"What will melt frigid replies?"
"Or frozen glances?"
"Hot air!" from Bill. "Melt anything." And then he gave a laugh at his own wit that bid fair to dislodge the great rock so delicately balanced in the Devil"s Gorge.
"Let"s go explore the Devil"s Gorge now!" suggested Helen, springing to her feet, forgetting all about her fatigue, only thankful for the foolishness that had been started by Nan to hide her sister"s embarra.s.sment. What would Dr. Wright think of her? He must have understood very well what Bobby meant by attorney-generaling, if the mustard and cold gravy was a mystery.
The girls held back when they looked down the frightful abyss so well named, but the spinster educators went on, determined to get geological specimens if they died for it, and Helen, in a spirit of bravado, leaped ahead of the exploring party and sprang down the rocks like a veritable mountain goat. Her cheeks were still glowing over the remarks of that enfant terrible, Bobby.
"Be careful, Helen!" called Lewis Somerville, who had const.i.tuted himself squire of spinsters and was helping those intrepid geologists down the slippery rocks. Helen tossed her head at her cousin and went on in her mad descent, swinging from rock to rock with the occasional help of a scrub oak that had somehow gained foothold on the barren boulders.
"Look out for snakes, Helen!" cried Douglas, who had turned back with the rest of the party.
But Helen heeded nothing and seemed bent on reaching the lowest point of the chasm. It flashed across her mind that she was a little like the Englishman. He was trying to escape from the buzzing and roaring in his head while she was in a mad race with her conscience. Why should she be so unkind and sharp with Dr. Wright? She didn"t know.
She could hear the people above talking and their voices seemed thin and far away, so deep had she penetrated into the gorge.
"Jest a leetle below whar Miss Helen is standing was whar they picked up the Englishman," she could hear Josh"s peculiar mountain voice recite before the party moved off back toward the temporary camp where they had had luncheon. The ladies on science bent, their squire, Dr. Wright and she were the only explorers left.
"Right down there is where that poor man fell," she said to herself. "I don"t believe it was suicide, either," and then she blushed for agreeing with Dr. Wright. "But it would be so easy to fall from any of these slippery crags. He might have been on the opposite cliff, which is certainly a precarious spot, and vertigo might have attacked him, and he might have gone over backwards, clutching at the scrub oaks as he fell, and gone down, down--why, what is that hanging in the tree there?"
Something was certainly caught in the branches of a dwarf tree that clung to the unfriendly rocks with determined roots--something that looked like a wallet, but she could not be sure.
"Lewis!" she called, but Lewis was so taken up with hanging by his toes and reaching for a particularly rare specimen of fern that one of the dames wanted for her collection, that he did not hear her calling.
"Will I do?" asked Dr. Wright from somewhere above her.
"Oh, no, I thank you. I don"t want anything." And then the buzzing conscience started up and she said more cordially, "I see something hanging in a scrub oak over there that I am going to get."
"Let me get it for you," and the young doctor started to swing himself down the cliff to the ledge where Helen was standing.
Before he reached her, however, she had determined to make the attempt herself. It was not much of a jump for one as athletic as Helen. It was several feet below where she was standing and the gorge narrowed at that point, making little more than a step across to the opposite ledge.
She gave a flying leap and landed safely, clutching the scrub oak in whose branches the wallet was lodged. Dr. Wright reached the spot where she had been standing just as she touched the rock below. He could not help admiring her grace and athletic figure as she made the jump, although his heart was sore at her persistent unkindness to him. He did not want to find her attractive and determined to let this visit to the camp be his last. She seemed to think that he had courted the power of attorney that had been thrust upon him, or why should she have said whatever she had said that had caused Bobby"s prattling? It was thoroughly ungenerous of her and unkind and he for one was not going to place himself in a position to have to endure it. The other members of the family were so very nice to him that he did not relish letting the summer go by without visiting them again--and Bobby--dear little shover.
He could but confess, however, that their kindness was outweighed in his heart by Helen"s unkindness, and he determined to stay away.
A second after Helen had made her triumphant leap, she gave a sharp cry.
Dr. Wright started toward her and his keen gaze saw an ugly snake gliding away across the rocks, disappearing in a crevice.
"My G.o.d, Helen! Did he bite you?" No bitterness now was in the young man"s heart as he jumped the chasm and landed by Helen"s side, just as she sank trembling to the ground.
She said afterwards it was not because it hurt so much, only for a moment was the pain intense, but she felt a kind of horror as though the poison had penetrated her very soul. She was filled with fear that could only have been equalled by Susan"s dread of hants.
