Читать книгу The Lady Doc - Caroline Lockhart - Страница 13

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Dr. Emma Harpe walked briskly into her office and, taking ten silver dollars and some worn banknotes from the pocket of her square-cut coat, piled them upon her office desk.

"Moses! I need that money, and," she sniggered at the recollection, "didn't old Dubois hate to dig."

She threw the Stetson hat she now affected upon a chair, her coat upon another, and rolling a cigarette with the skill of practice, sauntered up and down the room.

"He's sick all right—the old guinea. Looks like typhoid. If it is, it'll pull me out of this hole. Mileage counts up in this country at a dollar a mile. About five cases of typhoid would put me square again and see me through the summer; an epidemic would be a godsend. This is the infernalest healthy country I ever saw; die in their boots or dry up and blow off. Two cases of measles and the whooping cough in six weeks. Dubois comes like a shower of manna, for I can't stand off the Terriberrys forever. I'll go out and see him again in a couple of days and give him a dose of calomel. If he pulls through the credit is mine; if he dies, it's the will of God. Any way it goes, I'm squared. Harpe," she stopped and looked out of the window, "you belong to a noble profesh—you play a safe and genteel game where you can't lose."

She watched idly as a covered wagon accompanied by two men on horseback stopped on the vacant lot opposite the hotel which was much used as a camping-ground by freighters and campers. It was a common enough sight and she looked on indifferently while the team was unharnessed and the saddle horses led toward the livery stable by one of the riders and the driver of the wagon hastened across the street, looking, she thought, at the sign beneath her window.

She barely had time to throw away her cigarette and fan the smoke out of the air before the hurrying footsteps which had told her of his approach brought the man to her office door.

"Are you the doctor?" he asked in surprise at seeing a woman.

She nodded.

"Will you come over right away? My little girl fell over the wheel and one of the fellows that's along says her leg is broken. It only happened a little ways back but it's beginning to swell."

The man's face was pale beneath its tan and the dust of travel, and he plainly chafed at her deliberate movements as she took bandages from the drawer and adjusted her hat before a mirror. It was the first practical test of her theoretical knowledge of bone-setting and because of some misgivings her swagger was a little more pronounced than usual when she accompanied him across the street.

The child lay upon the bunk in the front of the wagon and her eyes were bright with the pain of the dull ache, and fear of more that the doctor might inflict.

"Is it hurtin' bad, Rosie?" Anxiety was in the man's voice.

"Not so very much, Daddy," she replied bravely.

"Your young'un?"

The man glanced at Dr. Harpe quickly in a mixture of surprise and resentment.

"My sister's—young'un," he answered curtly.

The child winced as Dr. Harpe picked up the foot roughly and ran her fingers along the bone.

"Yep; it's broken." She hesitated for an instant and added: "The job'll cost you fifty dollars."

"Fifty dollars!" Consternation was in the man's tone. "Ain't that pretty steep for settin' a leg?"

"That's my price." She added indifferently, "There's another sawbones sixty miles farther on."

"You know well enough that she can't wait to get there."

"Well," she shrugged her shoulder, "dig then."

"But I haven't got it," he pleaded.

"Sell a horse."

He looked to see if she was serious; undoubtedly she was.

"How am I to go on if I sell a horse?"

"That's your lookout."

He stared at her in real curiosity.

"What kind of a doctor are you, anyhow? What kind of a woman?"

"O Daddy—it's hurtin' worse!" moaned the child.

Dr. Harpe laughed disagreeably—

"I'm not in Crowheart for my health." Ignoring the displeasure which came into the man's eyes, she suggested: "Can't you borrow from those fellows that came with you?"

"They're strangers. We are all strangers to each other—we only fell in together on the road. The one lying under the wagon was on a tear in the last town; most likely he's broke."

The child in the bunk whimpered with the increasing pain.

"How much have you got yourself?" she haggled.

"Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents; it's all I've got and we're a hundred miles yet from the end of our road. I've got work there and I'll give you my note and send the balance as soon as I earn it."

Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents—it was more than she anticipated, but every extra dollar was "velvet" as she phrased it.

"See what you can do with that fellow outside."

