The Long Chance Part 13

"Why, you know my reputation, Miss Donna."

"Yes, you're the worst man in San Pasqual. But I'm afraid I can't agree to enter into this conspiracy."

"Why not?"

"It's unlawful."

"Miss Donna, I'm serious--"

"It's cruel and unusual punishment--"

"I'd light a fire under 'em" said Harley P. ferociously. "Better stand in, Miss Donna--to oblige me."

"All right, it's a go, if you put it that way."

"Shake! You'll enjoy it, Miss Donna. You'll find yourself real popular when you get up to the hotel. Some o' the natives was thinkin' o'

bringin' their blankets an' three days' rations, an' campin' in front o'

the hotel until you arrived. Well, good-by, till supper-time. I'm goin'

to breeze along down to the Hat Ranch an' warn the nurse agin spies an'

secret emissaries masqueradin' as angels o' mercy."

He waved his big hand at her and waddled down the track toward the Hat Ranch. Arrived there, he introduced himself to the nurse and made a few perfunctory inquiries regarding the condition of her patient, after which, with many premonitory coughs, he ventured to outline his campaign as San Pasqual's official news censor. The nurse was not lacking in a sense of humor, and readily agreed to enlist under the banner of Harley P.

"An' remember," he warned her, as he prepared to leave, "to look sharp if you see a forty-five-year-old damsel, with a little bright red face, all ears an' no chin, like the ace o' hearts. That'll be Miss Pickett.

She'll have with her, like as not, a stout married lady, all gab an'

gizzard, like a crow, an' a mouth like a new b.u.t.tonhole. That'll be Mrs.

Pennycook. Look out for 'em both. They talk!"

And having played this unworthy trick on the gossips of San Pasqual, Mr. Hennage returned to town in a singularly cheerful state of mind, and devoted the balance of the day to the duties of his profession.

That night, when he went to his dinner at the eating-house, he stopped at the counter to have a little chat with Donna.

"What luck?" he asked.

"I declare I'm almost exhausted. I've been dodging questions and tripping over hints all day long."

"Miss Pickett come over to offer sympathy."

"Yes."

"Hu-u-um! An' after she went away, I suppose Mrs. Pennycook come in as thick as three in a bed?"

"She was very nice."

"She'd better be" he remarked, and Donna thought that beneath the jocularity of his manner she detected a menace.

"What have you heard?" she queried.

"I've heard," he replied deliberately, "that Donna Corblay is harboring a desperate character in her home."

"I heard something else to-day. While we're gossiping, Mr. Hennage, I'll tell you the latest--the very latest. It's reported that Dan Pennycook is drinking."

"No!" Mr. Hennage was concerned. He was fond of Dan Pennycook. "Who told you!" he inquired.

"He was seen buying a bottle of port wine in the Silver Dollar saloon this afternoon, and you know his wife is strictly temperance."

"Oh, shucks! There's nothin' to that report. I can account for that just as easy as lookin' through a hoop. It's goin' to be wine jelly, after all. I thought maybe it might be calf's-foot, but--" he broke off. "I wish," he said earnestly, "I could get hold of a low-spirited billy goat, Miss Donna, an' tie him to your front gate when Mrs. P. arrives.

You want to warn the nurse, Miss Donna. Remember what the old sharp in the big book says: 'Beware o' the Greeks when they come into camp with gifts.' Hey, Josephine!"

He hailed his waitress.

"About twenty-five dollars' worth o' ham an' eggs," he ordered, "with some pig's ear and cauliflower on the side. I ain't had such a big appet.i.te for my grub since I was a boy."

That evening, when Donna left the eating-house for her home, it seemed to her that the Hat Ranch must be situated at least ten miles further from San Pasqual than it had been two days previous. It almost seemed as if she would never reach the gate that pierced the big seven-foot adobe wall which shut Bob McGraw in from the prying eyes of the townspeople; she felt that her heart, over-burdened with its weight of agonized happiness, must break before she found herself once more standing by Bob's bed, gazing down at him with a look of proprietorship and love.

As she stood there, smiling, her face flushed from the exertion of her rapid walk, her jaunty straw hat casting little vagrant shadows across her great, dark, sparkling eyes, he awakened and looked up. She was drawing off her gloves, and one who has ridden in the waste places as much as had Bob McGraw soon learns that simple signs are sometimes pregnant of big things. The big thing, as Bob read it then, was the fact that she had just come home; that she had hurried, for she was breathing hard. Why had she hurried? Why, to see him, Bob McGraw--and in such a hurry was she that she had not waited to remove her hat and gloves. This was all very gratifying; so gratifying that Mr. McGraw would almost, at that moment, have welcomed a .45 through his other lung, if thereby he could only make her understand how deeply gratified he really was--how dearly he loved her and would continue to love her. He was so filled with such thoughts as these that he continued to gaze at her in silence for fully a minute before he spoke.

"It's been a long, hot day" he whispered. "I worried. Thought you might be kept--late--again."

