Brave words are one thing, and inflammation in a gunshot wound is another. Infection set up in Jerry Boyle’s hurt on the day after that which the doctor had marked as the critical point in his battle for life.
Dr. Slavens was of the opinion that the bullet had carried a piece of clothing into the wound, which it was not able to discharge of itself. An operation for its removal was the one hope of saving the patient, and that measure for relief was attended by so many perils as to make it very desperate indeed.
The doctor viewed this alarming turn in his patient with deep concern, not so much out of sympathy for the sufferer and his parents, perhaps, as on his personal account. The welfare of Jerry Boyle had become the most important thing in life to him, for his own future hinged on that as its most vital bearing.
Agnes was firm in her adherence to the plan of procedure which she had announced. She declared that, as matters stood, she would not become a burden, with all her encumbrances, upon his slender resources. If mischance wrested the promised fee out of his hands, then they must go their ways separately. She repeated her determination to abide by that on the morning when Dr.
Slavens was hurt and disappointed. It seemed that his faith in her suffered a blighting frost.
“In plain words,” he charged, “you will refuse to marry me because I am poor.”
“There’s no other way to put it,” she admitted. “But I refuse only out of my boundless esteem and tenderness for you and your success. I am putting down happiness when I do this, and taking up an additional load of pain. But what peace or self-respect would ever be mine again if I should consent to add the burden of two helpless old people to what you will have to carry on your own account?”
“My back is broad enough to be Atlas to your little world,” he declared.
“But there’s no use strangling success,” she argued. “It can’t be many years, at the longest, until time and nature relieve my tottering charges of their dependence on me. If you would care to wait, and if I might not be too old––”
“If there’s nothing better for it, then we’ll wait,” he cut in almost sharply. “Do you remember how I showed you to hold that cone?”
She had consented to assist him in the operation to the extent of keeping the patient under the ether after he had administered it.
“This way,” said she, placing the cotton-filled paper cone over the nostrils.
From the physician’s standpoint, the operation was
In the case of Jerry Boyle the matter wore a brighter aspect all around. The doctor found the bit of coat-lining which the bullet had carried in with it, and removed it. The seat of inflammation was centered around it, as he had foreseen, and the patient was still alive, even though the greater part of the day had passed since the tormenting piece of cloth was removed.
The camp was hushed in the depression of despair. Until that day they had heard Mrs. Boyle’s hopeful voice cheering her husband, upon whom the foreboding of disaster seemed to weigh prophetically. Sometimes she had sung in a low voice as she watched beside her son. But now her courage seemed to have left her, and she sat in the tent with the Governor, huddled like two old tempest-beaten birds hiding under a frail shelter which could not shield them from the last bitter blow. They had given the care of their son over to the doctor and Agnes entirely, watching their coming and going with tearful eyes, waiting for the word that would cut the slender stay of hope.
On the afternoon of the second day after the operation, Agnes entered the tent and looked across the patient’s cot into Dr. Slavens’ tired eyes. He shook his head, holding the sufferer’s wrist, his finger on the fluttering
She went to her own tent and sat in the sun, which still fell hot and bright. The Governor and his wife had let down the flap of their tent, as if they could no longer bear the pain of watching. Tears came into Agnes’ eyes as she waited there in the wreckage of so many human hopes; tears for the mother who had borne that unworthy son, but whose heart was tender for him as if his soul had been without a stain; tears for the old man whose spirit was broken, and tears for herself and her own dreams, and all the tender things which she had allowed to spring within her breast.
After a long time Dr. Slavens came out of the hospital-tent and let the flap down after him. The sun was striking long, slanting shadows across the barrens; the fire was dying out of its touch. Agnes’ heart sank as she saw the doctor draw away a little distance, and then turn and walk a little beat, back and forth, back and forth, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind him in an attitude of thorough disappointment and deep gloom. She got up and went to him, a feeling that all was over.
“Never mind,” she consoled, lifting her tear-streaked face to meet his haggard look. “You’ve lost, but I
“Agnes, you have come in good time,” said he, lifting his hand to his forehead wearily.
“I am not noble enough to sacrifice my happiness for your good,” she continued. “I am too weak and common, and womanly frail for that. I cannot carry out my brave resolution, now that you’ve lost. We will go away together, according to your plan, and I will live by your plan, always and forever.”
“You have come in good time–in good time,” said he again, as one speaking in a daze.
Then he drew her to his breast, where her head lay fair and bright, her straying hair, spread like a shattered sunbeam, lifting in the young wind that came from the hills beyond the river.
There she rested against the rock of his strength, his hand caressing her wild tresses, the quiver of her sobbing breast stirring him like a warm and quickening draught.
