Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (5)

“The lovely wife, maternal care,
The self-denying zeal,
The smile of hope that chased despair,
And promised future weal;

“The clean, bright hearth, nice table spread,
The charm o’er all things thrown,
The sweetness in whate’er she said,—
All gone! I am alone.

“I slept last night, and then I dreamed;
Perchance her spirit woke;
A soft light o’er my pillow gleamed,
A voice in music spoke:

“‘Forgot, forgiven, all neglect,
Thy love recalled, alone;
The babes I loved, O love, protect,
I still am all thine own.’”

“Dear bereaved and sorrowing daddie!” sighed Jean, as she closed the book. “I cannot write a word to-night. Sacred to him and his be the page on which he has inscribed these echoes of his heart. But let nobody say, after this, that daddie has no sentiment in his make-up. The trouble is that he is too busy a man to give rein to his feelings, except under extraordinary pressure. I wish he hadn’t tried to throw away those heirlooms of mother’s, though. The oxen wouldn’t have felt the difference in the load. It was an act that he’ll be ashamed of some day.”

Weeks after, when the memory-hallowed relics came to light, Captain Ranger bowed his head upon his hands and gave way to such a convulsion of grief as had not shaken him, even at the time of her transition. Jean had good cause to recall the stanzas he had inscribed to her mother’s memory in her battered journal, as she said to herself: “I knew all the time that daddie’s heart was right. It is only necessary to touch it in the proper place to show that it is tender.” Once more she closed the book without having written a word.

But we must not anticipate.

On the 22d of June another entry is recorded,—Jean’s last memorandum of their journey in the Black Hills: “The prickly pears still give us much annoyance. The roads are heavy with sand, and the rocks over which our wagons must bump and bound are terribly rough and jagged.

“Across the Platte, and away to the southward many miles, though they seem much nearer, owing to the rarity of the air, are quaint and curious formations in the rocky cliffs, worn by the winds of ages into rude images of men and animals that stare at us with sunken eyes, their broken noses, grinning skulls, and disfigured bodies reminding us of unhappy phantoms risen from the under world.

“Sometimes the semblance of a great mosque or cathedral rears its domes and minarets in the clear blue of the heavens; and sometimes what seems a great embattled fortification is seen rising with realistic majesty from a vast sage plain that looks, with a little aid of the imagination, like the dried-up bed of a big moat. Of course, ‘’tis distance lends enchantment to the view,’ as no doubt the images we see so distinctly would resolve themselves into shapeless masses if we could see them at close range.

“The grass we so much need for the stock has again disappeared, and daddie says we shall return to-morrow to the main travelled road. Wild flowers are blooming in profusion all around our camp, smiling at us as if in mockery of the prevailing desolation. Wood is scarce again, and we find few buffalo chips.

“We seldom see any more deer or antelope, and the buffalo have all escaped to the distant hills; that is, all but the hapless multitudes that have been cruelly and needlessly slaughtered by the unthinking and greedy hunters of the plains.

“We passed half-a-dozen newly made graves again to-day, and it is evident that we are getting back into the dreaded cholera belt. The day has been extremely hot, but the evening is chilly and blustering. Daddie says the most of the victims of the epidemic are women. I wonder if such sorrow as ours pervades every family into whose ranks the Silent Messenger comes unbidden and steals away its hope.

“The Indians seem to have all been scared away by the cholera. What must they think of us, who claim to be civilized and even enlightened, who have come to bring them our religion, and with it starvation, pestilence, and death?

“Our world isn’t yet fit for the abode of anything but beasts of prey, of which poorly civilized man is chief. No wonder the Indians fear and hate us. We destroy their range, we scare away their game, we scatter disease and death among them; and as rapidly as possible we seize and possess their lands. ‘No quarter for man or beast’ should be written upon our foreheads in letters of fire. But maybe we are merely fulfilling our destiny. I cannot tell; it’s all a mystery.” She closed the book with a sigh.

XVIII

_THE LITTLE DOCTOR_

After leaving the Black Hills and descending again into the valley of the Platte, the Ranger company found travelling still more difficult than before they had left the main travelled road. The cattle, from burning their hoofs in the alkali pools, through which they were often compelled to wade for hours at a stretch, became afflicted with a serious foot-ail.

“A more dangerous epidemic than the cholera menaces us now,” said Mrs. McAlpin, as she watched the poor brutes limping along the road, many of them bellowing with pain and writhing under the cruel lashes of the drivers’ whips, as they hobbled wearily on toward the setting sun.

