Claim Number One Part 44

"When you're pa.s.sing through Cheyenne, stop off and see me," giving Slavens a respectful farewell.

Dr. Slavens advanced several points in the apprais.e.m.e.nt of Governor Boyle, although, to do the Governor justice, he had seen from the beginning that the wandering physician was a master. Boyle had been weighing men for what they were worth, buying them and selling them, for too many years to place a wrong bet. He told Slavens that unlimited capital was back of him in his fight for Jerry's life, and that he had but to demand it if anything was wanted, no matter what the cost.

Dr. Slavens told him bluntly that his son was in a fix where one man's money would go as far as another's to get him clear, and that it had very little weight in the other end of the scales against the thing they were standing in front of, face to face.

"Save him to me, Doctor! For G.o.d's sake save him!" begged the old man, his face bloodless, the weight of his unsh.o.r.ed years collapsing upon him and bowing him pitifully.

Again Slavens felt the wonder of this man's softness for his son, but pity was tinctured with the thought that if it had been applied in season to shaping the young man's life, and his conscience, and his sense of justice, it might have commanded more respect. But he knew that this was the opportunity to make the one big chance which the years had been keeping from him. At the start Slavens had told the old man that his son had a chance for life; he had not said how precariously it lay balanced upon the lip of the dark canon, nor how an adverse breath might send it beyond the brink. The weight of the responsibility now lay on him alone. Failure would bring upon him an avalanche of blame; success a glorious impetus to his new career.

He took a walk down to the river to think about it, and breathe over it, and get himself steadied. When he came back he found Smith there, unloading Agnes' things, soaking up the details of the tragedy with as much satisfaction as a toad refreshing itself in a rain.

Smith was no respecter of office or social elevation. If a man deserved shooting, then he ought to be shot, according to Smith's logic. As he made an excuse to stay around longer by a.s.sisting the doctor to raise Agnes' tent, he expressed his satisfaction that Jerry Boyle had received part payment, at least, of what was due him.

"But I tell you," said he to the doctor in confidence, turning a wary eye to see that Agnes was out of hearing just then. "I'm glad he got it the way he did. I was afraid one time that girl over there was goin' to let him have it. I could see it in her eye."

"You can see almost anything in a woman's eye if your imagination is working right," the doctor told him, rather crabbedly.

"You don't need to believe it if you don't want to," returned Smith, somewhat offended, "but I tell you that girl'd shoot a man in a minute if he got too fresh!"

"I believe you're right about that, Smith," agreed the doctor, "so let's you and I be careful that we don't get too fresh."

Smith said no more, but he kept turning his eye upon the doctor as he got his wagon ready to set off on his return, with a good deal of unfriendliness in it. Evidently it had come into his mind only then that Dr. Slavens was a.s.suming a sort of proprietary air around Agnes.

With his foot on the brake and his lines drawn up, Smith looked down and addressed her.

"Well, I don't suppose you'll be back on the river for some time?"

"I expect it will be a long time," she replied, evading exposition of her plans.

"I'll keep my eye on the place for you, and see that them fellers don't cut down your timber," he offered.

She thanked him.

"When you come over that way, take a look at that sign on the front of my store," said Smith, giving her a significant, intimate glance. "The more you see that name in print the better you like it."

With that Smith threw off his brake so suddenly and violently that it knocked a little cloud of dust out of his wagon, laid the whip to his team, and drove off with almost as grand a flourish as he used to execute when setting out from Comanche on the stage.

Mrs. Boyle left her son's side, her husband relieving her, to see that Agnes was supplied with everything necessary. She had pressed Agnes to remain with her--which was well enough in accord with the girl's own inclination--and help her care for her "little boy," as she called him with fond tenderness.

"Isn't she sweet?" whispered Agnes, as Mrs. Boyle went to her own tent to fetch something which she insisted Agnes must have. "She is so gentle and good to be the mother of such a wolf!"

"But what did she think about her precious son going to turn the whole United States out after you because you wouldn't help him pull the plank out from under an unworthy friend?"

"I didn't tell her that," said Agnes, shaking her head. "I told the Governor as we came over, and she isn't to know that part of it."

Their tents made quite a little village, and the scene presented considerable quiet activity, for the Governor had brought a man over from Comanche to serve the camp with fuel and water and turn a hand at preparing the food. Agnes was cook-in-extraordinary to the patient and the doctor. She and Slavens took their supper together that night, sitting beside the fire.

There they talked of the case, and the prospect of the fee, and of the future which they were going to fix up together between them, as confidently as young things half their age. With the promised fee, life would be one way; without it another. But everything was white enamel and bra.s.s k.n.o.bs at the poorest, for there was confidence to give hope; strength and love to lend it color.

Striking the fire with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of the gra.s.s, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle--which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time--and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other's hands in the bitter and the sweet of life.

"It would mean a better automobile," said he.

"And a better surgery, and a nicer chair for the consulting-room," she added, dreaming with wide-open eyes upon the fire.

"And a better home, with more comfort in it for you."

"Oh, as for that!" said she.

"I've got my eye on a place with old elms in front of it, and moss on the shingles, and a well where you pull the bucket up with a rope over a pulley," said he. "I've got it all laid out and blooming in my heart for that precious mother of yours. It is where mine used to live," he explained; "but strangers are in it now. We'll buy them out."

"It will be such a burden on you. And just at the beginning," she sighed. "I'm afraid, after all, that I'll never be coward enough to consent to it at the last."

"It's out of your hands now, Agnes," said he; "entirely out of your hands."

"It is strange how it has shaped out," she reflected after a little silence; "better, perhaps, than we could have arranged it if we had been allowed our own way. The one unfortunate thing about it seems to be that this case is isolated out here in the desert, where it never will do you a bit of good."

"Except the fee," he reminded her with a gentle smile.

"Oh, the fee--of course."

"But there is a big hurdle to get over before we come to even that."

"You mean----"

She looked at him with a start, the firelight catching her shining eyes.

"The crisis."

"Day after tomorrow," said she, studying the fire as if to antic.i.p.ate in its necromancy what that day offered to their hopes.

The shadow of that grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big _if_ in the life of every man and woman at some straining period of hopes and schemes.

Words fell away from them; they let the fire grow pale from neglect, and gray ashes came over the dwindling coals, like h.o.a.rfrost upon the bright salvia against a garden wall. Silence was over the camp; night was deep around them. In Jerry Boyle's tent, where his mother watched, a dim light shone through the canvas. It was so still there on that barren hillside that they could hear the river fretting over the stones of the rapids below the ford, more than half a mile away.

After a while her hand sought his, and rested warm upon it as she spoke.

"It was pleasant to dream that, anyway," said she, giving up a great sigh.

"That's one advantage of dreams; they are plastic material, one can shape them after the heart's desire," he answered.

"But it was foolish of me to mingle mine with yours so," she objected.

"And it was wrong and selfish. I can't fasten this dead weight of my troubles on you and drag you back. I can't do that, dear friend."

He started at the word, laying hold of her hand with eager grip.

"Have you forgotten the other word--is that all there is to it?" he asked, bending toward her, a gentle rebuke in his trembling voice.

"There is so much more! so much more!" she whispered. "Because of that, I cannot be so selfish as to dream those splendid dreams again--wait,"