The man's dark eyes flashed and his face went blood red, but he left the wagon abruptly, and she heard distinctly the angry explanation to his travelling companion lying on a saddle blanket in the shade of the wagon. The knowledge that she was forfeiting these strangers' respect did not disturb her. These indigent campers—gone on the morrow—could do her no harm in Crowheart where her reputation for blunt kindness and imperturbable good nature was already established. It was something of a luxury to indulge her hidden traits; in other words, she was enjoying her meanness.

A forceful ejaculation told her that the slumbering débauché had revived and grasped the situation. She listened intently to his response to the other's request for a loan.

"So the lady doc wants money? She wants to see the color of your dust before she can set the baby's broken leg, you say? Interesting—very. By all means give the kind lady money. How much money does the lady want?"

The color rose swiftly in her cheeks, not so much because of the mocking words as the intonation of the voice in which they were uttered—the most wonderfully musical speaking voice she ever had heard. The angry resentment of the child's foster-father had left her unmoved but this was different. The sneering, cutting insolence came from no ordinary person. It stung her. She thought she detected a slight foreign accent in the carefully articulated words, though the phraseology was distinctly western. The voice was high pitched without effeminacy, soft yet penetrating, polished yet conveying all the meaning of an insult. No Anglo-Saxon could express such mocking contempt by the voice alone—that accomplishment is almost exclusively a gift of the Latins.

She was hot and uncomfortable, conscious that the blood was still in her face, when she heard him scramble to his feet and walk to the back of the wagon. Ever after Dr. Harpe remembered him as she saw him first framed in the white canvas opening of the prairie schooner.

His unusually high-crowned Stetson was pushed to the back of his head, one slender, aristocratic hand rested carelessly upon his hip, a fallen lock of straight, black hair hung nearly to his eyebrows—eyebrows which all but met above a pair of narrow, brilliant eyes. The aquiline nose, the creamy, colorless complexion, the long face with its thin, slightly drooping lips was unmistakably foreign in its type while a loose, silk neck scarf containing the bright colors of the Roman stripe added an alien touch. There was at once high breeding and reckless diablerie in his handsome face.

In the antagonistic moment in which they eyed each other, Dr. Harpe endeavored to recall the something or somebody which his appearance suggested. She groped for it in the dim gallery of youthful memories. What was it? It flashed upon her with the suddenness of a forgotten word. She remembered it plainly now—that treasured, highly colored lithograph of a brigand holding up a coach in a mountain pass! There was in this face the same mocking deviltry; his figure had the same lithe grace; he needed only the big hoop earrings to complete the resemblance.

He removed his hat with a long, sweeping gesture and bowed in exaggerated deference.

"At your service," he murmured.

"There was no need——" she began in a kind of apology.

"Fifty dollars is little enough to pay for the privilege of your skill, madam. Shall it be in advance? Of course; in advance."

She threw out her hand in a gesture of protest, which he ignored.

"Permit me at least to show you that we have it here. I feel sure that you can work with a freer mind if I count it out and lay it where you can see it." He took an odd, foreign purse from the belt of his "chaps" and she noted that it sagged with the weight of its contents.

"Gold," he explained; "nearly new from the Mint. You can have it tested at the bank before you begin—acids or something of the sort, I believe."

She crimsoned with anger, but he went on—

"Fifty dollars! What a very little sum to start the milk of human kindness flowing!"

"I told him he needn't mind—there was no rush—just when it was convenient. He misunderstood me." She found her tongue at last and lied glibly.

The child's foster-father stared at her as though he doubted his own ears. Her very audacity left him speechless.

"There you are, $50 in gold!" He flung the money into her lap. "Old hoss," he laid his hand upon the man's shoulder while his mocking laugh again made her cheeks tingle, "you oughtn't to lie to me like that."

When he had sauntered across the street with his careless, easy stride and disappeared inside the swinging doors of the bar-room of the Terriberry House, Dr. Harpe said brusquely:

"Here, you gotta help me yank this leg straight but, first, I want you to go over to the store and bust up a thin box—something for splints—strips off a fruit case would be best if you can get 'em."

"Haven't you splints?" the man asked in surprise.

"No; I've just come; I haven't got a stock yet and there's no drug store in this jay town. It's on the way but that doesn't help us now. We ought to have plaster of Paris but we haven't. Hurry up—get a move on before it swells any more."

The man did as he was bid, with a look of doubt and uncertainty upon his face.

He returned almost immediately with strips torn from a case of fruit.

"That's good." Dr. Harpe laid them on the bunk with the bandages. She added shortly: "She's going to howl."

