The Shagganappi Part 25

"I not sabe 'bally,' me," answered the Indian.

The pink King Georgeman looked puzzled.

"He means he doesn't understand what 'bally' is," explained Banty.

Con laughed. "Tell him that _I'm_ 'bally,' in these clothes; he'll grasp then what a fearful thing 'bally' means."

It was that remark, "poking fun" at his own appearance, that thoroughly won Banty's loyalty to his cousin from over seas. A chap that could openly laugh and jeer at his own peculiarities must surely be a good sort, so forthwith Banty pitched in heart and soul to arrange all kinds of excursions and adventures, and The Eena planned and suggested, until it seemed that all the weeks stretching out into the holiday months were to be one long round of sport and pleasure in honor of the lanky King Georgeman, who was so anxious to fall easily into the ways of the West.

Just as The Eena predicted, Con proved an able fisherman and excellent "trailsman." He could stay in the saddle for hours, could go without food or sleep, had the endurance of a horse and the good nature of a big romping kitten. He was generous and unselfish, but with a spontaneous English temper that blazed forth whenever he saw the weak wronged or the timid terrified.

"I'll never make a really good hunter, Eena," he regretted one day, "I can't bear to gallop on a big cayuse after a little scared jack rabbit, and run him down and kill him when he's so little and doesn't try to fight me with his claws or fangs like a lynx will do. It's not a fair deal."

"But when one camps many leagues from the ranch house, one must eat,"

observed the Indian.

"Yes, that's the pity of it," agreed Con, "but it seems to me a poor sort of game to play at."

Nevertheless he did his part towards providing food when they all went camping up in the timberline in August, and frequently he, Banty and the Indian would go out by themselves on a three or four days' expedition away from the main camp, "grubbing" themselves and living the lives of semi-savages. And it was upon one of these adventures that the three got separated in some way, Banty and the Indian reaching camp a little before sunset, and waiting in vain for Con's appearance while the hours slipped by, and they called and shouted, and fired innumerable shots thinking to guide him campwards, while they little knew that all the gold in British Columbia could not have brought Con's feet to enter that little tent for many days to come; that with all his newborn affection for Banty, Con would make him most unwelcome should chance bring them face to face again.

II

It happened so strangely, so quickly, that Con gave himself no time to think. They had been trailing a caribou, just for sport, for the hunting season was closed, and Con struck into the wrong trail on the return journey. Thinking to overtake the others, he worked his cayuse hard, galloping on and on until the hills and canyons began to look unfamiliar. Feeling that he was lost, he fired his gun, once, twice.

Far down in the valley came a response, so he loped down the winding trail until he suddenly came upon a little shack surrounded by fields of alfalfa, and a few cattle grazing along a creek.

As he neared the ranch a shot was fired from the shack window, he jerked his animal up shortly, and was about to wheel and gallop back, when a pitiful groan reached his ears, and a man's voice begged: "Water, water, for the love of heaven bring me water!" Then, unfamiliar as Con was to Western life, instinct told him that the revolver shot was meant to call him to some one's aid.

"Coming," he shouted, slipping from his saddle, "buck up, I'll fetch water," but before he could enter the door, a terrible, repulsive face was lifted to the window, and the man almost shrieked:

"Don't come in, don't, I say; just hand me some water from the creek.

I'm too weak to walk."

"Of course I'm coming in," blurted Con, indignantly. "Why, man, you're dead sick!"

"Don't!" choked the man; "oh, boy, don't come near me, _I've got smallpox_."

For one brief second Con stood, stiff with horror. "Who's with you, helping you, nursing you?" he demanded.

"No one, I'm alone, alone; oh! water, water," moaned the man.

Con flung open the door. There was no hesitation, no fear, no thought of self; just a great human pity in his fair young face, and a wonderful tenderness in his strong young arms as he lifted the loathsome sufferer from the floor where he had fallen in his weakness, after crawling to the window in that last, almost hopeless effort to call a.s.sistance.

On the soiled and tumbled bed he laid the man, who still shrieked: "Go away, go away, you're crazy to come in here!" Then without a word of even kindly encouragement the boy seized a bucket and dashed down to the creek. "It's water, not words, he wants now," he said to himself, running back, and in another moment his good right arm was slipping under the sick man's shoulders, and he was lifting him up and holding to the fever-cracked lips a cup of gloriously cold water.

"Bless you! The dear good G.o.d himself bless you! But, oh, boy, go away, go away!" murmured the man, weakly.

"Go away and leave you here alone, perhaps to die? And then have to face my parents and Banty and The Eena, and--and England again and tell what I've done? Not I!" cried the boy, indignantly. "Look at this shack, the state it's in; look at you. How did you come to be here alone?"

"I had a pardner, but he left me, just skinned out, when he suspected what I had," said the man, hopelessly. It was then that Con burst forth in that quick flashing English temper that was always aroused at the sight of injustice, of unmanliness, or of underhand dealings. He was so furious that he took his temper out in cleaning up the shack, and cooking some soft foods for the patient, and every time the wretched man begged him to go away he got so indignant and abusive that the sick one finally laughed outright, thereby lifting them both out of the depths of grey despair.

"That's the way, 'Snooks,'" commented Con. (He had nicknamed his shack-mate "Snooks.") "Just you laugh, it will do you no end of good, don't you know."

But in spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy found a cake of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur.