“You did well to come and tell me this,” said he, “for, as I love you, my dear, dear woman, I would not have had you on the other terms. But I have not lost. Jerry Boyle has emerged from the shadow. He will live.”
After that day when his adventuring soul strayed so near the portal which opens in but one direction, Boyle’s
Young Boyle was full of the interest of life again, and his stock of audacity did not appear to be in the least diminished by his melancholy experience. He treated Dr. Slavens on the footing of an old friend, and if there was any shame in his heart at his past behavior toward Agnes, his colorless cheeks did not betray it.
With the exception of one flying visit to the capital city of the state, Governor Boyle had remained in camp faithfully since the day of the tragedy. But the slow days in those solitudes were galling to his busy mind once the safety of his boy’s life was assured. He became in a measure dictatorial and high-handed in his dealings with the doctor, and altogether patronizing.
Dr. Slavens considered his duty toward the patient at an end on the morning when they loaded him into the spring wagon to take him to Comanche. He told the Governor as much.
“He’ll be able to get up in a few days more,” said the doctor, “and inside of a month he’ll be riding his horse as if daylight never had been let through him.”
Governor Boyle took this announcement as the signal for him to produce his checkbook, which he did with considerable ostentation and flourish.
“How much did you expect to get out of this pile of rocks?” he asked the doctor, poising his fountain-pen over the page.
Dr. Slavens colored under the question, which came so sharply and indelicately, although he had rehearsed in his mind for that moment an uncounted number of times. He said nothing, fumbling as he was for a reply.
Jerry, lying back on his cot in the wagon, his head propped up, laughed shortly and answered for him.
“It was about twenty thousand, wasn’t it, Doctor?”
“Somewhere around there,” admitted Slavens, as if confessing some wild folly.
“Well, I said I’d give you half as much as you expected to get out of it if you pulled Jerry through, and I’m here to keep my word,” said the Governor, beginning to write.
Agnes looked at the doctor, indignant amazement in her face. Then she turned to the Governor sharply.
“I beg your pardon, Governor Boyle, but I was present when you made that promise; you said you’d pay him twice as much as he hoped to get out of the claim if he saved Jerry’s life,” said she.
Governor Boyle raised his eyes with a cold, severe look on his bearded face.
“I beg your pardon!” said he with withering rebuke, which carried with it denial and challenge of proof. That said, he bent to his writing again.
Jerry Boyle laughed.
“Oh, jar loose a little, Governor–be a sport!” he urged.
“Here is my check for ten thousand dollars, Doctor,” said the Governor, handing the slip to Slavens; “I
The Governor mounted his horse, and gave the driver the word to proceed slowly to the station.
“And if I croak on the road over the Governor’ll stop payment on the check,” said Jerry facetiously.
“Well, unless you get busy with that little gun of yours and somebody puts another hole through you on the way,” the doctor assured him, “I’ll make it to the bank door with a perfectly good check in my hand.”
Young Boyle held out his hand in farewell, his face suddenly sober and serious.
“The gun has been cached,” said he. “I promised mother I’d never sling it on a man again, and I’m going to stick to it. I’m going to get a bill put through the Legislature making it a felony to pack one, if it can be done. I’m cured, Doctor, in more ways than one.”
The cavalcade moved off down the winding road. Agnes was ablaze with indignation.
“The idea of that man going back on his solemn word, given in the very presence of death!”
“Never mind; that’s the way he made his money, I suppose,” said the doctor. “I’ve got more out of it than I ever expected to get without a row, and I’m going to make a line for that bank in Cheyenne and get the money on his check before he changes his mind. He may get to thinking before he gets home that Jerry isn’t worth ten thousand dollars.”
As they rode up to the rise of the hill, Agnes reined in and stopped.
“Here is where we changed places on the coach that day when Smith thought there was going to be a fight,” she recalled.
“Yes, this is the place,” he said, looking around with a smile. “Old Hun Shanklin was up here spying out the land.”
“Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he picked you out as a man who would put up a fight,” said she.
“Well, let us hope that he made a good guess,” Slavens said, “for here’s where we take up the racket with the world again.”
“We changed places on the coach that day; you took the post of danger,” she reflected, her eyes roaming the browning hills and coming back to his face with a caress in their placid depths.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, gravely; “where a man belongs.”
Dr. Slavens gathered up his reins to go, yet lingered a little, looking out over the gray leagues of that vast land unfolded with its new adventures at his feet. Agnes drew near, turned in her saddle to view again the place of desolation strewn over with its monumental stones.
“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.
“It was cursed and unholy when I came to it; I leave it sanctified by my most precious memory,” said he.
He rode on; Agnes, pressing after, came yet a little way behind, content to have it so, his breast between her and the world. And that was the manner of their going from the place of stones.