"Can't you give her anything?"

"No; I can't give ether by myself. I'm not going to take a chance like that. If she'd die on my hands it'd queer me here on the jump. 'Twon't kill her. She'll probably faint and then it'll be easy. When the muscles relax, hold on to her leg above her knee while I pull."

The man's face turned a ghastly hue as the child screamed and fainted away, nor did the color return as he watched the woman's clumsy fingers, the bungling movements which, unlettered as he was, told him of her inexperience—bungling movements which had not even compensating feminine gentleness.

When the child had revived and Dr. Harpe had finished, the man went outside and leaned against the wheel.

"Are you sure it'll be straight?"

She saw her own misgivings reflected in his face, and it exasperated her.

"What a fool question. Do you think I don't know my business?"

He did not answer, and she turned away.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, Rosie." He was at her side at once.

She lifted her clear eyes to his face.

"I don't like that woman."

"Like her!" he answered slowly. "Like her! Her heart is as black as my hat."

To herself Dr. Harpe was saying:

"Moses! I had to start in on somebody."

It was with relief that she looked through her office window after supper and saw that the wagon was gone from the vacant lot.

"Good riddance!" she muttered. "I wouldn't have that black-eyed devil hanging around this town for money. He's onery enought to do me mischief. I wonder who he was? He might be anything or anybody; a dago duke or a hold-up—or both. Anyway, he's gone, and if I never see him again it'll be soon enough."

She sat down in her office chair and rested her heels on the window sill while her cigarette burned to ashes between her listless fingers. For a time she watched the white light of the June moon grow on the line of dimpled foothills, the myriad odors of spring were in the air and the balmy west wind lifted the hair at her temples as it came through the open window. She felt lonely—inexpressibly lonely. She thought of Alice Freoff and restlessness grew. Downstairs she heard Essie Tisdale's merry laughter and it changed the current of her thoughts.

She had learned her story now and the mystery of her identity had given the little belle of Crowheart an added attraction. Everybody in Crowheart knew her story for that matter; it was one of the stock tales of the country to be repeated to interest strangers.

In the old days when Crowheart was a blacksmith shop and the stamping ground of "Snow-shoe" Brown, whose log cabin hung on the edge of the bench overlooking the stream like a crow's nest in a cottonwood tree, "Snow-shoe" Brown had yelled in vain, one spring day, at a man and woman on the seat of a covered wagon who were preparing to ford the stream at the usual crossing. But the sullen roar of the water drowned his warning that it was swimming depth, and, even while he ran for his horse and uncoiled his saddle rope, the current was sweeping the wagon and the struggling horses down stream. He followed along the bank until the horse's feet came up and the wagon went down, while there floated from the open end, among other things, something that looked to his astonished eyes like a wooden cradle. He threw his rope, and threw again, with the skill which long practice in roping mavericks had given him; and gently, gently, with a success which seemed miraculous even to "Snow-shoe" Brown, he had drawn the bobbing cradle gradually to shore. Inside, a baby smiled up at him with the bluest eyes he ever had seen. There was a picture primer tucked beneath the flannel coverlet and it contained the single clue to her identity. "Esther Tisdale" was written on the fly-leaf with a recent date.

"Snow-shoe" Brown said she was a maverick and unblushingly declared that he claimed all mavericks that he had had his rope on; therefore "Esther Tisdale" belonged to him. He left her in the care of the wife of a cattleman who hoped thereby to purchase immunity from "Snow-shoe's" activities, which he did, though that person rustled elsewhere with renewed energy, since he said he had a family to keep. So she learned to ride and shoot as straight as "Snow-shoe" himself and even as a child gave promise of a winsome, lovely girlhood. The unique relationship ended when her guardian died in his boots in the little cowtown over beyond the Limestone Rim. A hard winter and the inroads of sheep "broke" the cattleman who sold out and moved away, while Esther Tisdale shifted for herself that she might not be a burden. She was nearly twenty now, and, in the democratic community never had felt or been made to feel that her position was subservient or inferior. Therefore when her work was done and she bounded up the stairs to Dr. Harpe's door she felt sure of a welcome.

"It's only Essie Tisdale," she said in her merry voice as she rapped and peered into the room.

"Come in, Essie; I'm lonesome as the deuce!"

