_ CHAPTER XX. MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE
Sim Gage's reflections kept him wandering about for the space of an hour or two in the open air.
"I'll tell you," said he, after a time to Mrs. Jensen, who once more had cared for their household needs, "I reckon I'll go on down to the dam, on the mail coach this evening. You go in and tell her, won't you? Say I can't noways get back before to-morrow. I got to see about one thing and another. She'll understand."
Therefore, when the mail wagon came down the valley an hour later, Sim Gage was waiting for it at the end of his own lane. He had meantime arrayed himself cap-a-pie in all the new apparel he recently had purchased, so that he stood now reeking of discomfort, in his new hat, his new shoes, his tight collar. Evidently something of formal character was in his plans.
It was well toward midnight when the leisurely mail wagon arrived at the end of its semi-weekly round and put up at the Company works. At that hour the company doctor was not visible, so Sim found quarters elsewhere. It was a due time after breakfast on the following morning before he ventured to the doctor's office.
Doctor Barnes himself was engaged in bringing up his correspondence. He was his own typist, and at the time was engaged in picking out letter after letter upon a small typewriter with which he had not yet acquired familiarity. He was occupied with two letters of importance. One was going to a certain medical authority of the University from which he himself had received his degree. It contained a certain hypothetical question regarding diseases of the eye, upon which he himself at the time did not feel competent to pass.
The second letter was one to his new Chief, an officer of the reclamation engineers, at Washington. He wore again to-day the uniform of a Major of the Army. The wheels of officialdom were revolving. The public quality of this enterprise was well understood. That lawless elements were afoot in that region was a fact also well recognized. To have this dam go out now would be an injury to the peace measures of the country. Soldiers were coming to protect it, and the soldiers must have a commander. In the hurried times of war, when there was not opportunity always for exactness, majors were made overnight when needful out of such material as the Government found at hand. It might have used worse than that of Allen Barnes to-day and here.
"Oh, there
you are," said he at length, turning around and finding Sim Gage standing in the door. "What brought you down here? Anything gone wrong?"
"Well, I ain't sure, Doc," said Sim Gage, "but like enough. One thing, my knee hurts me considerable." In reality he was sparring for time. "But you're dressed up for a soldier?"
"Yes. Sit down there on the operating chair," said Doctor Barnes, tersely. "We'll look it over. Anything happen to it?"
"Why, nothing much," said Sim. "I hurt it a little when I was getting in the mail wagon yesterday evening--busted her open. So last night, when I was going to bed, I took a needle and thread and sewed her up again."
"What's that? Sewed it up?"
"Yes, I got a needle and some black patent thread. Do you reckon she'll hold all right now, Doctor?"
Doctor Barnes was standing, scissors in hand, about to rip open the trouser leg.
"No, you don't!" said Sim. "Them's my best pants. You just go easy now, and don't you cut them none a-tall. Wait till I take 'em off."
The doctor bent over the wounded member. "You put in a regular button-hole stitch," said he, grinning, "didn't you? About three stitches would have been plenty. You put in about two dozen--and with black thread! Like enough poisoned again."
"Well," said Sim, "I didn't want to take no chances of her breaking open again."
The doctor was busy, removing the stitches, and with no gentle hand this time made the proper surgical suture. "Leave it alone this way," said he, "and mind what I tell you. Seems like you can't kill a man out in this country. You can do things in surgery out here that you wouldn't dare tackle back in France, or in the States. I suppose, maybe, I could cut your head off, for instance."
"I wish't you would," said Sim Gage. "She bothers me sometimes."
After a pause he continued, "I been thinking over a heap of things. You see, I'm busted about flat. If I could go on and put up some hay, way prices is, I could make some money this fall, but them damn robbers has cleaned me, and I can't start with nothing. And I ain't got nothing. So there I am."
He vouchsafed nothing more, but had already said so much that Doctor Barnes sat regarding him quietly.
"Gage," said he after a time, "things might be better in this valley. I know that you'll stick with the Government. Now, listen. I'm going to have practical command here from this time on. This is under Army control. I'm going to run a telephone wire up the valley as far as your settlement. I'll appoint you a government special scout, to watch that road. If these ruffians are in this valley again we want to catch them."
"You think I could be any use that way, Doc?" said Sim.
"Yes, I've got to have some of the settlers with me that I can depend on, besides the regular detail ordered in here."
"Would I be some sort of soldier, too, like?" demanded Sim Gage. "I tried to get in. They wouldn't take me. I'm--I'm past forty-five."
"You'd be under orders just like a soldier."
"Would I have any sort of uniform, like, now?"
Doctor Barnes sat thinking for some time. "No," said he. "You have to pass an examination before you really get into the Army; and you're over age, you and Wid, both of you. But I'll tell you--I'll give you a hat--you shall have a hat with a cord on it, so you'll be like a soldier. We'll have a green service cord on it,--say green with a little white in it, Sim Gage? Don't that make you feel as if you were in a uniform?"
"Now that'd sure be fine, Doc, a hat like that," said Sim. "I sure would like that. And I certainly would try to do what was right."
