The doctor was looking at her with a puzzled expression which she thought was born of his sympathy. To the mention of her failing he responded quickly:
"No, Mrs. Aydelot, you succeeded. I had started to Shirley"s myself on personal business, and I was letting some whim turn me aside. If you had kept the trail we should have missed each other, for I was on my way to Big Wolf Creek, a good distance away, and your leaving the trail and wandering down here was providential for Shirley. Shall I show you on to the Crossing?"
"Oh, no, Doctor, if you will only come back with me. I don"t want to go on," Virginia insisted.
"You are a regular westerner, Mrs. Aydelot," Carey declared. "But you haven"t been out here long. I heard of your pa.s.sing through our town late last summer. I was up on Big Wolf then and failed to see you. I know something of your husband, but I have never met him."
He helped her to mount her horse and together they sought the trail and followed it westward in the face of the wind.
Near midnight down in Jim Shirley"s cabin Asher Aydelot turned from a lull in the sick man"s ravings to see Dr. Horace Carey entering the door with a pair of saddle bags in his hand.
"h.e.l.lo, sir! Aydelot? I"m Carey, the doctor."
Then as his quick eye took in the haggard face of the man before him, he said cheerily:
"Everything fit as a fiddle up your way. I left your cabin snug and warm as a prairie dog"s hole, and your wife is sound asleep by this time, with a big dog on guard. Yes, I understand," he added, as Asher silently gripped his hand. "You"ve died a thousand deaths today. Forget it, and give me a hand here. My own are too stiff, and I must get these wet boots off. I always go at my work dry shod."
He had pulled a pair of heavy shoes from the saddle bags, and was removing his outer coat and sundry scarfs, warming his hands between whiles and seemingly unconscious of the sick man"s presence.
"You are wet to the knees. You dared the short trail and the strange fords of rivers on a night so dark as this," Asher declared as he helped Carey to put off his wrappings.
"It"s a doctor"s business to forget himself when he sees a distress signal." Then Carey added quietly: "Tell me about Shirley. What have you been doing for him?"
He was beside Jim"s bunk now and his presence seemed to fill the whole cabin with its subtle strength.
"You know your business, doctor; I"m a farmer," Asher said, as he watched this frontier physician moving deftly about his work.
"Well, if you mean to farm so far from pill bags you have done well to follow my trade a little, as you seem to have done with Shirley," Carey a.s.serted, as he noted the evidences of careful nursing.
"Oh, Virginia--Mrs. Aydelot--helped me," Asher a.s.sured him. "She"s a nurse by instinct."
"What did you call your wife?" the doctor inquired.
"Virginia--from her own state. Pretty sick man here." Asher said this as Dr. Carey suddenly bent over Shirley with stern eyes and tightening lips.
But the eyes grew tender when Jim looked up into his face.
"You"re all right, Shirley. You must go to sleep now."
And Shirley, who in his delirium had fought his neighbor all day, became as obedient as a child, as a very sick child, that night under Horace Carey"s hand.
The next morning Virginia Aydelot was not able to rise from her bed, and for many days she could do nothing more than to sit in the rocking chair by the windows and absorb sunshine.
On the fourth day after Carey had reached Shirley"s Asher went down the river in the early afternoon to find how Jim"s case was progressing, leaving his wife comfortably tucked up in the rocking chair by the west window. The snow was gone and the early December day was as crisp and beautiful as an Indian summer day in a colder climate. Virginia sat watching the shadows of the clouds flow along the ground and the prairie hues changing with the angle of the afternoon sunlight. Suddenly a sound of ponies" feet outside was followed by a loud rap on the door.
"Come in!" Virginia called. "Lie down, Pilot!"
Pilot did not obey, but sat up alert before his mistress as Darley Champers" bulk filled the doorway.
"Excuse me, Madam," the real estate dealer said, lifting his hat, "Me and my friend, Mr. Smith out there, are looking up a claim for a friend of ours somewhere out in the Gra.s.s River settlement. Can you tell me who owns the last claim taken up down the river, and how far it is from here?"
