Chapter 18

Rymer, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed young fellow, one of Bryant's staff, walked out of the shack, pulling on his coat. He had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, at which he was sucking rapidly. In spite of its dark lacquer of tan his face had a grayish tinge.

"Sick?" he asked of Bryant, jerking a nod toward Louise Graham.

"A bit. Have Doc give you a little brandy in a glass. And bring out her things, too."

Rymer went back into the shack, presently returning with the liquor and accompanied by the young doctor, who still had his sleeves rolled up. Louise swallowed the fiery dram.

"That--that would raise the dead!" she gasped, wiping sudden tears from her eyes. She sat up, pushed back the hair from her brow, and began to glance about.

"How's your man?" Bryant asked the doctor.

"Right as a trivet--if no complications set in. Have him stowed on a cot in the inner room. Bring on your next."

"You ought to be the next," said Lee, darkly.

"Because I grabbed her? Well, I'll use her another time if she's about. Steady as a pin. No wasted motion, either. Passed me instruments and things like a veteran nurse. I just gave a nod or glance and she had the right tray. I wanted to pat her on the shoulder. Can't give people that thing; it's a born knack. Knowing exactly what's wanted at the instant. She has it, has it to the tips of her fingers."

Lee said no more. The young doctor was still labouring under the excitement of the past hour and swimming in exultation at performing an operation that would have taxed the skill of an experienced surgeon. It had been one of those wicked cases--arm crushed to the shoulder, everything gone into a hodge-podge of flesh and arteries and splintered bone, a case for fast work and at the same time for delicate closure of the stump. This had been thrust at Higginson like a flash, he out of a medical school but a year and a half, still coaxing a moustache, so to speak. Lee perceived it all. The matter for Higginson had been like the ditch with Bryant: something tremendous, something to be met with the means at hand, something to be accomplished at all costs. And now his brain was ringing with triumph. He was superior to anything Bryant might think or say or do. For the moment he was quite ecstatic. One in his exalted state could conceive nothing unmeet in having haled a strange, sensitive girl into the ghastly business for an assistant.

"I'll conduct Miss Graham to my office, where she can remain until she's wholly herself," Bryant said. "This air is too sharp. You have everything, Rymer--cap, coat, gauntlets? Bring them along."

"But I'm feeling better now," Louise protested.

"You're not yet fit to start home. Over there it's warm and quiet." He rose to help her remove the great apron.

In the shack at the head of the street where he led her, he made her comfortable in an old arm-chair from his ranch house with a Navajo rug over her lap. As he stirred up the fire, she gazed about at the room. In one corner was a desk knocked together of boards, littered with papers; near it on the floor were boxes stuffed with rolls of blue-prints; the wall spaces between windows were filled with statements and reports; bulging card-board files rested on a shelf; from nails hung an old coat and a camera; in another corner leaned a tripod, rod, and a six-foot brass-edged measure specked with clay; and piled in a heap beyond the stove were a saddle, a pair of boots, chunks of piñon pine, and a discarded flannel shirt on which lay a gray cat nursing a kitten. Through the inner door, standing open, she had a glimpse of two cots with tumbled blankets. The place was the office and temporary home of a busy man, a rough board-and-tar-paper habitation that went forward on skids as the camp went forward, the workshop and living-quarters of a director who was stripped down to the hard essentials of toil and whose brain was the nerve centre of a desperate effort by a host of horses and men.

"You have companions, I see," Louise remarked, indicating the mother cat and kitten.

"Dave's," was his reply, as he finished at the stove. "He found them somewhere. There were four kittens to begin with, but only one is left. It's a hard game for cats to survive in a camp like this."

"Poor little things!"

"Dave says he'll save this kitten, or know why."

"What about Dave himself with all these rough men?"

"It leaves him untouched," Lee said. "Doesn't hurt a boy when he's made of the right stuff. He'll be better for it, in fact. Many a grown man would be more competent with the knowledge Dave's picking up here, young as he is. He's learning what work means and what men are and what's what generally. When this job is done, I'm going to send him off to school; and he'll eat up his studies. Just watch and see." Bryant laughed. "He's aching to become an engineer. He has his mark already fixed, which not one boy in a thousand at his age has. And all this is priming him to go to his mark like a shot."

"I hadn't thought of that," she stated.

"Actually he's soaking up more arithmetic, geology, physics, veterinary knowledge, and so on, by pumping Pat Carrigan, the engineers, and the men, than I supposed his head could hold," Lee continued. "When he gets at his books, they won't be meaningless things to him. Not much! He'll understand what prompted them and what they open up. Well, now, are you feeling better?"

"Yes, I think so." Then she said, "But I'm keeping you away from your work. You go, and when I'm--"

"Wouldn't think of it. Nothing pressing." And Bryant began to move about thoughtfully, now going to gaze out a window and now returning to stand and fix his eyes upon her intently.

"That was a distressing experience for you," he went on, presently. "I feel all upset at your being in there. Higginson was desperate, I suppose, and grasped at you because you happened to be there and he could not wait."

She put out a hand toward Lee.

"Don't scold him please," she said.

"Little good it would do now," he replied. "He'll be so cocky that he'll dare me to fire him if I say a word, and grin in my face, for he knows now that he's a good man and that I know it and will never let him go."

