In Blue Creek Canon Part 14

"Come on, now," whispered Grant, as he joined Allie and Ned in advance, and left Louise to follow them with her elderly admirer; "the doctor's lost his wind already, and can't keep up; but, if he wants a walk, we'll give him one."

His companions entered into the spirit of his proposition, and they quickened their pace, after casting one backward glance towards Louise, as she lingered along, with a sort of repressed impatience of step and manner, while she listened to the Reverend Gabriel's elaborate explanations of his reasons for following her. Then such a race as they led him! Quitting the track, they turned aside into the open ground, covered with uneven tufts of coa.r.s.e bunch gra.s.s and thickets of sage brush, now racing down a little hillock, now jumping over a tiny stream and forcing their way through the clumps of willows on the bank, but always choosing the roughest, hardest path, and always going at the top of their speed, while Louise and the doctor panted and floundered along too far in the rear to be heard in their calls for mercy. Even Allie was beginning to be exhausted when, a few hundred feet above the mouth of the gulch, Grant turned abruptly to the right and scrambled up the steep hillside leading to the cemetery.

"There!" he chuckled, while Ned and Allie, breathless with laughing and with their rapid climb, dropped down on the ground beside him; "we'll give him a rest when he gets up here. If he's going to come along and spoil all our fun, he must pay for it; but he'll be tired by this time."

"I wonder if he'll ever get up here alive," said Allie, as she reached out to the nearest bush, to pick a bit of fur from the twig which had caught it from some pa.s.sing cottontail. "You almost used me up, and I don't believe Miss Lou could have gone on much farther, so I shouldn't wonder if he was pretty nearly dead."

"Well, 'twould be a nice, convenient place for the funeral; only I shouldn't be surprised if he stuck, half way up here," suggested Ned, comfortably lying on his back, and fanning himself with the hat which Allie had tossed aside. "No; here he comes," he added, as the Reverend Gabriel's wide-brimmed straw hat and flushed face appeared over the brow of the hill, followed by Louise, looking rosy and mischievous, but as fresh as she had done at the start.

"Come over to this tree, doctor, and sit down here in the shade while you rest," she said kindly, as she led the way to the spot where the boys were stretched out on the gra.s.s.

There was an unwonted gentleness in her voice, for she had been quick to discover the impish intention of her brothers, and was anxious to atone for their lack of courtesy towards an acquaintance whom she had always regarded as an old man, on the down-hill side of life. In spite of herself she had been amused at the doctor's frantic efforts to keep up with her own firm, quick pace, and at his urgent entreaties that she should tell him if he walked too fast for her. Nevertheless, as she seated herself beside her young brothers, she was resolving to give them a lecture upon the sins of the afternoon, so soon as she could get them in a place of safety.

In the mean time, the doctor appeared to be strangely annoyed over something, although she was unable to discover the cause of his trouble.

In obedience to her inviting gesture, he had spread out his large blue silk handkerchief on the ground by her side, and seated himself upon it.

Then he started to remove his hat; but he had no sooner raised it a little from his head than he hastily clapped it on again, with a little exclamation of surprise and displeasure.

"I do hope that these bad boys haven't given you too hard a climb, doctor," Louise was saying politely, while she turned to frown down any fresh demonstrations on the part of Grant, who was evidently plotting some new mischief.

"Um--m--ah--no--at least, I beg your pardon, but what was it you said?"

inquired the doctor, so abstractedly that Louise looked at him in astonishment.

The Reverend Gabriel sat with his face slightly turned away from her. He was tilting his hat so that, on the farther side, it was raised an inch or two from his head, while, with his disengaged hand, he was feeling carefully about underneath it, as if in search of some missing object.

His face, meanwhile, was rapidly a.s.suming every appearance of trouble and distress, which became more and more acute with every fresh motion of his hand. Louise watched him compa.s.sionately, sure that something was amiss, but not daring to offer to come to his a.s.sistance; then, thinking to spare him any added mortification, she looked away towards the valley.

