Then he dropped back upon the bed and didn"t care whether he lived or not.
Followed days of fever, through which Ward lived crazily and lost count of the hours as they pa.s.sed. Days when he needed good nursing, and did not get so much as a drink of water, except through pain and effort.
Hours when he cursed Buck Olney and thought he had him bound to the chair in the cabin. Hours when he watched for him, gun in hand, through the window beside the bunk.
It was while he was staring gla.s.sy-eyed through the window that his attention wandered to the big, white bowl of stewed prunes. They looked good, with their shiny, succulent plumpness standing up like little wrinkled islands in the small sea of brown juice. Ward reached out with his left hand--he was gripping the gun in his right, ready for Buck when he showed up--and picked a prune out of the dish. It was his first morsel of food since the morning when he had tried to eat his breakfast while Buck Olney stared at him with the furtive malevolence of a trapped animal. That was three days ago. The prune tasted even better than it looked. Ward picked out another and another.
He forgot his feverish hallucination that Buck Olney was waiting outside there until he caught Ward off his guard. He lay back on his pillow, his fingers relaxed upon the gun. He closed his eyes and lay quiet. Perhaps he slept a little.
When he opened his eyes he was in the dark. The window was a transparent black square sprinkled with stars. Ward watched them awhile. He thought of Billy Louise; he would like to know how her mother was getting along and how much longer they expected to stay in Boise. He thought of the times she had kissed him--twice, and of her own accord. She would not have done it, either time, if he had asked her; he knew her well enough for that. She must be left free to obey the impulses of that big, brave heart of hers. A girl with a smaller soul and one less fine would have blushed and simpered and acted the fool generally at the mere thought of kissing a man of her own accord.
Billy Louise had been tender as Christ Himself, and as sweet and pure.
Was there another girl like her in the world? Ward looked at the stars and smiled. There was never such another, he told himself. And she "liked him to pieces"; she had said so. Ward laughed a little in spite of his throbbing leg. "Some other girl would have said, "Ward, I lo-ove you,"" he grinned. "Wilhemina is different."
He lay there looking up at the stars and thinking, thinking. Once his lips moved. He was saying "Wilhemina-mine" softly to himself. His eyes, shining in the starlight, were very tender. After a long while he fell asleep, still thinking of her. A late moon came up and touched his face and showed it thin and sunken-eyed, yet with the little smile hidden behind his lips, for he was dreaming of Billy Louise.
Some time after daylight Ward woke and wanted a cigarette, which was a sign that he was feeling a little more like himself. He was feverish still, and the beating pain in his leg was maddening. But his brain was clear of fever-fog. He smoked a little of the cigarette he made from the supply on the shelf behind the bunk, and after that he looked about him for something to eat.
He had made a final trip to Hardup two weeks before, and had brought back supplies for the winter. And because his pay streak of gravel-bank had yielded a fair harvest, he had not stinted himself on the things he liked to eat. He lay looking over the piled boxes against the farther wall, and wondered if he could reach the box of crackers and drag it up beside the bunk. He was weak, and to move his leg was agony. Well, there was the dish of prunes on the window-sill.
Ward ate a dozen or so--but he wanted the crackers. He leaned as far as he could from the bed, and the box was still two feet from his outstretched fingers. He lay and considered how he might bring the box within reach.
At the head of the bunk stood the case of peaches and beneath that the case of canned tomatoes, the two forming a stand for his lantern. He eyed them thoughtfully, chewing a corner of his underlip. He did not want peaches or tomatoes just then; he wanted those soda-crackers.
He took Buck Olney"s knife--he was finding it a most useful souvenir of the encounter!--and pried off a board from the peach box. Two nails stuck out through each end of the board. He leaned again from the bed, reached out with the board, and caught the nails in a crack on the upper edge of the cracker-box. He dragged the box toward him until it caught against a ridge in the rough board floor, when the nails bent outward and slipped away from the crack. Ward lay back, exhausted with the effort he had made and tormented with the pain in his leg.
After awhile he took the piece of h.o.a.rd and managed to slide it under the box, lifting a corner of it over the ridge. That was hard work, harder than you would believe unless you tried it yourself after lying three days fasting, with a broken leg and a fever. He had to rest again before he took the other end of the board, that had the good nails, and pulled the box up beside the bunk.
In a few minutes he made another effort and pried part of the cover off the cracker-box with the knife. Then he pulled out half a dozen crackers and ate them, drank half a dipper of water, and felt better.
In an hour or so he believed he could stand it to fix up his leg a little. There was one splint that was poorly wrapped, or something.
It felt as though it were digging slivers into his leg, and he couldn"t stand it any longer.
He pulled himself up until he was sitting with his back against the wall at the head of his bunk and smoked a cigarette before he went any farther. Then he unwrapped the bandage carefully, removed the splint that hurt the worst, and gently ma.s.saged the crease in the bruised, swollen flesh where the narrow board had pressed so cruelly.