The adorable old muggins! The very thought of having somebody to worry over her was so very new to Donna, and so very sweet withal, that she _called_ Mr. McGraw an adorable old muggins, and pinched the lobe of his left ear, and tweaked the sunburned apex of his Irish nose. Then she kissed the places thus pinched and tweaked, and declared that she was happy enough to--to--to _swear!_ "I understand--perfectly" said Bob McGraw, and there is no doubt that he did. The idea of a glorious young Woman like Donna swearing was, indeed, perfectly ridiculous. Of course, nerve-racked tired waitresses and be-deviled chefs "cussed each other out" as a regular thing up at the eating-house during a rush, and Donna, having listened to these conversational sparks, off and on, for three years, felt now, for the first time, as she imagined they must feel--that the unusual commotion in one's soul occasionally demands some extraordinary outlet.

"I could beat Soft Wind with the broom, or tip over the stove, or do something equally desperate" she told him. "I feel so deeply--it hurts me--here," and she pressed her hand to her heart.

"Think of me," he whispered, "hurt on--both sides. Bullet--hole in--right lung--key-hole in--my heart."

The blarney of the wretch! Really, this McGraw man was the most forward person! As if he could ever, by any possibility, love her as she loved him!

"You great red angel" she said. Then she ruffled his hair and fled out to the kitchen to investigate the exact nature of the savory concoction which the nurse was preparing for her invalid. No royal chef, safe-guarding the stomach of his monarch against the surrept.i.tious introduction of a deadly poison in the soup, could have evinced a greater interest in the royal appet.i.te than did Donna in Bob McGraw's that night. As the nurse was about to take the bowl of broth which she had prepared, in to her patient, Donna dipped up a small quant.i.ty on a teaspoon and tasted it.

"A little more salt, I think" she announced, with all the gravity of her twenty years.

The nurse glanced at her for a moment, before she took her glowing face between her cool palms and kissed the girl on each cheek. Then she reached for the salt cellar, dropped a small pinch into the soup, seized the tray and marched out, smiling. She was one of the women on this earth who can understand without asking--at least Donna thought so, and was grateful to her for it.

The three weeks that followed, while Bob McGraw, having battled his way through the attack of traumatic pneumonia incident to the wound in his lungs, slowly got back his strength, seemed, indeed, the most marvelous period of Donna Corblay's entire existence. On the morning after her conversation with Harley P., Mrs. Pennycook, true to the gambler's prediction, did favor the Hat Ranch with her bustling presence, and wrapped in a snow-white napkin the said Mrs. Pennycook did carry the hereinbefore mentioned gla.s.s of wine jelly for the debilitated stranger in their midst. Donna was at the eating-house when Mrs. Pennycook called, but the nurse received her--not, however, without an inward chuckle as she recalled Mr. Hennage's warning and discovered that Mrs.

Pennycook's mouth did really resemble a new b.u.t.tonhole--as the mouth of every respectable, self-righteous, provincial female bigot has had a habit of resembling even as far back as the days of the Salem witchcraft.

For her wine jelly, Mrs. Pennycook received due and courteous thanks from the nurse personally, and also on behalf of Miss Corblay and the patient. To her apparently irrelevant and impersonal queries, regarding the ident.i.ty of the wounded man, his personal and family history, Mrs.

Pennycook received equally irrelevant and impersonal replies, and when she suggested at length that she "would dearly love to see him for a moment--only a moment, mind you--to thank him for what he had done for that dear sweet girl, Donna Corblay," the nurse found instant defense from the invasions by reminding Mrs. Pennycook of the doctor's orders that his patient be permitted to remain undisturbed.

Two days later Mrs. Pennycook, accompanied by Miss Pickett, called again. Miss Pickett carried the limp carca.s.s of a juvenile chicken, and armed with this pa.s.sport to Bob McGraw's heart and confidence, she too, endeavored to run the guard. Alas! The young man was still in a very precarious condition, and baffled and discouraged, the charitable pair departed in profound disgust.

The next day Dan Pennycook called, at Mrs. Pennycook's orders. The yardmaster, as he bowed to the nurse and ventured a mild inquiry as to the patient's health, presented a remarkable imitation of a heretofore conscientious dog that has just been discovered in the act of killing a sheep. Poor Daniel was easy prey for the efficient nurse. He retired, chop-fallen and ashamed, and the day following, two conductor's wives and the sister of a brakeman, armed respectively with a brace of quail, a bouquet of a.s.sorted sweet peas and half a dozen oranges, came, deposited their offerings, were duly thanked and dismissed.

To all these interested ladies, Donna, at the suggestion of Harley P.

(who, by the way, fell heir to the brace of quail, which he had prepared by the eating-house chef, and later consumed with great gusto), wrote a polite note of thanks. This, of course merely served to irritate an already irritated community, without affording them an opportunity for what Mr. Hennage termed "a social comeback." He contracted the habit, during that first week, of coming in to his dinner earlier, in order that he might hear from Donna a detailed report of the frantic efforts of her neighbors to get at the bottom of the mystery. Mr. Hennage was enjoying himself immensely.

After the first week had pa.s.sed without developments, interest in Donna and her affairs began to dwindle, for not infrequently matters move in kaleidoscopic fashion in San Pasqual, and the population, generally speaking, soon finds itself absorbed in other and more important matters. Mrs. Pennycook was quick to note that Donna (to quote Mr.

Hennage) was "next to her game," and with the gambler's threat hanging over her she was careful to refrain from expressing any decided opinions in the little circle in which she moved.