"That"s the first decent drink I"ve had for a month," he told her, dropping back to the pillow, refreshed to the point of clear thinking.
"Old Lady Fortune"s still playing football with me, William. I"ve been laid up with a broken leg for about six weeks. And when I got gay and thought I could handle myself again, I put myself out of business for awhile, and caught this cold before I came to and crawled back into bed. I"m--sure glad you showed up, old girl. I was--getting up against it for fair." He coughed.
"Looks like it." Billy Louise held herself rigidly back from any emotional expression. She could not afford to "go to pieces" now. She tried to think just what a trained nurse would do, in such a case. Her hospital experience would be of some use here, she told herself. She remembered reading somewhere that no experience is valueless, if one only applies the knowledge gained.
"First," she said cheerfully, "the patient must be kept quiet and cheerful. So don"t go jumping up and down on your broken leg, Ward Warren; the nurse forbids it. And smile, if it kills you."
Ward grinned appreciatively. Sick as he was, he realized the gameness of Billy Louise; what he failed to realize was the gameness of himself.
"I"m a pretty worthless specimen, right now," he said apologetically.
"But I"m yours to command, Bill-the-Conk. You"re the doctor."
"Nope, I"m the cook, right now. I"ve got a hunch. How would you like a cup of tea, patient?"
"I"d rather have coffee--Doctor William."
"Tea, you mean. I"ll have it ready in ten minutes." Then she weakened before his imploring eyes. "You really oughtn"t to drink coffee, with that fever, Ward. But, maybe if I don"t make it very strong and put in lots of cream-- We"ll take a chance, buckaroo!"
Ward watched her as intently as if his life depended on her speed. He had lain in that bunk for nearly six weeks with the coffee-pot sitting in plain sight on the back of the stove, twelve feet or so from his reach, and with the can of coffee standing in plain sight on the rough board shelf against the wall by the window. And he had craved coffee almost as badly as a drunkard craves whisky.
The sound of the fire snapping in the stove was like music to him.
Later, the smell of the coffee coming briskly to the boiling-point made his mouth water with desire. And when Billy Louise jabbed two little slits in a cream can with the point of a butcher knife and poured a thin stream of canned milk into a big, white granite cup, Ward"s eyes turned traitor to his love for the girl and dwelt hungrily upon the swift movements of her hands.
"How much sugar, patient?" Billy Louise turned toward him with the tomato-can sugar-bowl in her hands.
"None. I want to taste the coffee, this trip."
"Oh, all right! It"s the worst thing you could think of, but that"s the way with a patient. Patients always want what they mustn"t have."
"Sure--get it, too." Ward spoke between long, satisfying gulps.
"How"s your other patient, Wilhemina? How"s mommie?"
"Oh, Ward! She"s dead--mommie"s dead!" Billy Louise broke down unexpectedly and completely. She went down on her knees beside the bed and cried as she had not cried since she looked the last time at mommie"s still face, held in that terrifying calm. She cried until Ward"s excited mutterings warned her that she must pull herself together. She did, somehow, in spite of her sorrow and her worry and that day"s succession of emotional shocks. She did it because Ward was sick--very sick, she was afraid--and there was so much that she must do for him.
"You be s-still," she commanded brokenly, fighting for her former safe cheerfulness. "I"m all right. Pity yourself, if you"ve got to pity somebody. I--can stand--my trouble. I haven"t got any broken leg and--hookin"-cough." She managed a laugh then and took Ward"s hand from her hair and laid it down on the blankets. "Now we won"t talk about things any more. You"ve got to have something done for that cold on your lungs." She rose and stood looking down at him with puckered eyebrows.
"Mommie would say you ought to have a good sweat," she decided. "Got any ginger?"
"I dunno. I guess not," Ward muttered confusedly.
"Well, I"ll go out and find some sage, then, and give you sage tea.
That"s another cure-all. Say, Ward, I saw Rattler down the creek.
He"s looking fine and dandy. He came whinnying down out of that draw, to meet us; just tickled to death to see somebody."
"Don"t blame him," croaked Ward. "It"s enough to tickle anybody." Her voice seemed to steady his straying fancies. "How"re--the cattle--looking?"
"Just fine," lied Billy Louise. "You"re the skinniest thing I"ve seen on the ranch. Now do you think you can keep your senses, while I go and pick some nice, good meddy off a sage bush?"
"I guess so." Ward spoke drowsily. "Give me some more coffee and I can."