“Yes,” replied Captain Ranger, as he blanched with apprehension. “Our very lives depend upon the cattle; we have no other means of getting out of the wilderness. We must do something heroic to heal their feet, or we’ll all be left to die together.”

Scotty, whose serious accident had been overshadowed by the death and burial of Mrs. Ranger, and who had grown weary of receiving only such attention as could be bestowed upon an invalid not considered dangerously afflicted, began to demand the careful nursing he at first pretended to disdain. The jolting of the wagon, in which he still lay upon a sort of swinging stretcher, though it alleviated the roughness of constant rebounds from the rocky roads, aggravated the inflammation of his wound; and the pain grew more intolerable as the bones began to knit. His ravings of discontent were often hard for Mrs. Benson to endure. But she adhered resolutely to her purpose as her daughter’s chaperon to prevent too frequent visits between the twain, and often kept Mrs. McAlpin away from his side for many hours together.

“Scotty has managed somehow to disarrange his bandages, Little Doctor,” said Captain Ranger; “and badly as our cattle need attention, you will be obliged to look after his case this evening. I know how punctilious your mother is over what she is pleased to call the proprieties, but you must attend the fellow professionally, whether she consents or not.

“I do not want any more disagreeable encounters with my mother, Captain.”

“Damn it! I beg your pardon, ma’am! But I’m sure God swore in His wrath under less provocation,—if there is any truth in Holy Writ. These are no times for conventional hair-splittings. You are in duty bound to visit Scotty as his physician. I will accompany you if it will help you out.”

“I shall be glad indeed of your company, Captain. But women are not supposed to be doctors. We’ve always been taught to look upon the profession as one beyond our comprehension.”

“And indeed it is beyond your comprehension. Men do not comprehend it any more than you do. If they did, it would long ago have been developed into a science, instead of what it is,—empiricism. I’m afraid I’ll swear again if I hear any more nonsense about the things women are not supposed to know because they are women.”

“Are you ready to accompany me now, Captain?”

“I’ll have to be. But our lunch is ready; and, by my beans and bacon, I must have something to eat first! There! I didn’t mean to swear. It was a sort of slip of the tongue.”

“I am free to admit that it isn’t polite to swear, Captain. But you didn’t take the name of God in vain; so you are forgiven. You will grant that swearing, even by beans and bacon, is a bad habit, though. Don’t set a bad example before the children, to say nothing of the rest of us,” she added, laughing.

They found the patient in a high fever.

“It is his impatience that does it,” said Mrs. Benson. “He fumes like a madman sometimes.”

Mrs. McAlpin deftly unbound, dressed, and rebandaged the unfortunate limb.

“We’re doing nicely,” she said, when her work was finished. “You mustn’t fret yourself into a fever again. A sick man should be as serene as a May morning.”

“How in the name o’ Melchizedek and the Twelve Apostles is a man going to keep cool when the thermometer is raging in the nineties, and one’s self-elected nurse is scolding like a sitting hen? If she’d ride in the other wagon and leave you to do the nursing, I’d stand a chance to recover.”

“Mamma is getting on famously,” laughed the Little Doctor. “You are so amiable and sweet-tempered yourself that I can’t see why she doesn’t fall down before your injured foot and worship you. I feel almost tempted to try it myself. You don’t think she is enduring all this for fun, do you?”

“I suppose I haven’t been acting the angel; but it was because I wanted the society of my doctor.”

“You allude to Mrs. McAlpin, of course,” said the Captain, smiling.

“Who else in thunder should I mean? There is but one woman doctor in the world, so far as I know. Didn’t she find me in that infernal hole, wedged in it like a rat in a trap? And didn’t she patch my broken bones, like a trained physician, when there wasn’t a man in a hundred miles that could have done it?”

“It is never wise to argue a point with a man in a fever, Mr. Burns. We can talk it out later on. See! Mamma has brought soap, fresh water, and towels. You couldn’t have a better nurse. You must let her bathe your face and hands and head.”

“Won’t you take her place, Daphne?”

Captain Ranger and Mrs. Benson were not listening or looking just then; and as for an instant their eyes met, the patient felt upon his fevered forehead the fluttering touch of a soft, cool hand.

“Delicious!” he whispered. “I shall get well now.”

“Allow me,” said Mrs. Benson, elbowing her daughter aside; “I am head nurse in this ward.”