"Where is it?" the doctor questioned with a voice of such sympathy and tenderness that Helen"s thoughts went back to a time in her childhood when she had her tonsils removed. When she came from under the anesthetic, her father was holding her hand and he spoke to her in just such a tone.
"My heel! Just above the shoe!" she gasped.
"Take off your shoe and stocking as quick as you can."
She obeyed without question and Dr. Wright, with a deftness surprising in a man, twisted a handkerchief around her ankle just above the injured spot, and so tightly did he bind it, that it was all Helen could do to keep from crying out.
"I know it hurts, but we have to bear it."
His "we" made her feel in some way that it hurt him, too. But what was he doing? Without a word he had knelt and had his mouth to the wound and was sucking out the poison.
Helen hid her face in her hands. It took only a moment and then the kind voice said: "Now we have a little more to stand." He quickly opened his miniature case and, handing her a tiny phial, told her to take two of the pellets, which she did, while he got out a small hard alcohol lamp and lighted it. Then, producing the proper instruments from the wonderful case, he proceeded to cauterize the wound. Helen gritted her teeth and made not one murmur.
"Your father"s own daughter," was all he said as he put up his instruments, but that was as music in the ears of Helen. He then produced a small bottle from another pocket and washed out his own mouth with a thoroughness that explained his exceedingly perfect teeth.
"The wound is a very slight one and I truly believe you will have absolutely no trouble, but you must take every precaution and be very quiet for a day or so. Lewis and I together will carry you up to Josephus. A snake bite can be of little consequence if it is taken hold of immediately. Can you stand the ligature a little tighter?"
"Ye--s!"
"Ah, I see it is tight enough. You can put your stocking on again, but first I must make a.s.surance doubly sure and cut out a great hole where the rascal attacked you. There might be poison in it." He deftly bandaged the injured ankle with a roll of gauze he produced from yet another pocket, first treating the wound with iodine. "I wish I had some permanganate of potash but I fancy the work is already done and the iodine will be all right. He got you on the Achilles tendon. I wonder if it is your only vulnerable spot, too."
"No, it is not. I am full of vulnerable spots! Oh, Dr. Wright, I am not nearly so mean as I seem. I am so sorry I was so rude to you--I--I am going to be better. I am sorry I did not wear the leggins and I am sorry I did not look where I was stepping--I am sorry I jumped over the gorge when I saw you coming. I just did it to irritate you. I am sorry to have caused you all this trouble and I am so grateful to you that I can hardly----" but here Helen actually blubbered, something that she never did.
"Why, you poor little girl! I haven"t a doubt that I have been as horrid as you have thought I was and dictatorial and interfering and mean--and everything. Please forgive me and suppose we just be the good friends that somehow I believe we were cut out to be, you and Bobby and I;" and he took the girl"s hand in his and patted it gently while she wept on.
"Can"t you stop crying, honey?"
"I be--be--believe I could if I had a handkerchief, but I"ve lost mine."
"And mine is made into a ligature. Would a few yards of gauze help any?"
And then they both laughed while he unwound the gauze.
All of this had taken but a few minutes and Lewis and the scientific devotees had no idea that anything so terrifying as a snake bite was going on. They came in view just as Helen dried her eyes on the few yards of gauze.
"h.e.l.lo! What"s up?"
"Oh, Lewis, a snake bit me!"
"Gee! A rattler?"
Dr. Wright held up a warning finger behind Helen"s back.
"He got out of the way so fast we did not get a good look at him, but it is not a bad bite, and everything has been done that could be done, and now Miss Helen is going to take one more of these little green pellets and you and I are going to carry her up to Josephus."
The ladies were very solicitous and anxious to do anything in their power, but they were calm and quiet and Helen thanked her stars that the rest of the party had gone back and not ventured so far into the gorge.
"It would have been awful to have them buzzing all around me, yelling and screaming and squealing," she said to herself, and then the thought came to her of the horror all the girls had of snakes and the consternation her accident would cause among the week-enders. But why need they know? It was her own fault that she had been bitten, and such a thing need never happen again if only proper precautions were taken, such as leggins and looking where you stepped and keeping away from the Devil"s Gorge, where snakes were sure to abound.
"Dr. Wright, do you think it would be possible to keep this thing perfectly quiet? I am so afraid that my being bitten by a snake would give our camp such a bad name that it would be a failure from now on."
"Of course it could be kept quiet. What do you think, Somerville?"
"Me! Why, I"m game to keep my mouth shut."