The crease itched horribly, and it was too sore to scratch. Ward cussed it and then got the carbolized vaseline and rubbed that on, wincing at the pain of his lightest touch. He did not hurry; he had all the time there was, and it was a relief to get the bandage off his leg for awhile. You may be sure he was very careful not to move those broken bones a hair"s breadth!
He rubbed on the vaseline, fearing the liniment would blister and increase his discomfort, and replaced splint and bandage. He was terribly tired afterwards and lay in a half stupor for a long while.
He realized keenly that he had a tough pull ahead of him, unless someone chanced to ride that way and so discovered his plight; which was so unlikely that he did not build any hopes upon it.
He had held himself aloof from the men of the country. He knew the Seabeck riders by sight; he had talked a little with Floyd Carson two or three times, and had met Seabeck himself. He knew Charlie Fox in a purely casual way, as has been related; and Peter Howling Dog the same.
None of these men were likely to ride out of their way to see him. And now that his mind worked rationally, he had no fear of Buck Olney"s vengeful return. Buck Olney, he guessed shrewdly, was extremely busy just now, putting as many miles as possible between himself and that part of Idaho. Unless Billy Louise should come or send for him, he would in all probability lie alone there until he was able to walk.
Ward did not try to comfort himself with any delusions of hope.
As the days pa.s.sed, he settled himself grimly to the business of getting through the ordeal as comfortably as possible. He had food within his reach, and a scant supply of water. He worked out the question of diet and of using his resources to the best advantage. He had nothing else to do, and his alert mind seized upon the situation and brought it down to a fine system.
For instance, he did not open a can of fruit until the prunes were gone. Then he emptied a can of tomatoes into the bowl as a safeguard against ptomaine poisoning from the tin, and set the empty can on the floor. During the warm part of each day he slid open the window by his bunk and lay with the fresh air fanning his face and lifting the hair from his aching temples.
He tried to eat regularly and to make the fruit juice save his water supply. Sometimes he chewed jerked venison from the bag over his head, but not very often; the salt in the meat made him drink too much. On the whole, his diet was healthful and in a measure satisfying. He did not suffer from the want of any real necessity, at any rate. He smoked a good many cigarettes, but he was wise enough to leave the bottle of whisky alone after that first terrible time when it helped him through a severe ordeal.
He had his few books within reach. He read a good deal, to keep from thinking too much, and he tried to meet the days with philosophic calm.
He might easily be a great deal worse off than he was, he frequently reminded himself. For instance, if he had been able to build another room on to his cabin, his bunk and his food supply would have been so widely separated as to cause him much hardship. There were, he admitted to himself, certain advantages in living in one small room.
He could lie in bed and reach nearly everything he really needed.
But he was lonesome. So lonesome that there were times when life looked absolutely worthless; when the blue devils made him their plaything, and he saw Billy Louise looking scornfully upon him and loving some other man better; when he saw his name blackened by the suspicion that he was a rustler--preying upon his neighbors" cattle; when he saw Buck Olney laughing in derision of his mercy and fixing fresh evidence against him to confound him utterly.
He had all those moods, and they left their own lines upon his face.
But he had one thing to hearten him, and that was the steady progress of his broken leg toward recovery. A long, tedious process it was, of necessity; but as nearly as he could judge, the bone was knitting together and would be straight and strong again, if he did not try to hurry it too much. He tried to keep count of the weeks as they pa.s.sed.
When the days slid behind him until he feared he could not remember, he cut a little notch on the window-sill each morning with Buck"s knife, with every seventh day a longer and deeper notch than the others to mark the weeks. The first three days had been so hazy that he thought them only two and marked them so; but that put him only one day out of his reckoning.
He lay there and saw snow slither past his window, driven by a whooping wind. It worried him to know that his calves were unsheltered and unfed while his long stack of hay stood untouched--unless the cattle broke down his fence and reached it. He hoped they would; but he was a thorough workman, and in his heart he knew that fence would stand.
He saw cold rains and sleet. Then there were days when he shivered under his blankets and would have given much for a cup of hot coffee; days when the water froze in the pails beside the bed--what little water was left--and he chipped off pieces of ice and sucked them to quench his thirst. Days when the tomatoes and peaches were frozen in the cans, so that he chewed jerked venison and ate crackers rather than chill his stomach with the icy stuff.
Day by day the little notches and the longer ones reached farther and farther along the window-sill, until Ward began to foresee the time when he must start a new row. Day by day his cheek-bones grew more clearly defined, his eyes bigger and more wistful. Day by day his knuckles stood up sharper when he closed his hands, and day by day Nature worked upon his hurt, knitting the bones together.
