_ CHAPTER XVII. SAGEBRUSHERS
Nels Jensen reached his home late in the afternoon, his face grave and his tongue more than usually tight. His wife, Karen, looked at him for some time before she spoke.
"Find anything, up in?"
He nodded quietly.
"Doctor get to that sick man?"
"He wasn't sick," rejoined Nels. "Tree fell on him."
"What you do with him?"
"Died before we come out. Whole woods was afire up in there."
"I see the smoke a while back," said she unemotionally, nodding and gazing out of the window toward the distant landscape. "Died, did he? Did you bring him down?"
"The wind has changed," said Nels sententiously. "Before night, won't be nothing to bring down. We left him in his tent."
"Who set that fire, Nels?" she demanded of her husband after a time.
"The same people that burned out Sim Gage and Wid Gardner. All of 'em had cleared out but that one."
"How about that woman, Nels?"
"We brung her down with us. She'd spent the night in the woods alone. Doctor's got her in bed over at Sim's place now." He turned his heavy face upon her frowningly, apparently passing upon some question they earlier had discussed. "I say it's all right, Karen, about her."
"Well, are they going to be married?" she demanded of him. "That's the question. Because if they ain't----"
"If they are or they ain't," said Nels Jensen, "she's not no common folks like us."
"A lady--huh!"
"Yes, if I can tell one. Such being so, best thing you can do, Karen, is to get some eggs together, and like enough a loaf of bread, and go over there right soon."
"If they wasn't
going to be married," began Karen, "people in here wouldn't let that run along."
"Karen," said her husband succinctly, "sometimes you women folks make me tired. Go on and get the eggs."
"Oh, all right," said his wife; and already she was reaching for her sunbonnet. When she and her sturdy spouse had made their way by a short cut across the fields to Sim Gage's house, Karen Jensen had melted, and was no longer righteous judge, but simply neighbor.
"Where is she?" she demanded imperiously of Wid Gardner, whom she found standing outside the door.
Wid nodded toward the interior of the half-ruined cabin. As she passed in she saw Doctor Barnes, sitting on a box, quietly watching the pale face of a woman, young, dark-haired, flushed, her eyes heavy, her hands spread out piteously upon the blanket covering of the rude bunk bed. Karen's first quick glance assured her that this young woman was all that Nels Jensen had called her--a lady. She looked so helpless now that the big ranchwoman's heart went out to her in spite of all.
"You'd better get right out, Doctor," said she; and that gentleman followed her orders, exceeding glad to welcome a woman in this womanless wreck of a home.
Doctor Barnes stood outside, hands in pocket, for a time looking across the meadows lined with their banks of willows, silvering as usual in the evening breeze. "Come here," said he at length to the three men. They all followed him to one side.
"Now, Gage," said he, "I want you to tell me the truth about how this woman came out here."
Wid Gardner, taking pity on his friend, told him instead, going into all the details of the conspiracy that had now proved so disastrous. Doctor Barnes frowned in resentment when he heard.
"She's got to go back East," said he, "as soon as she's able to travel."
"That's what I think," said Sim Gage slowly. "It's what I told her. But she always said she didn't have no place to go back to. She could stay here as long as she liked, but now I ain't got much."
"But it can't run on this way, Gage," said Doctor Barnes. "That girl's clean as wheat. Something's got to be done about this."
"Well, good God A'mighty!" said Sim Gage, "ain't that what I know? If only you'll tell me what's right to do, I sure will do it. In one way it ain't just only my fault she come out here, nor it ain't my fault if she don't go back."
Doctor Barnes engaged for some time in breaking up bits of bark and casting them from his thumb nail. "Have you ever had any talk with her about this?" said he.
"Some," said Sim honestly; "yes, some."
"What was it?"
"She told me, when she answered that ad, she was getting plumb desperate, account of her eyes. She was out of work, and she was broke, and she didn't have no folks on earth, and she'd lost all her money--her folks used to be rich, I reckon, like enough. That's the only reason she answered that fool ad about me being in the market, so to speak, fer a wife. That's how she come out. She must of been locoed. You cain't blame
her. She was all alone in the whole world, but just one girl that knowed her. We got a letter from that girl--I got it here in my pocket. We opened it and read it, Wid and me did, yesterday. Her name's Annie Squires. But she's broke too, I reckon. Now what are we a-goin' to do?"
