The Lady Doc Part 55

"Way 'round 'em, Shep!" The voice was familiar. "Hullo, Doc!" The Sheep King of Poison Creek waved a grimy, genial hand.

"Hurry your infernal woolers along, can't you?" she yelled in response.

That other cloud of dust rising above the road which led from the Symes Irrigation Project into town was coming closer. She plunged among the sheep, forcing a path for herself through the moving ma.s.s of woolly backs.

"You're in a desprit rush, looks like. They won't die till you get there!" The Sheep King was not too pleased as he ran to head the sheep she had turned.

"Like the devil was after her." He watched her bound up the steps of Symes's veranda and burst through the doorway.

The engineer had steam up and the last half dozen sheep were being prodded into the last car of the long train bound for the Eastern market when the Sheep King of Poison Creek drew his s.h.i.+rt sleeve across his moist forehead in relief and observed with feeling:

"Of all the contrary--onery--say, Bill, there's them as says sheep is fools!"

It took a moment for this surprising a.s.sertion to sink into his helper's brain.

"They as says sheep is fools----" Bill, the herder's voice rang with scorn, "them as says sheep is fools----" great mental effort was visible upon his blank countenance as he groped for some word or combination of words sufficiently strong to express his opinion of those who doubted the intelligence of sheep--"is fools themselves," he added lamely, finding none.

"Guess we're about ready to pull out. Get aboard, Bill." The Sheep King, squinting along the track where the banked cinders radiated heat waves, was watching, not the signalling brakeman, but a figure skulking in the shade of the red water-tank. "It looks like----"

The heavy train of bleating sheep began to crawl up the grade. The Sheep King stood at the door of the rear car looking fixedly at the slinking figure so obviously waiting for the caboose to pa.s.s.

Dr. Harpe threw her black medicine case upon the platform.

"Give us a hand." The words were a demand, but there was appeal in the eyes upturned to his as she thrust up her own hand.

"Sure." The cordiality in the Sheep King's voice was forced as he dragged her aboard; and in his curious looks, his constraint of manner, the sly glances and averted, grinning faces of his helpers inside, Dr.

Harpe read her fate.

"Your name," Essie Tisdale had said, "will be a byword in every sheep-camp and bunk-house in the country."

Sick with a baffled feeling of defeat and the realization that the prophecy of the girl she hated already had come true, Dr. Harpe sat on the top step of the caboose, her chin buried in her hands, with moody, malignant eyes watching Crowheart fade as the bleating, ill-smelling sheep train crept up the grade.

x.x.x

"THICKER THAN WATER"

Essie Tisdale pulled aside the coa.r.s.e lace curtains starched to asbesteroid stiffness which draped the front windows of the upstairs parlor in the Terriberry House, and looked with growing interest at an excited and rapidly growing group on the wide sidewalk in front of the post-office.

Such gatherings in Crowheart nearly always portended a fight, but since the hub of the fast widening circle appeared to be Mr. Percy Parrott gesticulating wildly with a newspaper, she concluded that it was merely a sensational bit of news which had come from the outside world. Yet the citizens of Crowheart were not given to exhibiting concern over any happening which did not directly concern themselves, and Dr. Lamb was running. From a hurried walk he broke into a short-stepped, high-kneed prance which was like the action of an English cob, while from across the street dashed Sohmes, the abnormally fat butcher, clasping both hands over his swaying abdomen to lessen the jar.

She turned from the window, and one of the waves of gladness which kept rising within her again swept over her as she realized that the affairs of Crowheart meant nothing to her now. A gulf, invisible as yet, but real as her own existence, lay between her and the life of which she had been a part such a little time before.

She looked about her at the cotton plush furniture of dingy red, at the marble-topped centre table upon whose chilly surface a large, gilt-edged family Bible reposed--placed there by Mrs. Terriberry in the serene confidence that its fair margins would never be defiled through use. Beside the Bible, lay the plush alb.u.m with its Lombroso-like villainous gallery of countenances upon which transient vandals had pencilled mustaches regardless of s.e.x. She looked at the fly-roost of pampas gra.s.s in the sky-blue vase on the shelf from which hung an old-gold lambriquin that represented the highest art of the Kensington cult--water lilies on plush--and at the crowning glory of the parlor, a pier gla.s.s in a walnut frame.

It was tawdry and cheap and offended her eye, but it was exclusively her own and she looked about her with a keen thrill of pleasure because of the condition which her occupancy of it represented. Somehow it seemed years ago that she had walked around the hole in the ingrain carpet in the bare room which looked out upon the heap of tin-cans and corrals of the Terriberry House.