Doctor Barnes, still sitting before the little white operating table where his surgical instruments lay, was looking thoughtful. "In all likelihood I shall have to put a corporal and four men up at your place. That means they'll have to have a house. I can commandeer some of the teams down here, and some men, and they'll all throw in together and help you build an extra cabin. You and they can live in that, I suppose?"
"I reckon we could," said Sim Gage. "That'd be fine, wouldn't it?"
"And as those men would need horses for their own transport, they'd need hay. We'd pay you for hay. I don't see why we couldn't leave one wagon and a team at least up there, to get in supplies. That would help you in getting things started around on your place again, wouldn't it?"
"Would it, Doc?" said Sim Gage, brightening immensely. "It would raise a
load offen me, that's what it would! Right now, especial." He cleared his throat.
"That there brings me right around to what I come down here to talk about," said he with sudden resolution. "For instance, there was a letter come to her up there--from back where she lived--from Annie Squires. So her and me got to talking over that letter, you see."
"What did Annie Squires say, if it's any of my business?" said the Doctor, looking at him steadily.
"Well, I was just talking things over, that way, and we allowed that maybe Annie Squires could come out here--after--well, after the
wedding, you see."
It was out! Sim Gage wiped off his brow.
"The wedding?"
"Why, one thing and other, her and me got to talking things over. Things couldn't run on; so we--we fixed it up."
"Gage," said Doctor Barnes suddenly, "I've got to talk to you."
"Well, all right, all right, Doc. That'll be all right. I wish't you would."
"See here, man. Don't you realize what that woman is? She's too good for men like you and me."
"Yes, Doc. But I wouldn't never raise hand nor voice to her, the least way in the world. I allowed she could live along as my housekeeper, but seems not. You can shoot me, Doc, if you don't think I'm a-doing the right thing by her in every way, shape and manner."
"She's too
good--it's an impossible thing."
Sim Gage's face was lifted, seriously. "Doc, you know mighty well that's true, and so do I--she's plumb too good for me. But it ain't me done all the thinking."
"Didn't you ask her about it?"
"It kind of come around."
Doctor Barnes rose and paced rapidly up and down within the narrow confines of his office. "You
do love her, don't you?"
Sim Gage for the first time in his life felt the secret quick of his simple, sensitive soul cut open and exposed to gaze. Not even the medical man before him could fail of sudden pity at witnessing what was written on his face---all the dignity, the simplicity, the reticence, all the bashfulness of a man brought up helplessly against the knife. He could not--or perhaps would not--answer such a question even from the man before him, whom he suddenly had come to trust and respect as a being superior to himself.
But Allen Barnes was the pitiless surgeon now. "I don't care a damn about you, of course, Gage. You're not fit for her to wipe her shoes on, and you know it. But
she can't see it and doesn't know it. If she could see you--what do you suppose she'd think? Gage--
she mustn't ever know!"
Sim Gage looked at him quietly. "Every one of them words you said to me, Doc, is plumb true, and it ain't enough. I told her my own self, that first day, and since then, it was a blessing she was blind. But look-a-here, I reckon you don't understand how things is. You say you're going to build a house up there, and help me get a start. That's fine. Because hers is the other one, my old house. I wish't I could get some sheets and pillow cases down here while I'm right here now--I'd like to fix her up in there better'n what she is. I'd even like to have a tablecloth, like. But you understand, that's for
her, not me. That's
her house, and not mine. She can't see. It's a God's blessing she can't. And what you said is so--she mustn't
ever know, not now ner no time, what--Sim Gage really is."
Doctor Barnes' voice was out of control. He turned once more to this newly revealed Sim Gage, a man whom he had not hitherto understood.
"Marriage means all sorts of things. It covers up things, begins things, ends things. That's true."
"It ends things for her, Doc--it don't begin nothing fer me, you understand. It is, but it isn't. I'd never step a foot across that door sill, night or day--you understand that, don't you? You didn't think
that for one minute, did you? You didn't think I was so low-down I couldn't understand a thing like
that, did you? It's because she's blind and don't know the truth; and because she's plumb up against it. That's why."
"Oh, damn you!" said Doctor Barnes savagely. "You understand me better than I did you. Yes--it's the only way."
"It sure is funny how funny things get mixed up sometimes, ain't it, Doc?" remarked Sim Gage. "But now, part of my coming down here was about a minister."
"Well," said Doctor Barnes, desperately, feeling that he was party to a crime, "it's priest day next Sunday. We have five or six different sorts of priests and ministers that come in here once a month, and they all come the same Sunday, so they can watch each other--every fellow is afraid the other fellow will get some souls saved the wrong way if he isn't there on the job too. Listen, Gage--I'll bring one of these chaps--Church of England man, I reckon, for he hasn't got much to do down here--up to your ranch next Sunday morning. We've got to get this over with, or we'll all be crazy--I will, anyhow. When I show up, you two be ready to be married.
"Does that go, Sim Gage?" he concluded, looking into the haggard and stubbly face of the squalid-figured man before him.
"It goes," said Sim Gage. _