"Mr. Shirley"s claim is a few miles down the river, if you go by the short trail and ford at the bends, but much longer if you go around by the long trail," Virginia explained.
"Is it occupied?" Champers put the question in a careless tone.
Pilot"s bristles, that had fallen at the sound of Virginia"s voice, rose again with the query. It is well to be wary of one whom a dog distrusts.
But the woman"s instinct in Virginia responded little to the dog"s uneasiness, and she replied courteously:
"Yes, Mr. Shirley is there, very sick."
"Um, who have I the honor of addressing now?" Champers asked awkwardly, as if to change the subject.
"Mrs. Asher Aydelot."
"Well, now, I"ve heard of Aydelot. Where is your man today? I"d like to meet him, Mrs. A."
It was the man"s way of being friendly, but even a duller-fibred man than Champers would have understood Mrs. Aydelot"s tone as she said:
"You will find him at Shirley"s, or on the way. Only the long trail winds around some bluffs, and you might pa.s.s each other without knowing it."
"How many men in this settlement now?" Champers asked.
"Only two," Virginia replied, patting Pilot"s head involuntarily.
"Only two! That"s sixteen more"n"ll ever make it go here," Darley Champers declared. "Excuse me for saying it, Mrs. Aydelot, but I"ve been pretty much over Kansas, and this is the poorest show for settlement the Lord ever left out of doors. I"ve always heard this valley was full of claims you simply couldn"t give away, but my friend, who has no end of money and influence fur developin" the country, wanted me to look over the ground along the Gra.s.s River, It"s dead desolation, that"s all; no show on earth in fifty year out here, and in fifty year we won"t none of us care for more"n six feet of ground anywhere. I"m sorry for you, Madam. You must be awfully lonely here, but you"ll be gettin" away soon, I hope. I must be off. Thank you, Madam, for the information. Good day," and he left the cabin abruptly.
The sunshine grew pallid and the prairies lay dull and endless. The loneliness of solitude hung with a dead heaviness and hope beat at the lowest ebb for Virginia Aydelot, trying bravely to deny his charge against the future of the land she had struggled so to dream into fruitfulness.
She was only a woman, strong to love and brave to endure, but neither by nature nor heritage shrewd to read the tricks of selfish trade. And she believed that while Asher and Jim Shirley were hopeful dreamers like herself, here was an ill-mannered but unprejudiced man who saw the situation as they could not see it.
"That woman and her fool dog were half afraid of me at first. They don"t know that women aren"t in my line. I"d never harm a one of "em."
"They"re in my line always. Was she good looking? I never pa.s.s a pretty woman," Thomas Smith said smoothly.
"Don"t be a danged fool, Smith. I might cut a man"s throat to some extent, if it would help my business any, but I"d cut it more"n some if he forgets his manners round a woman. We"re a coa.r.s.e, grasping lot out here fur as property goes, and we ain"t got drawing-room manners, but it takes your smug little easterners to be the real dirty devils. Come on."
And Thomas Smith knew that the big, coa.r.s.e-grained man was sincere.
"Yonder"s Aydelot now. Want to see him?" Darley Champers declared, sighting Asher down the short trail beyond the deep bend.
"I"ve no business with him, and he"s the man I don"t want to see," Thomas Smith said hastily. "I"ll ride on out of sight round this bend and wait for you. It"s a good place when you don"t want to be seen."
"Depends on how much of a plainsman Aydelot is. He ought to have sighted both of us half a mile back," Champers declared.
But Smith hurried away and was soon behind the low bluff at the deep bend.
Asher Aydelot had seen the two before they saw him, and he saw them part company and only one come on to meet him.
"You"re Aydelot from the claim up the river, I s"pose. I"m just out lookin" at the country. Not much to it but looks," Champers declared as the two met at the deep bend.