Peak and Prairie Part 9

Intelligence came struggling back into his face.

"No, my dear," he said, gathering himself for a strong effort. "I have had attacks like this before."

"And a stimulant is all you need?"

"All I need," he muttered. His eyes closed, and his breath came even and deep.

Elizabeth knelt there, thankful that he slept. How white his lips were!

How spent he looked! He had asked for whisky. Perhaps even in his delirium he knew what he wanted; perhaps a stimulant was all he needed.

Of course it was! How stupid not to have understood!

She hurried to her room and got a small brandy-flask that had been given her for the journey. She had emptied it for a sick man on the train.

She went back to her father. He was sleeping heavily. She glanced at his watch lying upon the table beside the chloral bottle. One o'clock! She wondered whether the "store" would be open. She should hate to go to a saloon. But then, that was no matter. If her father needed a stimulant he must have it. She dressed herself quickly, and put her purse and the brandy-flask into her pocket. Then she hurried to the shed, where she saddled the bronco. Her father had once told her that she would have made a first-rate cowboy. Well, now was her chance to prove it.

The collies, who had taken refuge from the wind on the south side of the shed, came trotting in at the open door, and a.s.sembled, a curious little shadowy group, about her. But they soon dropped off to sleep, and when she led the bronco out and closed the door upon them, a feeble wag of a tail or two was all the evidence of interest they gave.

She twisted the bridle round a post and slipped into the house for one more look at her patient. He was sleeping profoundly. She placed the lamp upon the floor in a corner, so that the bed was in shadow. Then she came back to the bedside and watched the sleeper again for a moment. She touched his forehead and found it damp and cool. The fever was past.

Perhaps he was right; there was no need of a doctor--it was nothing serious. Perhaps the stuff in that little bottle had done something queer to him. A stimulant was all he needed. But he needed that, for his face was pitifully pallid and drawn.

A moment later the bronco was bearing her swiftly through the night, his hoof-falls echoing in a dull rhythm. The wind still came in gusts, blowing straight into her face, but it was warm and pleasant. When she had pa.s.sed through the gate of the ranch the road went between wire fences, straight north to Cameron City. Now and then a group of horses, roused, perhaps, by her approach, stood with their heads over the fence watching her pa.s.s, while the wind stretched their manes and tails out straight to one side. She wished she could stop and make friends with them, but there was no time for that. Her father might wake up and call for her. So on they sped, she and the bronco, waking the cattle on either side of the road, startling more than one prowling coyote, invisible to them, causing more than one prairie-dog, snug in his hole, to fancy it must be morning. And the great night, encompa.s.sing the world, gleaming in the heavens, brooding upon the earth, made itself known to her for the first time. Elizabeth never forgot that ride through the beautiful brooding night. Nature seemed larger and deeper and grander to her ever after.

As they came among the houses of the town she reined in the bronco and went quietly, lest she should wake the people. There was a light burning in the room over the store, and the window was open. A woman answered her summons. It was the wife of the storekeeper. Her husband was absent, she said, and she was up with a sick baby. She readily filled the little flask, and was sympathetic and eager to help. Shouldn't she send somebody over to the ranch? There wasn't any doctor in Cameron City, but Cy Willows knew a heap about physic.

No. Elizabeth said her father was better already, only he seemed in need of a stimulant. No, she did not want an escort. The night was lovely, and she wouldn't miss her solitary ride home for anything. She was so glad Mrs. Stiles had the whisky. It would be just what her father needed when he waked up.

And when, some hours later, Jacob Stanwood awoke, he found his daughter sitting beside him in the gray dawn.

"Why, Elizabeth!" he said, "is anything the matter? Did I disturb you?"

She leaned toward him, and laid her hand on his.

"You were ill in the night, papa, and asked for a stimulant, and I got it for you."

"A stimulant?" he repeated vaguely. "What stimulant? Where did you get it?"

"I got it at the store. It's whisky."

"Whisky?" he cried, with a sudden, eager gleam.

Elizabeth was enchanted to find that she had done the right thing.

"Here it is, papa," she said, drawing the flask from her pocket, and pouring a little of the contents into a gla.s.s that stood ready.

He watched her with that intense, eager gleam.

"Fill it up! Fill it up!" he cried impatiently. "A drop like that is no good to a man."

He was sitting straight up again, just as she found him in the night. He reached his thin hand for the gla.s.s, which he clutched tightly. The smell of the liquor was strong in the room. His eyes were glittering with excitement.

The girl stood beside him, contemplating with affectionate delight the success of her experiment. Her utter innocence and unsuspiciousness smote him to the heart. Something stayed his hand so that he did not even lift the gla.s.s to his lips. Slowly, with his eyes fixed upon the sweet, young face, he extended his arm out over the side of the bed, the gla.s.s shaking plainly in his hold. She did not notice it; she was looking into his face which had softened strangely.

"Elizabeth," he said.

There was a sound of breaking gla.s.s, and a strong smell of liquor pouring out upon the floor.

"O papa!" she cried, distressed.

He had sunk back against the pillows, pale with exhaustion. But when she lifted the fragments of the gla.s.s, saying: "Isn't it a pity, papa?" he only answered in his usual tone, "There's no harm done, my dear. I don't believe it was just what I needed, after all."

He smiled with a new, indescribable sweetness and weariness.

"I think I could sleep, now," he said.

At noon Stanwood was quite himself again; himself and more, he thought, with some surprise. He would not have owned that it was a sense of victory that had put new life into his veins. Victory over a vulgar pa.s.sion must partake somewhat of the vulgarity of the pa.s.sion itself.

No, Stanwood was not the man to glory in such a conquest. But he could, at last, glory in this daughter of his.

As she told him with sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"--she always loved to hear him say "Elizabeth,"--"Elizabeth, do you think it would make Nick very mad indeed if we were to go snacks?"

"Mad as hops!" she cried.

"Then let's do it!"

Elizabeth beamed.

"And Elizabeth, there's no place like Switzerland in summer. Let's pack up and go!"

"Let us!" she answered, very softly, with only a little exultant tremor on the words.

She never guessed all that she had won that day; she only knew that life stretched on before her, a long, sunny pathway, where she and her father might walk together in the daily and hourly good-comradeship that she loved.

IV.

AT THE KEITH RANCH.

The dance was in full swing--a vehement, rhythmic, dead-in-earnest ranch dance. Eight couples on the floor tramped or tiptoed, as the case might be, but always in perfect time with the two unmelodious fiddles.

The tune, if tune it might be called, went over and over and over again, with the monotonous persistency of a sawmill, dominating the rhythmic tread of the dancers, but not subduing the fancy of the caller-out.

The caller-out for the moment was a curly-headed lad of twenty, with a shrewd, good-humored face. He stood in a slouching att.i.tude, one shoulder much higher than the other, and as he gave forth, in a singsong voice, his emphatic rhymed directions, his fingers played idly with the red-silk lacings of his brown flannel shirt. To an imaginative looker-on those idly toying fingers had an indefinable air of being very much at home with the trigger of the six-shooter at the lad's belt.

So, at least, it struck Lem Keith.

"Swing him round for old Mother Flannigan!

You've swung him so nice, now swing him again, again!

On to the next, and swing that gent!

Now straight back, and swing your own man again!"