The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel of coals. The tar soap was a blessing both to himself and the patient, and the salts they both swallowed manfully and daily. There was rice, oatmeal, tapioca, jam, tinned stuffs and prunes, and Con knew as little of cookery as he knew of nursing, but he made shift with the little store in hand. Snooks kept alive and the boy remained well. But the nights were long periods of horror. Snooks would become delirious with fever, and the torture of the foul disease would become unbearable.

Once they had an out-and-out fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man to his back. Then flinging his whole weight above the prostrate body he held him by sheer force, conquering and saving this life which had no claims on him except that of all common humanity. An onlooker would have thought that the dread disease had no horrors for the boy, but Con was only human, and many a time he fought it out with himself when the terrors of the threatened infection were upon him. Then he would say to himself, "Con, are you going to try and be a gentleman through your whole life, or just be a cad?" Then all thought of quitting would vanish, and back he would go to the shack, to be rewarded by a wonderful look of dog-like grat.i.tude that would shine in Snooks' festered eyes, replacing the haunting fear that always lurked there whenever the boy remained outside any length of time--the fear that Con, too, had gone, as had his "pardner," leaving him forever alone.

"Don't you get scared," Con would say on these occasions. "I'm with you to the finish for good or ill, and it will be for good, I think."

"It sure is for _my_ good," Snooks had said once. "If I pull out of this I'll be another man, and it will be owing to having known you, pard. I had forgotten that such bravery and decency and unselfishness existed.

I had--"

"Oh, quit it! Stop it!" Con smiled. "This isn't anything--don't you know." But Snooks shook his head thoughtfully, muttering, "I _do_ know, and you're making another man of me."

One day, after two weeks had dragged wearily past wherein no human being had pa.s.sed up the unfrequented trail, Con heard gun shots, distant at first, then nearing the shack. Like a wild being he sprang to the door, hoping some range rider, chancing by, would at least bring food and a doctor, when, to his horror, he saw Banty riding by, almost exhausted, peering to right and left of the trail, searching--searching, he well knew, for his lost cousin. Con made a rapid bolt for a hiding place, but Banty, whose quick eyes had caught sight of the fleeting figure, gave a yell of delight as he leaped from his saddle.

"Don't you come _near_ this place! Get out, _get_ out, I tell you!"

screamed Con, while Banty stood as if petrified, staring wide-eyed at his seemingly insane cousin.

"You come near here and I'll trim you within an inch of your life," Con roared anew, shaking his fist menacingly. "I'll trim you the way I did the fellow who sent me the blue ribbon for my hair. We've got smallpox here. I'm looking after a chap who is down with it. Get us a doctor and beef tea and more tar soap and food, but don't you come an inch nearer, Banty, _don't_. Think of aunt and the people at the ranch. You can't do any good, and I'll go clean crazy if you expose yourself to this. Oh, Banty, get out of this, get out of this, or, I tell you, _honest_, I'll lick you if you don't."

Banty was no coward, but Con looked terrifyingly fierce and in dead earnest, and the boy's common sense told him that he could far better serve these stricken shackmen in doing as he was bidden. So after more explanations and instructions, he mounted and rode away like one possessed, Con's last words ringing in his ears: "Don't forget _barrels_ of tar soap, and _tons_ of tea. I haven't had a drink of tea for ten days."

Late that night a young doctor rode up from Kamloops, and in his wake a professional nurse with supplies of food, medicines, and exquisitely fresh, clean sheets. While the physician bent over the sick man, Con seized a package of groceries and in five minutes was drinking a cup of his beloved English tea, as calmly as if he had been nursing a friend with a headache.

Presently the doctor beckoned him outside. Con put down his cup regretfully and followed.

"Young man," said the doctor, eyeing him curiously, "Do you know who this man is you've been nursing, exposing yourself to death for?"

"Haven't an idea; I call him 'Snooks,'" said Con.

"Much better call him 'Crooks,'" said the doctor, angrily. "You've been risking your life and that pretty pink English skin of yours for one of the most worthless men in British Columbia; he's been a cattle rustler, a 'salter' of gold mines, and everything that is discreditable; it makes me indignant. He tells me he at least had the decency to warn you, when you came here. What ever made you come on--in?"

Con stared at the doctor, a cold, a "stony British" stare. "Why, doctor," he said, "because Snooks has been a--a--failure, I don't see that's any reason why I should be a cad."

The doctor looked at him hard. "I wish I had a son like you," he remarked.

"My father is an army surgeon; he's been through the cholera scourge in India twice. I never could have looked him in the face again if I hadn't seen Snooks through," said Con, simply.

"Well, you can look him in the face now all right, boy!" the doctor replied, gravely. "Say good-bye to your sick friend, for we've brought a tent and you are to be soaked in disinfectants and put into quarantine.

No more of this pest-shack for you, my boy."

So Con went back to shake hands with "Snooks," who said very quietly: "I can't even say 'Thank you,' as I want to; I guess the best way to thank a pard is to live it, not speak it. I ain't said a prayer for years till the day you came here, and I've prayed night and day, _real_ prayers, that you wouldn't get this disease. Maybe that'll show you, pard, that I've started to be a new man."

"Yes, that shows," answered Con confidentially, and with another handclasp, he left for his little tent, with a great faith in his heart that the sick man's prayers would be answered.

At last one joyous day the doctor sent for Banty, who rode over with a led horse, and Con, leaping into the saddle, waved good-bye to Snooks, who, now convalescent, stood in the door of the distant shack. As the boy galloped off up the trail, Snooks turned to the nurse and said: