.”
When Captain Ranger and his man Limpy appeared on the scene, bringing the tent and medicines, water was already boiling in a black iron kettle, the only cooking utensil in sight. The tent was soon pitched, and a bed prepared for the sufferer, who was writhing in convulsions.
“Any woman accustomed to the comforts of a well-ordered home would have died,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next morning, after the crisis was past. “But the average specimen of the poor white trash of the original slave States has as many lives as a cat.”
“I didn’t have no doctor,” said the patient, as soon as she was able to be on her feet. “Thar was a woman yar, an’ she giv’ me some hot truck, but I jist kored myself.”
The woman was telling her story to a visitor, who had called, partly from sympathy, but chiefly from curiosity; and Mrs. McAlpin, who was assisting Captain Ranger to compound the mixture for the ailing feet of the stranger’s cattle, overheard the shrill-voiced visitor add, “I never did take no stock in them women doctors.”
“I wanted water,” continued the patient, “an’ couldn’t git none; so I waited till nobody was watchin’ and jist stole out o’ the tent in the night an’ swallered all I could hol’ from a canteen; and I mended from the word ‘go.’ The stuff was as warm as dish-water, but I wanted it so bad I didn’t stop to taste it.”
All day the convalescent wrestled with weakness; but as the afflicted cattle could not go forward till the following morning, she moved languidly about the camp and fed her family with beans and bacon, with the never-failing accompaniment of black coffee, which Captain Ranger declared was “strong enough to bear up an iron wedge.”
* * * * *