Colorado Jim Part 33

He touched her on the injured arm and she winced with pain.

"h.e.l.lo, you ain't hurt your arm?"

She nodded.

"Jim, I've done an awful thing. I've lost the dog-team."

She saw him start, and realized the full extent of the loss. To her surprise his furrowed brows relaxed and he smiled whimsically.

"Things do sure happen at the wrong time. But how did you manage that?"

She told him in low, self-reproachful tones, and winced again as a movement of the injured arm brought agony.

"Say, that's bad."

"Yes. I know. Without the dogs----"

"Oh, darn the dogs! I meant your arm. It's hurting you a heap. Ain't you had a look at it?"

"Not yet. It's rather a job getting my dress undone."

He promptly walked across the room, and in a few seconds came back with two huge red handkerchiefs.

"Sit you down," he ordered. "We'll start on this right now. How do you manage this arrangement?"

"It--it unb.u.t.tons at the back," she stammered.

She felt his big inexperienced hand at work on the b.u.t.tons, and soon her dress was slipped over the injured shoulder. A little hiss escaped him as the round white arm came to view, with a hideous black bruise around the shoulder-joint. She stole one look at his face, and saw his perturbed countenance surveying the injury.

"Move your arm a little--that way."

She did so with a groan.

"Good--there ain't nothin' broke."

He soaked the handkerchief in cold water and tied up the arm with astonishing skill. Then he fashioned a sling with the other handkerchief, and carefully bent her arm and tucked it inside the latter.

"How's that?"

She smiled gratefully.

"It seems much easier."

"Sure! It'll be fine in a day or two. You sit down here and I'll git some tea."

Without waiting to see this order obeyed, he ran to the stove and poked the fire into a blaze. The singing kettle began to boil, and a few minutes later they were having tea.

She watched him carefully, and knew that the loss of the dogs was worrying him. Yet he had made so light of that, and so much of her comparatively trivial injury!

"About them dawgs, Angela?"

"Yes."

"It's kinder unfortunate, because grub's low and it's a h.e.l.l of a way to Dawson. I guess we'll have to pack up to-morrow and git going. We can do a bit o' digging on the way back."

Her eyes shone strangely.

"It was all my fault, Jim."

"Bound to happen at times," he said. "Dawgs is the silliest things. See here, you're worrying some over that, ain't you now?"

"I--I know what it means--to you."

"It don't mean nothin' so long as you didn't go over that cliff with 'em.

We'll make Dawson all right. I've bin up against bigger trouble than this."

He jumped up and commenced vigorously to wash up the cups and saucers, talking rapidly all the while and refusing to allow her to lend a hand.

"I done this for years, back there in Medicine Bow," he said. "Gee, them were times! There wasn't water enough to make tea with in the summer. Me and my two chums used to buy a pail of water for twenty dollars. It had to serve the three of us a whole day. We washed in it, and then drank it----"

"Ugh!"

"Wal, if we'd drank it first we couldn't have washed in it after. I guess them chaps had logic. When we _did_ strike a spring, gold wasn't in it for excitement. It was like finding heaven. Hookey swore he'd never touch whisky again, and he didn't until we hit the next saloon."

She laughed merrily as he turned and dried his wet hands.

"It's good to hear you laugh," he said. "If you'd only laugh sometimes, Angela, I wouldn't care a d.a.m.n about short rations. I seen men laugh on the plains when the chances were that two hours later their scalps would be hanging at the belts of Injuns. I was only a kid then ... but laughing is a fine thing. You can't beat a man who laughs."

"You used to laugh then?"

"Sure!"

"But not now!"

He stared out through the window.

"Maybe that's why I'm being beaten," he said.

She stood up and touched him on the arm.

"I don't think you'll ever be beaten," she said.

He shook his head, almost fearful of meeting those clear, beautiful eyes of hers.

"Only one thing in the world can beat me," he said. "And that is the thing which above all others I'm mad to get; and it ain't gold."

He spent the evening packing up the gear and the food that remained, ready for the journey down the river. The home-made sled was again requisitioned, after undergoing sundry repairs. Late in the evening Angela, from the inner room, called him. Nervously he went inside, to find her with her wonderful hair flowing over her shoulders and her dress half undone.