Winning the Wilderness Part 40

"I tell you, I'm in a devil of a fix," he repeated.

"Well, be wise and go to a doctor in time," Doctor Carey said, only half in jest. "Champers, we haven't always worked together out here, but I guess we know each other pretty well. I'm willing to trust you. Are you afraid to trust me?"

Darley Champers leaned back in his office chair and stared at the questioner.

Horace Carey's heavy hair was very white now, although he was hardly fifty-five years old. The decades of consecrated service to his profession had told only in this one feature. His face was the face of a vigorous man, and something in his life, maybe the meaning of giving up and the meaning of the service, he once told Jim Shirley, he had known, had left upon his countenance their mark of strength. As Darley Champers looked at this face, he realized, as he had never done before, the freedom and joy of an unsullied reputation and honest dealing.

"Lord, no, I'd trust you in h.e.l.l, Doc," he exclaimed bluntly.

"I won't put it to the proof," the doctor a.s.sured him. "Nor will I trouble you nor myself with any matter not concerning us two. Tell me frankly all the trouble about this sale."

Briefly, Champers explained Smith's hatred of Jim Shirley, and his anger at the present sale.

"All I ask is that you will not break your word to Miss Shirley," Horace Carey said. "I happen to know that the money will be ready for you. This Smith is the same man who came to old Carey's Crossing years ago, of course?"

"Why, do you remember him?" Darley Champers asked in surprise.

"I've crossed his trail a hundred times since then, and it's always an ill-smelling trail. Some day I may follow it a bit myself. You'll do well to break with him," the doctor a.s.sured him.

"If Doc Carey ever starts on that hyena's trail, I'd like to be in at the end of the chase," Champers declared with a grin.

"Why not help a bit yourself? I'm going East for a week. When I come back, I'll see you. Maybe I can help you a little to get his claws unhooked from your throat," Carey suggested, and the two men shook hands and separated.

Champers stood up and breathed deeply. The influence of an upright man's presence is inspiring. Horace Carey did not dream that his confidence and good will that day were turning the balances for Darley Champers for the remainder of his life. Champers was by nature a ferret, and Carey's parting words took root and grew in his mind.

The May rains that had flooded Gra.s.s River and its tributaries did worse for Clover Creek in Ohio a few days later. The lower part of the town of Cloverdale was uncomfortably submerged until the high railroad grade across the creek on the Aydelot farm broke and let the back water have broader outlet.

Doctor Carey had not startled the same old loafers who kept watch over the railway station when he suddenly dropped into the town again. They were too busy watching the capers of Clover Creek to attend to their regular post of duty. And since he had been a guest of Miss Jane Aydelot as much as a half dozen times in two decades, they knew about what to expect of him now.

They were more interested in a big bluff stranger who dropped into town off the early morning train, ate a plentiful meal at the depot restaurant, and then strolled down to the creek. He loitered all day about the spot where the grade broke, nor did he leave the place when the crowd was called away late in the afternoon to a little stream on the other side of town that had suddenly risen to be a river for the first time in the memory of man.

To Doctor Carey, Jane Aydelot looked scarce a day older for the dozen years gone by. Her days were serene and full of good works. Such women do not lose the charm of youth until late in life.

"I have come for help, as you told me to do when I took Leigh away,"

Doctor Carey said as they sat on the south veranda in the pleasant light of the May evening.

Jane Aydelot's face was expectant. n.o.body except Doctor Carey knew how a little hungry longing in her eyes disappeared when he made his brief visits and crept back again when he said good-by.

"I am waiting always to help you," she replied.

"I need fourteen hundred dollars to loan to Leigh, and I must have that sum at once."

Miss Jane looked thoughtfully at the deep woodland, hiding the marshes as of old.

"I can arrange it," she said presently. "Tell me about it."

And Horace Carey told her all of Leigh's plans.