"Higginson, is that his name?" Louise asked. "Well, he is a good man. When he started the engineer using the chloroform and me arranging things, he was swallowing hard. I saw he was terribly nervous and keyed up. But he went right at the operation without faltering and with a sort of doggedness. As if nothing should stop him. I myself was doing rather mistily what he wanted. The chloroform, the smell of antiseptics, the shiny instruments, the cutting, the nipping of blood-vessels with forceps and tying them, the clipping with scissors, the sewing--all went to my head. And I constantly had to tell myself, 'Don't be silly! You're not going to faint. He might fail if you did. That tray, those forceps, those sponges, that thread, that's what he wants now. Keep your head. Don't be a quitter.' And so on through eternity--it seemed an eternity, anyway. I think the young engineer with me thought so, too. He turned quite green once or twice. But then I must have looked that way throughout. All at once it was over, suddenly. Quite unexpectedly, too. I had come to believe that it would go on and on forever. But, as I say, all at once it was done and the men were wheeling the bandaged fellow into the other room. Then the doctor called over his shoulder at me, 'Open the door, girl; let in some air.' So I opened it as he wanted, and came out."

Bryant was greatly affected by that simple recital. He began to walk back and forth beside Louise, restlessly thrusting his hands in his coat pockets but immediately pulling them out as if there were no satisfaction in the action, and casting troubled glances at her from under close-drawn brows. His disquietude moved her to speak.

"You're worrying about me, Mr. Bryant; you mustn't do that. In a few minutes more I'll be entirely recovered. I should be foolish to pretend that the happening wasn't a shock to me, but I'm not a weakling--I've health and strength. I'll not permit the thought of the operation to depress my spirits. Indeed, I know I'll be very proud of what I did this afternoon, for it was a chance to do a real, disinterested service. And I can guess what father will say when he learns of it--'Louise, you did just right. Exactly what you should do under the circumstances.'"

Already the colour had reappeared in her cheeks. A resilience of nature was indeed hers, he perceived, that enabled her to undergo ordeals that would prostrate many women. It came, undoubtedly, from the same springs out of which rose her splendid courage, her fine sympathy. Ah, that golden quality of sympathy! Because of it her duty that day had seemed plain and clear.

"Louise--may I not use that name, for we're friends?--Louise, you're the bravest, kindest girl I have ever known. I mean it, really. I've never forgotten your generous act that day when someone so brutally killed my dog Mike, how you tried to save him. I didn't know you then, but that made no difference to you. And now when you find an opportunity to help save a man's life, you never flinch."

"Why, it's the natural thing to do."

"Is it? I was beginning to think selfishness was the natural thing," he said, with a hard, twisted smile.

She rested her hand on his sleeve for an instant. A smile and a shake of her head accompanied the action.

"I know better than that, Lee Bryant," she rejoined. "You're not selfish yourself and will never arrive at a time when you'll believe what you said."

"But there are selfish people, many of them."

"Yes. Of course."

"And one can't change them, and they cause infinite anxiety in others----"

"Yes; that, too. Has Mr. Menocal been troubling you in some new way?"

Lee rose hastily. "I wasn't thinking of him," said he; and he went to a window and stared out at the engineers' shack across the street. Her touch on his arm, her tone, her solicitude, agitated him more than he dared let her see. Why in the name of heaven couldn't he have a Ruth who was like her? A Ruth who was a Louise, with all of her lovable qualities and splendid courage and fine nobility of heart?

He swung about to gaze at her. She yet sat half turned in her seat so that her clear profile was before his eyes. Her soft chestnut hair glinted with gleams of the fire that escaped through a crack in the door. Her features were in repose. Something in her attitude, in her face, gave her a girlish appearance, as she might have looked when sixteen--an infinite candor, an innocence and simplicity, that alone comes from a serene spirit.

Presently he discovered that she had moved her head about, that she was looking straight at him. Bryant experienced a singular emotion.

"Some serious trouble is disturbing you," she said.

Her eyes continued fixed upon his, increasing his uneasiness. He felt himself flushing. He made a gesture as if whatever it was might be disregarded, then said, "Yes."

"You're not still anxious concerning me? I'm rested--see!"

She sprang up, casting off the rug and spreading her arms wide for his scrutiny. The heat of the fire had put the glow into her cheeks again; a smile rested on her lips; she seemed poised for an upward flight.

"I'll take you home," he said, abruptly.

"Oh, no. I can ride----"

"One of the boys will bring your horse to you in the morning," he continued, as if she had not spoken. "It would be dark before you reached home; dusk is already at the windows. And you would be chilled through. You've no business to be riding after what you've been through. I'll bring my car to the door while you're putting on your things."

A vague fear sent him out of the door quickly. Ruth in his mind was like a figure projected far off in the landscape, occupied, distant, facing away; but Louise Graham was by, and despite his wish or will, or her knowledge, drawing his heart. What he had sought in Ruth was in her possession, the possibility of happiness. Life had deluded him and seemed about to crush him in a savage clutch. As he moved along the street, this apprehension lay cold in his breast; he could not dismiss it; it persisted like a dull throb of pain. A sudden fury swept him. The place was becoming intolerable, the mesa a hell. He burned to chuck the whole wretched business.

When he returned with the car he was at least outwardly calm. He helped Louise into the seat.

"I'll have you home in no time," said he.

"And you must stay for supper."

"Yes; why not. Might as well."

"And we'll pick up the girls; all of us can crowd in here somewhere."

The slightest pause followed before his answer.

"Certainly," he said. "We can all ride."

Imogene's cabin, however, was the only one showing a light when they stopped before the pair of little houses, and only Imogene was at home. She was delighted to go with Lee and Louise. Ruth had driven with Charlie Menocal to Kennard earlier in the afternoon, she briefly stated. Then she remarked:

"Aren't you dissipating frightfully to-night, Lee?"

"Like a regular devil," was the response.