The patient groaned.

“The Captain says you ought to have been a man, Daphne,” said Mrs. Benson, as her daughter yielded her place.

“If my father had lived to see this day, he would have rejoiced that I didn’t allow my usefulness to run to waste because of my femininity. Of that I am as certain as that my patient is better.”

“You are a disobedient and ungrateful girl, Daphne.”

“You are my mamma.”

“I am not to blame for that, Daphne.”

“Am _I_?” asked the daughter, seriously. “I don’t pretend to understand, and so of course cannot explain the cause that leads to individual being, mamma dear. I know, though, that I am; and if the time should ever come that I can know why I am, I shall understand why I am a woman. I cannot now see that anybody is to be blamed on account of the fact, or accident, of sex.”

“You are to blame for being a thankless child, Daphne.”

“I am neither a child nor thankless, mamma dear. I simply desire to be and act myself. You know I love and honor you; but I have learned, by sad experience, that each human being exists primarily for himself or herself; and not one of us can live for another. If I had been taught this truth in my childhood, we might both have been spared much suffering. But”—turning to her patient—“we have other duties. Your fever has fallen several degrees in the past fifteen minutes. I must go. When you want to rail at anybody just pitch into me and let mamma have a rest. Jean will bring you some broth. I’ll send Mrs. O’Dowd to sit with you sometimes, to give mamma a little liberty. You two have been forced to keep each other’s company till you are both as cross as a pair of imprisoned cats.”

“I believe I’ve been pursuing the wrong policy,” said Mrs. Benson to the Captain, as they walked together on the burning sand. “If Daphne had been compelled to endure that patient’s petulance for more than a week, as I have, she would have been as weary of the sight of him as I am.”

“I am not so sure of that,” replied the Captain, “seeing they’re not married yet. Two cats will agree together like two doves, as long as they have their individual freedom; but if you tie ’em together, they’ll fight like dogs and tigers.”

“Poor little mamma! She’s all tired out, so she is!” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin, as she and her mother were walking out together after they had stopped for the night. “You must change places to-morrow with Mrs. O’Dowd. Then you can ride in Captain Ranger’s big family wagon with the children and me, and get your much-needed rest.”

“Do you mean to say that I shall ride in that widower’s wagon, Daphne, and his wife only just buried? What would people say?”

“Why should you think or care what anybody says, so long as you do your duty, mamma? Captain Ranger is a gentleman. His heart is buried with his wife. Don’t be a silly! Beg pardon, mamma. I didn’t mean to be slangy or saucy. We’ve other troubles in store, and ought not to be quarrelling between ourselves. Do you know that Donald McAlpin is following, or at least shadowing, this train?”

Mrs. Benson blanched.

“Why do you think that, Daphne?”

“I’ve seen him twice since we met that colony of freighters. If he persists in his persecutions, I’ll kill him!”

“Do not talk that way, child. People have been made innocent victims of the scaffold for having made threats which they never meant to and never did fulfil.”

“I have nothing to say against him as a man. But before God he is not my husband, no matter what the law may have decreed, and I am living a lie when I permit the outrage. He would make you an agreeable husband, because you love him. I’ve known this for many a day. If I were dead or divorced, you could become his wife, and then you would both be happy. We are all miserable as it is.”

“But think of the looks of it, daughter! What would people say?” Her eyes grew suddenly aglow with a newly awakened hope, in spite of her demurrer, and her heart beat hard.

“Do you intend to do what you know to be right in the sight of God? or do you mean to remain a slave all the days of your life to the idle words of men and women who care nothing for you, and to whom you owe no allegiance? Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. At least, I so read the Scripture, which you say is your rule of faith and practice.”

“But we owe allegiance to the English Church and to human law, my child.”

“That is true; and I for one intend to obey the laws of man till they are amended, although I was allowed no voice in their construction. But, thanks to the progressive spirit of the age, we have divorce courts established almost everywhere throughout the civilized world, so anybody can obey the law and still ‘to his own self be true.’”

“No divorce can be had in our church, Daphne, except for a nameless crime.”

“That ruling is a relic of barbarism. I will see that the way is opened for both you and Donald to obey the law and be honest with yourselves also.”

“But how about Mr. Burns? Does your rule apply to him?”

“We won’t discuss that matter, mamma. Mr. Burns fully understands that I am not a free woman, and he has no right to discuss with me a question that I am not at liberty to consider. Although I despise the law that holds me in its thrall, I will obey it till it is annulled.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, child.”