"It is a wonderful undertaking for a girl, but she has faith in herself, and if she fails, the land is abundantly worth the mortgage with nothing but weeds on it," the doctor explained. "She is a charming girl. She seems to have inherited all of her mother's sweetness and artistic gifts, without her mother's submissiveness to others; and from her father, she has keen business qualities, but fails to inherit his love of gain and traits of trickery. Her executive mind with her uncle's good heart make a winning team. By the way, my affection for Jim Shirley is leading me to make some quiet investigation of an agent of Tank's who is hounding Jim and will, I suppose, turn against Leigh. Can you help me at all?"

Doctor Carey had always felt that Miss Jane knew much more than she cared to tell of the Shirley family's affairs.

She rose without replying and went into the house. In a few minutes she returned and gave a large sealed envelope into Doctor Carey's hands.

"Do not use that until it is needed to protect someone from Tank Shirley's violence. It is legally drawn and witnessed. You will find it effective if it is needed at all."

"I have one more duty, Miss Aydelot," Doctor Carey said. "My time is brief. I have an intuition, too, that I may never come East again."

Jane Aydelot's face whitened, and her hands closed involuntarily on one another as she waited.

"I must have you and Asher Aydelot reconciled. What can I tell him of you?"

The pink flush returned to the pale cheeks.

"Let him read my will. I copied it when I had your telegram two days ago.

I cannot give him my property; Uncle Francis' will forbids it. But--take the copy with you. I hope my wishes will be realized."

Doctor Carey held her hand long when he bade her good-by. In her clear gray eyes he read a story that gave him infinite sorrow. Stooping down, he put his arm gently about her shoulders and, drawing her to him, kissed her once on her forehead, and once--just once--on her lips, and was gone.

They never met again. But those who knew her best in Cloverdale remember yet that from the Maytime of that year, Miss Jane's face was glorified with a light never there before.

Down at the creek, Doctor Carey saw a large man intently studying the bank beyond the break in the railroad grade. Something made the doctor pa.s.s slowly, for the figure appealed to his interest. Presently, the man turned away and, climbing up to the National pike road before him, made his way into town. As the last light of evening fell full upon him, it revealed to Doctor Carey a very white face, and eyes that stared, as if seeing nothing--even the bluff face and huge form of Darley Champers.

Two weeks later when Darley Champers gave Leigh Shirley the deed in her own name to the Cloverdale Ranch, he said, in his bluff way:

"I'm sayin' nothin' against Jim Shirley, madam, when I say I hope you'll keep this in your own name. Some day you'll know why. And I hope to Gawd you'll prosper with it. It's cost more'n the money paid out for it to get that quarter section of prairie out of the wilderness. Sorrow and disappointment, bad management, and blasted hopes, and hard work, and hate. But I reckon it's clean hands and a pure heart, as the Good Book says, that you are usin' now. This money don't represent all it'll cost me yet by a danged sight."

He bade her a hearty good-by and strode away.

The mortgage for the loan was given to Horace Carey, as agreed upon between himself and Miss Jane Aydelot.

"If Leigh knows it's Aydelot money she might feel like she's taking what should be Thaine's. Would the Aydelots feel the same if they knew it?"

Miss Jane had asked.

"The thing the Aydelots have never grieved for is this Ohio inheritance,"

Carey answered her. "Asher gave it up to live his life in his own way. If you knew what a prince of a fellow he is, although he's only a Kansas farmer, you would understand how that prairie ranch and the lure of the sunflower have gripped him to the West,"

The day after the completion of the sale Dr. Carey went to the Big Wolf neighborhood. In the dusk of the evening he drove up to Darley Champers'

office in Wykerton. As he was. .h.i.tching his team Rosie Gimpke rushed out of the side street and lunged across to the hitching post.

"Oh, Doctor Carey, coom queek mit me," she exclaimed in a whisper. "Coom, I just got here from Mis' Aydelot's. They mak' me coom home to work at the Wyker House, ant a man get hurt bad in there. Coom, do coom," she urged in a frenzy of eagerness.

"What's the trouble?" Dr. Carey asked.

"Coom. I show you. I 'fraid the man coom back and finish heem. Don't make no noise, but coom." Rosie was clutching hard at Dr. Carey's arm as she whispered.

"That sounds surprising, but life is full of surprises," the doctor thought as he took up his medicine case and followed Rosie's lead.