CHAPTER XII
THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW
A car with dimmed lights stood in front of the Quirt cabin when Swandrove around the last low ridge and down to the gate. The rattle ofthe wagon must have been heard, for the door opened suddenly and Frankstood revealed in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp on the tablewithin. Behind Frank, Lorraine saw Jim and Sorry standing in theirshirt sleeves looking out into the dark. Another, shorter figure sheglimpsed as Frank and the two men stepped out and came striding hastilytoward them. Lorraine jumped out and ran to meet them, hoping andfearing that her hope was foolish. That car might easily be only BobWarfield on some errand of no importance. Still, she hoped.
"That you, Raine? Where's Brit? What's all this about Brit beinghurt? A doctor from Shoshone----"
"A _doctor_? Oh, did a doctor come, then? Oh, help Swan carry dad in!I'm--oh, I'm afraid he's awfully injured!"
"Yes-s--but how'n hell did a doctor know about it?" Sorry, the silent,blurted unexpectedly.
"Oh,--never mind--but get dad in. I'll----" She ran past them withoutfinishing her sentence and burst incoherently into the presence of anextremely calm little man with gray whiskers and dust on the shoulderof his coat. These details, I may add, formed the sum of Lorraine'sfirst impression of him.
"Well! Well!" he remonstrated with a professional briskness, when shenearly bowled him over. "We seem to be in something of a hurry! Isthis the patient I was sent to examine?"
"No!" Lorraine flashed impatiently over her shoulder as she rushedinto her own room and began turning down the covers. "It's dad, ofcourse--and you'd better get your coat off and get ready to go to work,because I expect he's just one mass of broken bones!"
The doctor smiled behind his whiskers and returned to the doorway todirect the carrying in of his patient. His sharp eyes went immediatelyto Brit's face, pallid under the leathery tan, his fingers went toBrit's hairy, corded wrist. The doctor smiled no more that evening.
"No, he is not a mass of broken bones, I am happy to say," he reportedgravely to Lorraine afterwards. "He has a sufficient number, however.The left scapula is fractured, likewise the clavicle, and there is acompound fracture of the femur. There is some injury to the head, theexact extent of which I cannot as yet determine. He should be removedto a hospital, unless you are prepared to have a nurse here for sometime, or to assume the burden of a long and tedious illness." Helooked at her thoughtfully. "The journey to Shoshone would be aconsiderable strain on the patient in his present condition. He has asplendid amount of constitutional vitality, or he would scarcely havesurvived his injuries so long without medical attendance. Can you tellme just how the accident occurred?"
"Excuse me, doctor--and Miss," Swan diffidently interrupted. "I couldask you to take a look on my shoulder, if you please. If you are donesetting bones in Mr Hunter. I have a great pain on my shoulder fromcarrying so long."
"You never mentioned it!" Lorraine reproached him quickly. "Of courseit must be looked after right away. And then, Doctor, I'd like to talkto you, if you don't mind." She watched them retreat to the bunk-housetogether. Swan's big form towering above the doctor's slighter figure.Swan was talking earnestly, the mumble of his voice reaching Lorrainewithout the enunciation of any particular word to give a clue to whathe was saying. But it struck her that his voice did not sound quitenatural; not so Swedish, not so careful.
Frank came tiptoeing out of the room where Brit lay bandaged andunconscious and stood close to Lorraine, looking down at her solemnly.
"How'n 'ell did he git here--the doctor?" he demanded, making a greateffort to hold his voice down to a whisper, and forgetting now andthen. "How'd _he_ know Brit rolled off'n the grade? Us here, _we_never knowed it, and I was tryin' to send him back when you came. Hesaid somebody telephoned there was a man hurt in a runaway. Thereain't a telephone closer'n the Sawtooth, and that there's a good twentymile and more from where Brit was hurt. It's damn funny."
"Yes, it is," Lorraine admitted uncomfortably. "I don't know any morethan you do about it."
"Well, how'n 'ell did it happen? Brit, he oughta know enough torough-lock down that hill. An' that team ain't a runaway team. _I_never had no trouble with 'em--they're good at holdin' a load. They'llset down an' slide but what they'll hold 'er. What become of thehorses?"
