The Power and the Glory Part 19

"Git down and pick 'em up--every one! Don't you miss a one. Yo' eyes is younger'n mine. Hunt 'em up! hunt 'em up," hissed Pap, casting himself upon the handkerchief and its contents.

"What is it?" questioned Buckheath keenly. "I thort you had some game on hand." And he hastened to comply. "Air they really silver?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE LOOMED ABOVE THEM, WHITE AND SHAKING. "YOU THIEVES,"

HE ROARED. "GIVE ME MY BANDANNER! GIVE ME JOHNNIE'S SILVER MINE!"]

"No--better'n that. They're nickel. The feller that was here from the North said by the dips and turns of the stratagems an' such-like we was bound to have nickel in these here mountains somewhar. A nickel mine's better'n a gold mine--an' these is nickel. I know 'em by the piece o'

nickel ore from the Canady mines that I carry constantly in my pocket.

We'll keep the old fool out of the knowin' of it, and find whar the mine is at, and we'll--"

The two men squatted on the floor, tallying over the specimens they had already collected, and looking about them for more. In the doorway behind them appeared a face, gaunt, grimed, a blood-stained bandage around the brow, and a pair of glowing, burning eyes looking out beneath. Uncle Pros had failed to find Mavity Bence, and was returning.

Too dazed to comprehend mere words, the old prospector read instantly and aright the att.i.tude and expression of the two. As they tied the last knot in the handkerchief, he loomed above them, white and shaking.

"You thieves!" he roared. "Give me my bandanner! Give me Johnnie's silver mine!"

"Yes--yes--yes! Don't holler it out that-a-way!" whispered Pap Himes from the floor, where he crouched, still clutching the precious bits of ore.

"We was a-goin' to give 'em to you, Uncle Pros. We was just foolin',"

Buckheath attempted to rea.s.sure him.

The old man bent forward and shot down a long arm to recover his own. He missed the bandanna, and the impetus of the movement sent him staggering a pace or two forward. At the porch edge he strove to recover himself, failed, and with a short, coughing groan, pitched down the steps and lay, an inert ma.s.s, at their foot.

"Cover that handkecher up," whispered Himes before either man moved to his a.s.sistance.

CHAPTER XIII

A PATIENT FOR THE HOSPITAL

When the Hardwick carriage drove up in the heavy, ill-odoured August night, and stopped at the gate to let Johnnie Consadine out, Pap Himes's boarding-house was blazing with light from window and doorway, clacking and humming like a mill with the sound of noisy footsteps and voices.

Three or four men argued and talked loudly on the porch. Through the open windows of the front room, Johnnie had a glimpse of a long, stark figure lying on the lounge, and a white face which struck her with a strange pang of vague yet alarming resemblance. She made her hasty thanks to Miss Sessions and hurried in. Gray Stoddard's horse was standing at the hitching post in front, and Gray met her at the head of the steps.

Stoddard looked particularly himself in riding dress. Its more unconventional lines suited him well; the dust-brown Norfolk, the leathern puttees, gave an adventurous turn to the expression of a personality which was only so on the mental side. He always rode bareheaded, and the brown hair, which he wore a little longer than other men's, was tossed from its masculine primness to certain hyacinthine lines which were becoming. Just now his clear brown eyes were luminous with feeling. He put out a swift, detaining hand and caught hers, laying sympathetic fingers over the clasp and retaining it as he spoke.

"I'm so relieved that you've come at last," he said. "We need somebody of intelligence here. I just happened to come past a few minutes after the accident. Don't be frightened; your uncle came down to see you, and got a fall somehow. He's hurt pretty badly, I'm afraid, and these people are refusing to have him taken to the hospital."

On the one side Himes and Buckheath drew back and regarded this scene with angry derision. In the carriage below Lydia Sessions, who could hear nothing that was said, stared incredulously, and moved as though to get down and join Johnnie.

"You'll want him sent to the hospital?" Stoddard urged, half interrogatively. "Look in there. Listen to the noise. This is no fit place for a man with a possible fracture of the skull."

"Yes--oh, yes," agreed Johnnie promptly. "If I could nurse him myself I'd like to--or help; but of course he's got to go to the hospital, first of everything."

Stoddard motioned the Hardwick driver to wait, and called down to the carriage load, "I want you people to drive round by the hospital and send the ambulance, if you'll be so kind. There's a man hurt in here."

Lydia Sessions made this an immediate pretext for getting down and coming in.

"Did you say they didn't want to send him to the hospital?" she inquired sharply and openly, in her tactless fashion, as she crossed the sidewalk. "That's the worst thing about such people; you provide them with the best, and they don't know enough to appreciate it. Have they got a doctor, or done anything for the poor man?"

"I sent for Millsaps, here--he knows more about broken bones than anybody in Cottonville," Pap offered sullenly, mopping his brow and shaking his bald head. "Millsaps is a decent man. You know what _he's_ a-goin' to do to the sick."

"Is he a doctor?" asked Stoddard sternly, looking the lank, shuffling individual named.

"He can doctor a cow or a nag better'n anybody ever saw," Pap put forward rather shamefacedly.

"A veterinarian," commented Stoddard. "Well, they've gone for the ambulance, and the surgeon will soon be here now."