"Have you ever talked the whole business over--you two--since she came out?"
"Doc," said Sim Gage, "I told you, I tried my damnedest, and I just couldn't. I says to myself, lady like she was, it wouldn't be right fer a man like me to marry her noways on earth."
"And what did she say?"
Sim Gage began to stammer painfully. "I don't know what she would say," said he. "I ain't never asked her none yet."
"Well, I reckon you'll have to," said Doctor Barnes slowly, after a long time in thought; "if she lives."
"Lives? Doc, you don't mean to tell me she's that sick?"
"She isn't trying to fight very hard. When your patient would rather die than live, you've got hard lines, as a doctor. It's hard lines here more ways than one."
"Die--her!--What would
I do then, Doc?" asked Sim Gage, so simply that Doctor Barnes looked at him keenly, gravely.
"It's not a question about you, you damn sagebrusher," said he at last, gently. "Question is, what's best for her. If I didn't feel such a woman was too good to be wasted I'd say, let her go; ethics be damned out here. If she gets well she'll have to decide some time what's to do about this whole business. That brings you into the question again. It was a bad bet, but deceived as she was, she's put herself under your protection. And mine!"
"You see," he added, "that's something that really doesn't come under my profession, but it's something that's up to every decent man."
Mrs. Jensen came to the door, broom in hand. "You, Sim," said she, "come in here!" She accosted him in hoarse whispers when he had obeyed.
"Look-a-here at this place!" said she. "Is this where a hog or a human has been living? I've got things straightened around now, and don't you dare muss 'em up. When that pore girl is able to get around again I'm a-going to take her and show her where everything is--she'll keep this house better blind than you did with your both eyes open. I've got a aunt been blind twenty year, and she cooks and sweeps and sews and knits as good as anybody. She'll do the same way. She's a good knitter, I know. The pore child."
Sim reached out a hand gently to the work which he found lying, needles still in place, on the table where Mary Warren had left it the day before.
"She'll learn soon," said Karen Jensen. "Ain't she pretty enough to make you cry, laying there the way she is." The keen gray eyes of Karen Jensen softened. "She's asleep," she whispered. "Doctor doped her."
"If only now," said Sim Gage, frowning as usual in thought, "if only I could get some sort of woman to come here and stay a while, until she gets well. It ain't right she should be in a place like this all alone."
"You pore fool," said Karen Jensen, "did you think for a minute I'd go away and leave that girl alone with you? Go out and get some wood! I'm a-going to get supper here. Tell Nels he can go back home after supper, and him and Minna and Theodore 'll have to keep house until I get back. The pore thing--you said she was right blind?" she concluded.
"Plumb blind," said Sim Gage. "What's more, she can't see none a-tall. It ain't no wonder she's scared sick."
"I'm mighty glad you're a-goin' to get supper here to-night," he continued. "I'm that rattled, like, I couldn't make bread worth a damn."
He edged out of the cabin and communicated his news. "Mrs. Jensen says she'll take care of her till she gets better," he said.
"That's the best thing I've heard," commented Doctor Barnes. "That'll help. I'll stay here to-night myself. Gardner, can you run my car down to the dam?"
"I might," said Wid. "I never did drive a car much, but I think I could. Mormons does; and I've had a lot to do with mowing machines, like them."
"Well, get down to the dam and tell the people I can't be back until to-morrow afternoon. Here's where I belong just now. Where do I sleep, Gage?"
"Out here in the tent, I reckon," replied Sim, "though most all my blankets is in there on the bed. Maybe I kin find a slicker somewheres. Wid, he ain't got nothing left over to his place, neither."
"Don't bother about things," said Nels Jensen. "I'll go over and bring some blankets from my place. The woman'll take care of that girl until she gets in better shape."
Doctor Barnes looked at them all for a time, frowning in his own way. "You damn worthless people," said he with sudden sheer affection. "God has been good to you, hasn't he?"
"Now, ain't that the truth?" said Sim Gage, perhaps not quite fully understanding. _