Through the door which opened into her bed-chamber she saw the floor littered with boxes and papers, the new near-silk petticoat draping a chair, the new near-tailored suit which represented the "last cry" from the General Merchandise Store, the Parisian hat which the clairvoyant milliner had seen in a trance and trimmed from memory, but the lines of which suggested that the milliner's astral body had practised a deception and projected itself no further than 14th Street.

A fresh realization of what these things meant, namely the personal interest of some one who cared, brought a rush of tears to her eyes.

They were still moist when Mr. Richard Kincaid appeared in the parlor, his eyes twinkling above a pillar of boxes and bundles which he carried in his arms.

"What's the matter, Esther? What has happened?" He dropped the packages and went to her side.

She threw her arms impulsively about his neck and laid her head upon his breast while she said between little sobs of tears and laughter--

"I'm so happy! happy! _happy!_ Uncle d.i.c.k--that's all. And so grateful, too. I love you so much that I want to cry, and so happy that I want to laugh. So I do both. I didn't have to learn to love you. I did from the first. It came with a rush just as soon as I found out who you were--that we belonged to each other, you know. All at once I felt so different--so safe--so sure of you, and so secure--and so proud to think we were related. I can't explain exactly, but just being _me_, so long--not knowing who I was or where I came from--and belonging to no one at all--it seems a wonderful thing to have you!"

She turned her face to his shoulder and cried softly.

He patted her cheek and smiled--a smile that was of sadness and understanding.

"I know what you mean, Esther; I comprehend your feelings perfectly.

It's the bond of kins.h.i.+p which you recognize, the tie of blood, and let me tell you, girl, there never was a truer saying than the old one that 'blood is thicker than water.' Disguise it as you will, and bitter family feuds would sometimes seem to give it the lie, but it's a fact just the same. It takes time to find it out--a lifetime often--but deep in the heart of every normal human being there's an instinctive, intimate, personal feeling for one's own flesh and blood that is like nothing else. Their successes and their failures touch us closer, for the pride of race is in us all.

"There's none who realize more strongly the limitations of strangers'

friends.h.i.+ps than those, who, like you and I, have been dependent upon them as a subst.i.tute for the affection of our own. But there, that's done with, loneliness is behind us, for we have each other now; and, bottled up within me, I've the longings of twenty years to spoil and pamper somebody. When I was the marrying age I was off in the hills; since then I've been too busy and too critical. So you see, Esther Kincaid Tisdale, you are filling a long-felt want."

He kissed her with a smack and she hugged his arm in ecstasy.

"I'm going to try and make up for what we both have lost. No harm can come to you so long as I have a dollar and the brains to make more."

"It's like stories I've dreamed!" she breathed happily.

"But tell me,"--some thought made him hold her at arms' length to read her face--"has there been no one, no one at all who has figured in these dreams of yours in a different way from which I do?"

He watched with something like consternation the tell-tale color rise in her face and her eyes drop from his own.

"There was--one," she faltered, "but he--I--misunderstood--I was vain enough to think he cared for me. It was a mistake--a stupid mistake of mine--he just liked me--he was lonely--I suppose--that's all." She swallowed hard to down the rising lump in her throat.

"Who was he?"

"I don't know exactly who he was; he just came here; rode in on horseback--for his health, he said. They used to say he was a hold-up getting the lay of the town to make a raid, or a gambler, but he wasn't, he _wasn't_ anything like that. _You'd_ have liked him, Uncle d.i.c.k, I know you would have liked him!" Her eyes were sparkling now. "He talked like you, and when he was interested enough to exert himself he had the same sure way of doing things. But he went away about three weeks ago and did not even say good-by."

"What's his name?"

She answered with an effort--

"Ogden Van Lennop."

"Van Lennop?" Kincaid's voice was sharp with astonishment. "Why, girl, he's here. He just got in and he's raising Cain in Crowheart! I meant to tell you, but this shopping business quite drove it from my head. The news has only come out that the Symes's Irrigation Company is going into a Receiver's hands and the bondholders will foreclose their mortgages.

Look down in the street. There's a mob of workmen from the project and the creditors of your friend Symes considering how they best can extract blood from a turnip. For some reason of his own Van Lennop has gone after Symes's scalp and got it. Don't be too quick to judge him, Esther." But a glance at her face told him he need not plead Van Lennop's cause.

"He meant it, then!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "All that he said that day we rode together. I didn't understand his meaning, but this is it: 'I'll wear your colors in the arena where _men_ fight--and win,' he said. 'I'll fight with the weapons I know best how to use.'"