"I don't know nothin' about veterinarians and surgeons," growled Pap, still alternately mopping his bald head and shaking it contemptuously; "but I know that Millsaps ain't a-goin' to box up any dead bodies and send 'em to the medical colleges; and I know he made as pretty a job of doctoring old Spotty has ever I seen. To be sh.o.r.e the cow died, but he got the medicine down her when it didn't look as if human hands could do it--that's the kind of doctor he is."

"I aim to give Mr. Pa.s.smore a teaspoonful of lamp oil--karosene," said the cow doctor, coming forward, evidently feeling that it was time he spoke up himself. "Lamp oil is mighty rousin' to them as late like he's doin'. I've used copperas for such--but takes longer. Some say a dose of turpentine is better lamp oil--but I 'low both of 'em won't hurt."

Johnnie pushed past them all into the front room where the women were running about, talking lot and exclaiming. A kerosene lamp without a chimney smoked and flared on the table, filling the room with evil odours. Pros Pa.s.smore's white face thrown up against the lounge cushion was the only quiet, dignified object in sight.

"Mandy," said Johnnie, catching the Meacham woman by the elbow as she pa.s.sed her bearing a small kerosene can, "you go up to my room and get the good lamp I have there. Then take this thing away. Where's Aunt Mavity?"

"I don't know. She's been carryin' on somethin turrible. Yes, Johnnie, honey--I'll get the lamp for ye."

When Johnnie turned to her uncle, she found Millsaps bending above him, the small can in his hands, its spout approached to the rigid blue lips of the patient with the unconcern of a man about to fill a lamp. She sprang forward and caught his arm, bringing the can away with a clatter and splash.

"You mustn't do that," she said authoritatively. "The doctors will be here in a minute. You mustn't give him anything, Mr. Millsaps."

"Oh, all right--all right," agreed Millsaps, with decidedly the air that he considered it all wrong.

"There is some people that has objections to having their kin-folks cyarved up by student doctors. Then agin, there is others that has no better use for kin than to let 'em be so treated. I 'low that a little dosin' of lamp oil never hurt n.o.body--and it's cured a-many, of most any kind of disease. But just as you say--just as you say." And he shuffled angrily from the room.

Johnnie went and knelt by the lounge. With deft, careful fingers she lifted the wet cloths above the bruised forehead. The hurt looked old.

No blood was flowing, and she wondered a little. Catching Shade Buckheath's eye fixed on her from outside the window, she beckoned him in and asked him to tell her exactly how the trouble came about.

Buckheath gave her his own version of the matter, omitting, of course, all mention of the bandanna full of ore which lay now carefully hidden at the bottom of old Gideon Himes's trunk.

"And you say he fell down the steps?" asked Johnnie. "Who was with him?

Who saw it?"

"n.o.body but me and Pap," Shade answered, trying to give the reply unconcernedly.

"I--I seen it," whispered Mavity Bence, plucking at Johnnie's sleeve. "I was in the fore room here--and I seen it all."

She spoke defiantly, but her terrified glance barely raised itself to the menacing countenances of the two men on the other side of the lounge, and fell at once. "I never heard nothin' they was sayin'," she made haste to add. "But I seen Pros fall, and I run out and helped Pap and Shade fetch him in."

Peculiar as was the att.i.tude of all three, Johnnie felt a certain relief in the implied a.s.surance that there had been no quarrel, that her uncle had not been struck or knocked down the steps.

"Why, Pap," she said kindly, looking across at the old man's perturbed, sweating face, "you surely ain't like these foolish folks round here in Cottonville that think the hospital was started up to get dead bodies for the student doctors to cut to pieces. You see how bad off Uncle Pros is; you must know he's bound to be better taken care of there in that fine building, and with all those folks that have learned their business to take care of him, than here in this house with only me. Besides, I couldn't even stay at home from the mill to nurse him. Somebody's got to earn the money."

"I wouldn't charge you no board, Johnnie," fairly whined Himes. "I'm willin' to nurse Pros myself, without he'p, night and day. You speak up mighty fine for that thar hospital. What about Lura Dawson? Everybody knows they shipped her body to Cincinnati and sold it. You ort to be ashamed to put your poor old uncle in such a place."

Johnnie turned puzzled eyes from the rigid face on the lounge--Pros had neither moved nor spoken since they lifted and laid him there--to the old man at the window. That Pap Himes should be concerned, even slightly, about the welfare of any living being save himself, struck her as wildly improbable. Then, swiftly, she reproached herself for not being readier to believe good of him. He and Uncle Pros had been boys together, and she knew her uncle one to deserve affection, though he seldom commanded it.

There was a sound of wheels outside, and Gray Stoddard's voice with that of the doctor's. Shade and Pap Himes still hovered nervously about the window, staring in and hearkening to all that was said, Mavity Bence had wept till her face was sodden. She herded the other girls back out of the way, but watched everything with terrified eyes.

"He'll jest about come to hisself befo' he dies," the older conspirator muttered to Shade as the stretcher pa.s.sed them, and the skilled, white-jacketed attendants laid Pros Pa.s.smore in the vehicle without so much as disturbing his breathing. "He'll jest about come to hisself thar, and them pesky doctors 'll have word about the silver mine. Well, in this world, them that has, gits, mostly. Ef Johnnie Consadine had been any manner o' kin to me, I vow I'd 'a' taken a hickory to her when she set up her word agin' mine and let him go out of the house. The little fool! she didn't know what she was sendin' away."