"I don"t feel either pity or pain in his case," said the doctor; "or, when it comes to that, for the other one, either."
"Well, you couldn"t have prevented it, anyway," she sighed.
"And wouldn"t have if I could," he declared. "I looked on them as one poison fighting another, as we set them to do in the human system. When one overcomes the other, and the body throws them both out, health follows."
"Do you think Jerry will recover?"
"There"s a chance for him," he replied.
"For his mother"s sake I hope he will," she said. "I went to see her, remembering in the midst of my distress her kind face and gentle heart.
I"m glad that I went, although my mission failed."
"No, nothing fails," he corrected gently. "What looks to us like failure from our side of it is only the working out of the plan laid down a long time ahead. We may never see the other side of the puzzle, but if we could see it we"d find that our apparent failure had been somebody else"s gain. It"s the balance of compensation. Your thought of Boyle"s mother, and your ride to appeal to her in my behalf, worked out in bringing his father here at a time when Jerry needed him as he never may need him in his life again."
"It was a strange coincidence," she reflected.
"We call such happenings that for want of a better name, or for the short-sightedness which keeps us from applying the proper one," said he.
"It"s better that you have concluded to give up the City of Refuge.
You"ll not need it now."
"It was a foolish undertaking, romantic and impossible, from the very beginning," she owned. "I never could have put it through."
"It would have carried many a heartache with it, and many a hard and lonely day," said he. "And so we are both back where we were, so far as landed possessions go in this country, at the beginning."
"I"ve lost considerable by my foolish dream," she confessed with regret.
"And I have gained everything," he smiled, taking her hand in his.
The world around them seemed to be too grave to look kindly on any love-pa.s.sages of tenderness or kisses, or triflings such as is the common way of a man with a maid. In that moment when hand touched hand she looked up into his eyes with warm softness glowing in her own, and on her lips stood an invitation which his heart sprang to seize, like an eager guest leaping through the portal of welcome.
At that moment, when eye drew eye, heart warmed to heart, and lips trembled to meet, Jerry Boyle coughed as if blood were mounting to his throat and cutting off his life.
Dr. Slavens was at his side in a moment. It must have been the strangulation of an uneasy dream, for there was no symptom of hemorrhage. The wounded man still slept, groaning and drawing the lips back from the teeth, as he had drawn them in his pa.s.sion when he came on that morning to meet his enemy with the intention in his heart to slay.
But love shuddered and grew pale in the cold nearness of death. The kiss so long deferred was not given, and the fluttering pulse which had warmed to welcome it fell slow, as one who strikes a long stride in a journey that has miles yet to measure before its end.
Governor Boyle was back in camp in the middle of the afternoon, and before night the tents and furnishings for lodging the party comfortably arrived from Comanche. The Governor pressed Agnes, who was considering riding to Comanche to find lodging, to remain there to a.s.sist and comfort his wife when she should arrive.
"We need the touch of a woman"s hand here," said he.
They brought Jerry"s tent and set it up for her. She was asleep at dusk.
Mrs. Boyle arrived next morning, having started as soon as the messenger bearing news of the tragedy reached the ranch. She was a slight, white-haired woman, who had gone through hardships before coming to prosperity on that frontier, so the fifty-mile ride in a wagon was no unusual or trying experience for her.
Whatever tears she had for her son"s sad plight she had spent on the rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its pangs to those of the present.
Her presence in camp, and her constant ministrations at her son"s side, relieved Dr. Slavens of considerable professional anxiety, as well as labor. It gave him time to walk about among the gigantic stones which cast their curse of barrenness over that broken stretch, Agnes with him, and make a further investigation of the land"s mineral possibilities.
"Ten-Gallon was telling the truth, in my opinion," said he. "I have explored these rocks from line to line of this claim, and I reached the conclusion a good many days ago that somebody had been misled in supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle"s persistent determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my mind."
"Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you expected to get out of it at the first," she suggested.
He looked at her questioningly.
"I mean the Governor"s declaration yesterday morning that he would pay you twice what you expected to get out of it if you would save Jerry"s life."
"Oh, _that_!" said he, as if he attached little importance to it.
"He"s a millionaire many times over," she reminded him. "He can afford to do it, and he should."
"I may be out of the case entirely before night," he told her, explaining that another physician would arrive on the first train from Cheyenne.
"You know best," said she, resigning hope for his big fee with a sigh.
"Smith will come over with your tent and goods today, very likely," said he, "and then we can leave. I had planned it all along, from the time we used to take those moonlight walks to the river, that we should leave this country together when it came our time to go."
"It would be wrong for you to waste your life here, even if you could make more money than elsewhere, when the world with more people and more pain in it needs you so badly," she encouraged him.
"Just so," he agreed. "It"s very well for Smith to stay here, and men of his kind, who have no broader world. They are doing humanity a great service in smoothing the desert and bringing the water into it."
"We will leave it to them," she said.
They tramped across the claim until they came in sight of Hun Shanklin"s tent. Its flap was blowing in the wind.
"The old rascal came over to make friends with me," said Slavens. "He claimed that he never lifted his hand against me. There"s his horse, trying to make it down the slope to the river. I"ll have to catch the beast and take that rope off.
"There"s a man over there!" Agnes exclaimed. "Look! There among the rocks to the right of the tent! I wonder who it is?"
Slavens looked where she pointed, just as the man disappeared among the rocks.
"It"s the Governor!" she whispered.
"Looked like his coat," he agreed.
"Do you suppose he"s----"
"Trying to locate old Shanklin"s mine," he said. "That"s what he"s after. If there"s copper on that piece the Governor will get it, even if his son doesn"t live to share with him. The difference of a figure or two in the description of a piece of land might be revised on the books, if one had the influence."
The doctor for whom Governor Boyle had sent arrived on the afternoon train from Cheyenne and reached the camp before sunset. He spoke in the highest terms of the manner in which Dr. Slavens had proceeded, and declared that it would be presumptuous meddling for him, or anyone else, to attempt to advise in the case.
Agnes heard his commendation with triumph in her eyes, and Mrs. Boyle gave Dr. Slavens her blessing in a tearful look. The doctor from Cheyenne took up his instrument-case and held out his hand with a great deal more respect in his bearing toward the unknown pract.i.tioner than he had shown upon his arrival.
"On vacation here?" he asked, puzzled to find any other excuse for so much ability running wild among the rocks in that bleak place.
"Something like that," answered Slavens noncommittally.