“Yes, I do, mamma. I have studied the law carefully. I shall obey it in everything I undertake.”

“Don’t you know that Rollin Burns is a pauper?”

“That’s neither here nor there. The possible future relations between Mr. Burns and myself are neither supposable nor discussable under present conditions. What a glorious world we live in!” she exclaimed, clinging to her mother’s arm and pulling her along. “How happy everybody might become if everybody could afford to be honest!”

“But public opinion is a moral safeguard, my child.”

“It has wellnigh made a lunatic of me,” exclaimed the daughter, with a sigh. “I should have been in an insane asylum if I had not grown strong enough to defy the thing you call public opinion. Now please remember, mamma, you may meet Donald McAlpin at any time. I have told you that he was shadowing us. But you are not to recognize him so long as I am his lawful wife, or it will be the worse for all of us. God knows, I am anxious enough to set him free; and I’ll do it as soon as the law will let me. ‘All things come to him who waits.’ Be hopeful, be trustful, be patient, mamma dear; and be sure ‘your own will come to you.’”

A solitary horseman galloped past them and halted at the camp.

“It’s Donald!” cried Mrs. Benson, nervously clutching her daughter’s arm. “Why can’t we speak to him, Daphne?”

“Come this way.”

Reluctantly Mrs. Benson followed.

“Let’s sit behind these rocks,” said the daughter. “It is fortunate that I gave Captain Ranger his latest name. He knows him only as Donald McPherson.”

They watched the two men parleying. Captain Ranger pointed toward the distant hills with one hand, and with the other was gesticulating vigorously.

“Will you promise not to let him recognize you while we are on this journey, mamma dear?”

“It would be an easy promise to make, my child, if I could know when, where, and under what circumstances we might meet again in the future.”

XIX

_A BRIEF MESSAGE FOR MRS. BENSON_

“We’ll not be able to advance another mile unless something can be done to cure the cattle’s feet,” exclaimed the Captain the next morning, when his teamsters came together for consultation.

“I have been studying the case during the night,” said Mrs. McAlpin, who was preparing breakfast. “It is cool and pleasant now, but it will be terribly hot by nine o’clock. We must treat the sore feet of our sufferers to a heroic cure, and get them out on the range, away from the sand of the public road, before the sun gets over the hills. We can’t drive a hoof over the road to-day.”

“I’d like to know how in blazes we’re going to doctor the cattle’s feet without medicine,” cried Hal. “We haven’t even enough o’ ‘Number Six’ on hand to give my off-leader’s left foot a thorough treatment.”

“I guess we have everything we need,” replied the Little Doctor. “Bring me your fullest tar-bucket. There, that’s encouraging. Got any turpentine, Captain? That’s good. Now bring me an iron pot, Susannah. Here’s a good bed of glowing coals. There,” she cried, as she emptied the liquid tar into the iron kettle. “Now let’s add the turpentine, and I’ll heat the mixture as slowly as possible over these red-hot coals. It is fortunate that the flames are dead, otherwise we might set our dish on fire and spoil our broth. Have you any oakum?”

“Not a bit. Who’d ’a’ thought we’d need oakum on a land-lubbers’ journey like this?” said the Captain.

The Little Doctor knitted her brows. “Have you some Manila rope and a big pan?” she asked.

“We have mother’s clothes-line, if that will do,” said Jean.

“Yo’ uns not gwine to empty dat stuff in my dish-pan, honey?” exclaimed Susannah, in indignant protest, as Mary was fetching the pan.

Mrs. McAlpin laughed.

The seething mixture was lifted dexterously from the coals in the nick of time to prevent an accident by fire. It was then emptied into the dish-pan and stirred to the consistency of blackstrap,—a commodity with which the wayfarers were familiar,—and pieces of the tarred rope were made ready for placing between the doctored hoofs.

“We’ll try our Little Doctor’s remedy on Scotty’s off-leader first,” said Hal. “If it should kill him, there will be only one dead, and he’s nearly dead anyhow.”

The poor beast bellowed pitifully as his hoof was plunged into the almost scalding mixture; but like the lassoed victim of a branding iron, he could not get away, and each hoof received its treatment in its turn.

By the doctor’s order, a tent had been cut into convenient patches; and the seared feet of the afflicted brute, after a liberal supply of the flour of sulphur had been added to the tar and turpentine, were securely wrapped with the pieces and bound with rope, to protect them from the dust and gravel of the roads.