"Oh, you"re the pesteringest patient! I told you coffee isn"t good for what ails you, but I suppose--" She poured him another cup of coffee, weakened it with hot water, and let him drink it straight. After all, perhaps the hot drink would induce the perspiration that would break the fever. She pulled up the wolf-skins and the extra blankets he had tossed aside in his feverish restlessness and covered him to his chin.
"If you don"t move till I come back," she promised, "I"ll maybe give you another cup--after you"ve filled up on sage tea." With that qualified hope to cheer him, she left him.
She did not spend all her time picking sage twigs. A bush grew at the corner of the cabin within easy reach. She went first down to the stable and led Blue inside and unsaddled him. Rattler was standing near, and she tried to lead him in also, but he fled from her approach.
She found the pitchfork and managed to scratch a few forkfuls of hay down from a corner of the stack; enough to fill a manger for Blue and to leave a little heap beside the stable for Rattler.
When she was leaving the stable to return to the house, however, she changed her plan a little. She went back, carried the small pile of hay into the stable, and filled another manger. Then she took down the wire gate of the hay corral and laid it flat alongside the fence.
Rattler would go in to the stack, and she would shut him in. That would simplify the catching of him when he was needed. She would find something in which to carry water to him, if he was too frisky to lead to the creek. Billy Louise was no coward with horses, but she recognized certain fixed limitations in the management of a snuffy brute like Rattler. He was not like Blue, whom she could bully and tease and coax. Rattler was distinctly a man"s saddle-horse. Billy Louise had never done more than pat his shoulder after he was caught and saddled and, therefore, prepared for handling. She foresaw some perturbation of spirit in regard to Rattler.
Ward was lying quiet when she went in, except that he was waving her handkerchief to and fro by the corners to cool it. Billy Louise took it from him, wet it again with cold water, and scolded him for getting his arms from under the covers. That, she said, was no nice way for a hookin"-cough man to do.
Ward meekly submitted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.
"Ward Warren, you"re a perfectly awful hookin"-cough man! There. Now that"s going to be the very last one-- Oh, Ward, it isn"t!" She knelt and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again.
"I do love you, Ward. I"ve been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I"m ashamed to the middle of my bones. You"re my own brave buckaroo always--always! You"ve done what no other man would do, and you don"t whine about it; and I"ve been weak and--horrid; and I"ll have to love you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She kissed him again with a pa.s.sion of remorse for her doubts of him.
"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an arm, so that he could hold her closer.
"No, I"m just beginning. Just beginning right. I"m your pal for keeps. But--"
"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When are you going to--marry me?"
"Oh, when you get over the hookin"-cough, I s"pose." Once more Billy Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe flippancy--that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.
"Now it"s up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately--to once."
She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward"s eyes worshiping her.
She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his lungs.
She hunted through the cupboards and found a bottle of turpentine; syrupy and yellowed with age, but pungent with strength. She found some lard in a small bucket and melted half a teacupful. Then she tore up a woolen undershirt she found hanging on a nail and bore relentlessly down upon him.
"You gotta be greased all over your lungs," she announced with a matter-of-factness that cost her something; for Billy Louise"s innate modesty was only just topped by her good sense.
Ward submitted without protest while she bared his chest--as white as her own--and applied the warm mixture with a smoothly vigorous palm.
"That"ll fix the hookin"-cough," she said, as she spread the warm layers of woolen cloth smoothly from shoulder to shoulder. "How does it feel?"
"Great," he a.s.sured her succinctly, and wisely omitted any love-making.
"Will your game leg let you turn over? Because there"s some dope left, and it ought to go between your shoulders."
"The game leg ought to stand more than that," he told her, turning slowly. "If I hadn"t got this cold tacked onto me, I"d have been trying to walk on it by now."
"Better give it time--since you"ve been game enough to lie here all this while and take care of it. I don"t believe I"d have had nerve enough for that, Ward." She poured turpentine and lard into her palm, reached inside his collar and rubbed it on his shoulders. "Good thing you had plenty of grub handy. But it must have been awful!"
"It was pretty d.a.m.ned lonesome," he admitted laconically, and that was as far as his complainings went.
Billy Louise then poured the water off the sage leaves she had been brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a carefully dampened broom and wiped the dust off things and restored the room to its most cheerful atmosphere of livableness.
"Wan" a drink," mumbled Ward, with a blanket over his mouth and a raveled thread tickling his nose so that he squirmed.