"Why--they're over there yet. We forgot all about the horses, I think.Caroline was standing up, all right. The other horse may be killed. Idon't know--it was lying down. And Yellowjacket was up that littlegully just this side of the wreck, when I left him. They did try tohold the load, Frank. Something must have happened to the brake. Isaw dad crawling out from under the wagon just before I got to wherethe load was standing. Or some one did. I think it was dad. ButCaroline kicked my horse down off the road, and, I only saw him aminute--but it _must_ have been dad. And then, a little way down thehill, something went wrong."
Frank seemed trying to reconstruct the accident from Lorraine'sdescription. "He'd no business to start down if his rough-lock wasn'tall right," he said. "It ain't like him. Brit's careful about themthings--little men most always are. I don't see how 'n 'ell it workedloose. It's a damn queer layout all around; and this here doctorgitting here ahead of you folks, that there is the queerest. What's hesay about Brit? Think he'll pull through?"
The doctor himself, coming up just then, answered the question. Ofcourse the patient would pull through! What were doctors for? As tohis reason for coming, he referred them to Mr Vjolmar, whom he thoughtcould better explain the matter.
The three of them waited,--five of them, since Jim and Sorry had comeup, anxious to hear the doctor's opinion and anything else pertainingto the affair. Swan was coming slowly from the bunk-house, buttoninghis coat. He seemed to feel that they were waiting for him and to knowwhy. His manner was diffident, deprecating even.
"We may as well go in out of the mosquitoes," the doctor suggested."And I wish you would tell these people what you told me, young man.Don't be afraid to speak frankly; it is rather amazing but not at allimpossible, as I can testify. In fact," he added dryly, "my presencehere ought to settle any doubt of that. Just tell them, young man,about your mother."
Swan was the last to enter the kitchen, and he stood leaning againstthe closed door, turning his old hat round and round, his eyes goingswiftly from face to face. They were watching him, and Swan blushed adeep red while he told them about his mother in Boise, and how he couldtalk to her with his thoughts. He explained laboriously how thethoughts from her came like his mother speaking in his head, and thathis thoughts reached her in the same way. He said that since he was alittle boy they could talk together with their thoughts, but peoplelaughed and some called them crazy, so that now he did not like to havesomebody know that he could do it.
"But Brit Hunter's hurt bad, so a doctor must come quick, or I think hemaybe will die. It takes too long to ride a horse to Echo from thisranch, so I call on my mother, and I tell my mother a doctor must comequick to this ranch. So my mother sends a telephone to this doctor inShoshone, and he comes. That is all. But I would not like it ifeverybody maybe finds it out that I do that, and makes talk about it."
He looked straight at Jim and Sorry, and those two unprepossessing oneslooked at each other and at Swan and at the doctor and at each otheragain, and headed for the door. But Swan was leaning against it, andhis eyes were on them. "I would like it if you say somebody rides toget the doctor," he hinted quietly.
Sorry looked at Jim. "I rode like hell," he stated heavily. "I leaveit to Jim."
"You shore'n hell did!" Jim agreed, and Swan removed his big form fromthe door.
"You boys goin' over t' Spirit Canyon?" Frank wanted to know.
"Yeah," said Sorry, answering for them both, and they went out, givingSwan a sidelong look of utter bafflement as they passed him. Talkingby the thought route from Spirit Canyon to Boise City was evidently abit too much for even their phlegmatic souls to cont
emplate withperfect calm.
"They'll keep it to theirselves, whether they believe it or not," Frankassured Swan in his laboured whisper. "It don't go down with me. Iain't supe'stitious enough fer that."
"The doctor he comes, don't he?" Swan retorted. "I shall go back nowand milk the cows and do chores."
"But if your shoulder is lame, Swan, how can you?" Lorraine asked inher unexpected fashion.
Swan swallowed and looked helplessly at the doctor, who stood smoothinghis chin. "The muscle strain is not serious," he said calmly. "Alittle gentle exercise will prevent further trouble, I think."Whereupon he turned abruptly to the door of the other room, glanced inat Brit and beckoned Lorraine with an upraised finger.
"You have had a hard time of it yourself, young lady," he told her."You needn't worry about Swan. He is not suffering appreciably. Ishall mix you a very unpleasant dose of medicine, and then I want youto go to bed and sleep. I shall stay with your father to-night; notthat it is necessary, but because I prefer daylight for the trip backto town. So there is no reason why you should sit up and wear yourselfout. You will have plenty of time to do that while your father's bonesmend."
He proceeded to mix the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed andstraightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusinglyin her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father'sdesperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farthercorner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night--itseemed so long ago!--and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it,bright sunlight was shining into the room.