A lovely picture lay at her feet, for the canon opened out before her eyes in all the grandeur of its mountainous surroundings, while the little town in its bosom was softened and beautified by the kindly autumnal haze, which took away the crude shabbiness of its detail and brought it into harmony with the rugged landscape about it. Beyond the town lay the creek, and over it all floated the heavy pall of thick white smoke, which seemed to be supported on the tall red chimneys of the smelter buildings. The sun was dropping behind the mountains, and already the town lay in shadow, while the last beams lingered upon the cloud of smoke which flushed to a pale pink, then deepened to a rosy glow. The girl's eyes rested on the scene below her; then, surprised at the continued silence of her escort, she glanced at him once more. He was still groping about underneath his hat, with the same strained, upward roll to his eyes; but, as she looked at him, a new light burst in upon Louise's mind, for two long locks of tawny hair had straggled down over his right ear, and lay in a feeble ringlet against the top of his tall collar. The Reverend Gabriel's wrist brushed against them; he felt of them inquiringly; then he deliberately took off his hat to show the top of his head shorn of the glory of his curl, and the long ends of hair hanging in elf-locks about his face.

"Miss--um--Miss Everett," he began hesitatingly, while a dark flush rose on his weather-beaten cheeks; "Miss Everett, I am exceedingly sorry to trouble you, but"--he paused; then went on desperately; "in fact, could you be good enough to lend me a hairpin? The exertion of my climb has removed mine from its accustomed place, and I fear that my hair may be slightly disarranged."

The silence that followed was unbroken while Louise felt about among her braids and drew out a long, slender pin; but when the doctor put his hat down on the ground by his side, carefully rolled up his hair over his two forefingers, spread it into the usual long curl, and fastened it into its place, Allie and Ned fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggling. But, for the once, Grant's attention was distracted, for he was gazing steadily towards the engine house at the mouth of the mine.

"Say, Lou," he exclaimed; "what's going on down there? Everybody's rushing over to the mine; something must be wrong."

Louise's eyes followed the direction of his hand.

"There 's some trouble, down there," she said, rising abruptly. "Will you excuse us, Dr. Hornblower, if we go down without waiting to get rested? I am always a little anxious about my father." And she hurried away down the hill, leaving the Reverend Gabriel to adjust his hairpin at his ease, while he reflected upon the unsatisfactory nature of his walk.

CHAPTER XI.

"SWEET CHARITY'S SAKE."

"You see," Howard was explaining to Ned, that evening, "he'd put in his charge for the blast, and was tamping it down all right; but he kicked over his drill, and the end fell on an extra package of giant powder."

"I know that," interrupted Ned. "Papa said he was outrageously careless, to have any of the stuff lying around loose; and 'twas a wonder that there weren't any more men near enough to be killed. Poor old Mike! He's worked in the mine ever since 'twas first opened, and he was one of their best men."

"I don't see how he came to be so careless, then," said Marjorie, wisely shaking her head over the matter. "I should suppose he'd have known better by this time."

"They do know better," said Ned thoughtfully; "only they get hardened to the risk and don't think much about it, or else say their luck will hold out. But Mike has the worst of it. Do you know, this is the first accident in the Blue Creek I ever remember, and I used to see Mike 'most every day, so I can't get to believe it a bit. It seems as if it couldn't be true."

"Papa was all broken up to-night," added Grant. "He knows all the old foremen, and Mike was the best one of them all."

"I believe I'd rather die 'most any way than be blown up," said Allie, with a shudder. "It must be so hard for his family. But didn't you say somebody else was hurt, Howard?"

"Just one boy," answered Howard, rising and walking nervously about the room, as the scene came freshly to his mind. "I don't know who he was, for n.o.body seemed to be sure of his name. He had dark hair, and was about Charlie Mac's size, I should think. They brought him up in the cage just as Charlie and I stopped at the shaft, and the first thing we knew, we were right beside him."

"What's it going to do to him?" asked Marjorie, as her bright face grew very serious at the picture that Howard had brought before her.

"No one knew, for the doctor wasn't there, of course, and they took him right off home. Papa said he was an English boy that lived over the creek," said Grant, stretching himself out on the sofa, with his heels on the cushion.