But, though he was lean to the point of being skinny, his eyes were clear, and what little flesh he had was healthy flesh. Though he was lonesome and hungry for action and for sight of Billy Louise, his mind had not grown morbid. He learned more of the Bobbie Burns verses, and he could repeat _The Rhyme of the Three Sealers_ in his sleep, and most of _The Lady of the Lake_. He used to lie and sing at the top of his voice, sometimes: _The Chisholm Trail_--unexpurgated--and _Sam Ba.s.s_ and that doleful ditty about the _Lone Prairie_, and quaint old Scottish songs he had heard his mother sing, long and long ago. His leg would heal of itself if he let it alone long enough, he reminded himself often. His mind he must watch carefully, if he would keep it healthy. He knew that, and each day had its own little battle-ground.
Sometimes he won, and sometimes the fight went against him--as is the way with the world.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BRAVE BUCKAROO
"BOISE, IDAHO, _December_ 23.
"BRAVE BUCKAROO,--
"I wonder if you ever in your whole life got a Christmas present? I"ve been cultivating the Louise of me, and here are the first fruits of my endeavor; I guess that"s the way they say it. I"ve spent so much time sitting by mommie when she"s asleep, and I get tired of reading all the time, so a nurse in this ward--mommie has a room to herself of course, but not a special nurse, because I can do a lot of the little things--well, the nurse taught me how to hemst.i.tch. So I got some silk and made some nice, soft neckerchiefs--one for you and one for me.
"This one I made last. I didn"t want your eagle eyes seeing all the bobbly st.i.tches on the first one. I hope you like it, Ward. Every st.i.tch stands for a thought of the hills and our good times. I"ve brought Minervy back to life, and I try to play my old pretends sometimes. But they always break up into pieces. I"m not a kid now, you see. And life is a lot different when you get out into it, isn"t it?
"Mommie doesn"t seem to get much better. I"m worried about her. She seems to have let go, somehow. She never talks about the ranch much, or even worries about whether Phoebe is keeping the windows washed.
She talks about when she was a little girl, and about when she and daddy were first married. It gets on my nerves to see how she has slipped out of every-day life. The nurse says that"s common, though, in sickness. She says I could go home and look after things for a week or so just as well as not. She says mommie would be all right. But I hate to leave her.
"I"m awfully homesick for a good old ride on Blue. I miss him terribly. Have you seen anything of the Cove folks lately? Seems like I"m clear out of the world. I hate town, anyway, and a hospital is the limit for dismalness. Even the Louise of me is getting ready to do something awful if I have to stay much longer. Mommie sleeps most of the time. I believe they dope her with something. She doesn"t have that awful pain so bad. So I don"t have anything to do but sit around and read and sew and wait for her to wake up and want something.
"Pal, the Billy of me is at the exploding point! I believe I"ll wind up by getting out in the corridor some day and shooting holes in all the steam radiators! Did you ever live with one, Ward? Nasty, sizzly things; they drive me wild. I"d give the best cow in the bunch for just one hour in front of our old stone fireplace and see the sparks go up the chimney, and hear the coyotes. Honest to goodness, I"d rather hear a coyote howl than any music on earth--unless maybe it was you singing a ten-dollar hoss an" a forty-dollar saddle. I"d like to hear that old trail song once more. I sure would, Ward. I"d like to hear it, coming down old Wolverine canyon. Oh, I just can"t stand it much longer. I"m liable to wrap mommie in a blanket and crawl out the window, some night, and hit the trail for home. I believe I could cure her quicker right on the ranch. I wish I"d never brought her here; I believe it"s just a scheme of the doctors to get money out of us. I know my poultices did just as much good as their old dope does.
"And this is Christmas, almost. I wonder what you"ll be doing. Say, Ward, if you want to be a perfect jewel of a man, send me some of that jerky you"ve got hanging at the head of your bunk. I swiped some, that last time I was there. It would taste mighty good to me now, after all these hospital slops.
"And write me a nice, long letter, won"t you? That"s a good buckaroo.
I"ve got to stop--mommie is beginning to wake up, and it"s time for the doctor to come in and read the chart and look wise and say: "Well, how are we to-day? Pretty bright, eh?" I"d like to kick him clear across the corridor--that is, the Billy of me would. And believe me, the Billy of me is sure going to break out, some of these days!
"I hope you like the neckerchief. I want you to wear it; if I come home and find it hasn"t been washed a couple of times, there"ll be something doing! Don"t rub soap on it, kid. Make a warm lathery suds and wash it. And don"t wave it by the corners till it dries. Hang it up somewhere. You"ll have my st.i.tches looking worse frazzled than my temper.
"Well, a merry Christmas, Pal-o"-mine--and here"s hoping you and mommie and I will be eating turkey together at the Wolverine when next Christmas comes. Nummy-num! Wouldn"t that taste good, though?