It was some time later that Mrs. Terriberry sailing through the corridor in her dressing-sacque and petticoat, with her feet scuffling in Mr. Terriberry's carpet-slippers, had the stone-china water-pitcher dashed from her hand as she turned a corner.

"Why, Essie!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Terriberry!"

"What's the matter?" She looked wonderingly at the girl's crimson face.

"Don't ask me! but don't expect me to be friends with that woman again!"

"Have you had words—have you quarrelled with Dr. Harpe?"

"Yes—yes; we quarrelled! But don't ask me any more! I won't—I can't tell you!" the girl replied fiercely as she rushed on and slammed the door of her room behind her.

In her office, Dr. Harpe was sitting by the window panic-stricken, sick with the fear of the one thing in the world of which she was most afraid, namely, Public Opinion.

She was deaf to the night sounds of the town; to the thick, argumentative voices beneath her window; to the scratched phonograph squeaking an ancient air in the office of the Terriberry House; to the banging of an erratic piano in the saloon two doors above; to the sleepy wails of the butcher's urchin in the tar-paper shack one door below, and to a heap of snarling dogs fighting in the deep, white dust of the street.

She glanced through the window and saw without seeing, the deputy-sheriff escorting an unsteady prisoner down the street followed by a boisterous crowd. In a way she was dimly conscious that there was something familiar in the prisoner's appearance, but the impression was not strong enough to rouse her from her preoccupation, and she turned to walk the floor without being cognizant of the fact that she was walking.

She suddenly threw both hands aloft.

"I've got it!" she cried exultingly. "The very thing to counteract her story. It'll work—it always does—and I know that I can do it!"

In her relief she laughed, a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it as quickly as it came.

Addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!

La tua soave imagine chi mai, chi mai scordar potra!

Del ciel l'auzzurro fulgido, la placida marina,

Qual core non imebria, non bea non bea divolutta!

In tela terra el 'aura favellano d'amore;

Te sola al mio dolore conforto io sognero

Oh! addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!

Addio care memorie del tempo ah! che fuggi!

The voice rang out like a golden bell, vibrating, as sweetly penetrating. The strange words fell like the notes of the meadow lark in spring, easy, liquid, yet with the sureness of knowledge.

The incoherent argument beneath the window ceased, the piano and the phonograph were silenced, the wailing urchin dried its tears and all the raw little town of Crowheart seemed to hold its breath as the wonderful tenor voice rose and fell on the soft June night.

Adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!

Thy wondrous pictures in the sea, will ever fill my memory!

Thy skies of deepest, brightest blue, thy placid waves so soft and clear;

With heaving sigh and bitter tear, I bid a last, a sad adieu!

Adieu the fragrant orange grove, the scented air that breathes of love

Shall charm my heart with one bright ray, in dreams, wher'er I stray;

Oh, adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!

Adieu each soul-felt memory, of happy days long passed away!

The old street-song of Italy, the song of its people, never held a stranger audience in thraldom. If the song had been without words the result would have been the same, almost, for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which vaguely they believed.

Only those who have lived in isolated places can understand what music means to those who year after year are without it. Any sound that is not an actual discord becomes music then and the least gentle listen with pathetic eagerness. A worn phonograph screeching the popular songs of a past decade holds the rapt attention of such. It reminds them of that world they left long ago, a world which in the perspective of waning years looks all song and laughter, good company, good clothes, good food, and green things everywhere.

Therefore it is little wonder that this voice of marvellous sweetness and power rising unexpectedly out of the moonlit night should lay an awed hush upon the music-starved town. To some it brought a flood of memories and lumps in aching throats while many a weather-beaten face was lifted from mediocrity by a momentary exultation that was of the soul.

That a human voice unaided by a visible personality could throw such a spell upon the listeners seems rather a tax upon credulity; but the singer himself appeared to have no misgivings. His face wore a look of smiling, mocking confidence as he stood with one hand on his hip, the other grasping a bar of the iron grating which covered the single window of Crowheart's calaboose, pouring forth the golden notes with an occasional imperious toss of his head and a flash of his black eyes which made him look like a royal prisoner.

When the last note had died away, Dr. Harpe breathed an ejaculation.

"The Dago Duke!"

"He sings like an angel," said "Slivers," a barkeep.

"And fights like a devil," replied Dan Treu, the deputy-sheriff. "He turned a knife in Tinhorn's shoulder."