Marjorie sprang up and shook herself, with a little shiver.

"Don't let's talk about it any more," she exclaimed. "It just makes me sick to think of it."

"But it's there, all the same, whether we talk about it or not; and if you'd seen it, as we did, you couldn't forget it, even if you did keep still," said Howard soberly; and Allie added,--

"Besides, maybe if we talk about it we can find out there's something to do, to help out."

For an hour, the five young people, gathered in the Everetts' parlor, had been telling over the details of the accident. As Ned had said, it had been a long time since the Blue Creek had been visited by an accident like those which so frequently occurred in the neighboring mines, and this, killing, as it did, one of the oldest and best-known of the miners, had created an intense excitement in the little town.

Immediately following the explosion, there had been put in circulation a report of the accident so exaggerated that it had brought to the spot the wives of half the miners in the camp, each one of whom was confident that her husband was among the twenty or more men said to have been killed. It had been this hasty gathering which had caught Grant's eye; and the Everetts and Allie had hurried down into the town just in time to learn the truth that but one man was killed, and to watch the excited groups as they slowly dispersed, so noisy in their joy that their own friends had escaped, that they forgot to give more than a pa.s.sing thought to poor, careless Mike, whose working days were ended. But that came later; and among all his mourners there were none more sincere than the little group at the Everetts', who knew and appreciated the real worth of the jovial, brawny Irishman, whose pleasant word and helping hand were extended to all with whom he ever came in contact. They were still talking of him when the bell rang; and, a moment later, w.a.n.g k.u.m ushered Dr. Brownlee into the parlor. At sight of him, Marjorie sprang up impulsively.

"Oh, doctor, tell us about the poor boy! How is he?" she asked abruptly, without waiting for any formal greeting.

"If you mean the one who was hurt at the mine this afternoon," the doctor was beginning, when Ned hastily interposed,--

"Hold on a minute, Dr. Brownlee; but don't sit down in that chair.

There's something wrong about the stuff it's covered with; 'tisn't real leather, and it melts and gets sticky in summer, or when there's a hot fire. You'd better steer clear of it. We mean to keep it out of the way."

"You might use it for a trap," suggested the doctor laughingly, as he pushed aside the great easy-chair, and settled himself in a willow rocker. Then his face grew grave again, as he turned back to Marjorie.

"He's as badly hurt as he can be," he went on. "He'll get over it, but he'll never be able to do anything more. He hasn't come to his senses yet, and I wish he needn't, for the present, for he has a hard time before him," he added, as he rose to meet Louise, who came into the room just then.

"I'm a little upset to-night," he said apologetically, in answer to her exclamation about the coldness of his hand. "To be perfectly honest, this is my first accident case; and it's a very different thing from seeing people quietly ill in bed, even if you know they can't get well.

I was at the house when they brought him in, and I hope I sha'n't often have to go through such a scene again."

"Tell me about it," said Louise, with a gentle sympathy which lent a new grace to her beauty. "I'm not afraid to hear, and perhaps I can do something for them by and by."

And the doctor told, forgetting himself, and even the charming young woman before him, as he went on with the story of the mother's frantic sorrow over her only son, of the boy's half-conscious suffering, and of the long, helpless life before him. The girl's eyes filled with tears as she listened, though her pity for the lad was mingled with a new admiration for the speaker. The tale did not lie entirely in the mere words describing the accident; but, under all that, it told of the generous, kindly sympathy of the true doctor, who shrinks from the sight of pain, even while he gives his life to watching and helping it.

Two weeks later Marjorie was spending a stormy afternoon at the Burnams', when Ned appeared on the piazza.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed, as he furled his dripping umbrella, and shook himself out of his rubber coat. "You'd better believe I'm wet. Lou went off before it rained, and I had to pack her rubbers and umbrella over to her. It's no joke to walk a mile in such a pour."

"Where is she?" asked Allie, while she hospitably drew up a chair for her guest.

"Over the creek with that boy of hers. She puts in ever so much time there, since he's better. She says he's crazy to read and be read to, so she goes over 'most every day," responded Ned, as he wriggled away from the too exuberant caresses of Ben.