By the time that each disabled animal had been subjected to this heroic treatment, it was long past noon, and the Captain decided to turn the teams back upon the range for the remainder of the day.

* * * * *

“May I take a ride on Sukie, daddie dear?” asked Jean. “I’ll find good grass for her, and plenty of it.”

“Yes, Jean. Take her to yonder ravine, where you see a clump of cottonwoods. You’ll be pretty sure to find some tender grass at their roots.”

Jean leaped nimbly to the saddle and cantered leisurely away.

Suddenly a bronzed and handsome horseman rode up beside her and lifted his hat,—a large sombrero, surmounting a pair of square shoulders that sported a gay serape.

“Good-morning, little miss. Or would you call it afternoon? I had stopped under the cottonwoods to graze my horse, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to accost you. Going to California?”

“No; to Oregon.”

“A God-forsaken country that. Rains thirteen months in every year.”

“Have you ever been there?”

The stranger shook his head. “I’ve had rain enough in England to do me for the rest of my life.”

“A little of the Oregon rains we’ve read about would be a godsend if we could have it now,” said Jean, mopping her perspiring face with the curtain of her sunbonnet, and glancing ruefully at the brazen sky.

“May I ride beside you for a little distance?”

“If we keep in sight of the wagons, sir.”

“You’re not afraid of me, I hope?”

He was close beside her now, so close he could have grasped her bridle-rein.

“Afraid? Of course not. I am not afraid of any gentleman.”

“Do you belong to yonder camp?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And there are two ladies travelling with you,—a widow and her daughter?”

“There are a grass widow and a nigger, sir.”

“Now see here, little one,” and his voice grew harsh and loud, “you’ve been coached; that’s evident. Don’t be frightened. I don’t mean to harm you. But I am no longer deceived. Will you do me a favor?”

He was reading her face anxiously.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“Will you carry a note for me to Mrs. Benson?”

“I don’t know, sir. See! They’re bringing in the cattle. I must hurry back to camp.”

“Wait a little, miss. I must write a note.”

“I haven’t promised to give it to anybody, sir.”

“But you’ll do it,” he said, thrusting a few hastily written, unsealed lines into her hand. “Give that to the young lady’s mother. I feel that I can trust you. Here’s a dollar. You will not read the note, nor say a word about it to any one?”

“You can trust me, sir, but I do not want your dollar.”

“Keep it, child.”

He wheeled and was gone. She watched him disappear in a cloud of dust, and hid the note away in the bosom of her dress.

“He trusted me, and I won’t read it, though I’d be glad to know its contents,” she whispered to herself. “Why does Fate make me the depositary of other people’s affairs and then burden me with secrecy? I’m only an ignorant girl; but I know enough about the secrets of more than one of our fellow-travellers to explode bombs in several directions if I’d tell!”

* * * * *

“I am overjoyed at the success of my first practice as a veterinary doctor,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next day.

“We’re all glad,” said the Captain. “Small use any man would have for this world if it weren’t for the women to help him out under difficulties.”

“Poor Captain! How he misses his wife!” she thought, as she sought the wagon where Scotty lay.

“I’d get well a great deal faster if I had you for a nurse, Daphne,” he said appealingly.

“Nature is doing her best for you. She’s mending your bones thoroughly. If we patched you up in too big a hurry, we’d soon be in trouble again.”

“But I feel like a chained eagle, lying here.”

“Captain Ranger is making you a pair of crutches, Mr. Burns. You’ll soon be out again on your well foot, if you obey orders. Where’s mamma?”

“In the shadow of the wagon, yonder.”

Mrs. Benson was resting in the shade, indulging in a silent reverie. “Are all the teachings of my life to be overthrown?” she said, as she thrust a note into her pocket and buried her face in her hands. “Can it be true that Daphne was right and I was wrong? What will people say? Daphne has good principles, but she’s as unsentimental as a Mandan squaw. She has no more romance in her make-up than black Susannah. Yet,” and a fluttering hope welled up in her heart, “she’s a true and faithful daughter. I would to Heaven that all the people in the world were as good.”

She produced her treasured note again, and read it stealthily.

“Yes, yes! it can be managed, and none of the curious will ever be the wiser,” she said, after due reflection. “It is indeed fortunate that he’s been compelled by the law of entail to take his mother’s name. Nobody will know him in Oregon.”

Mrs. McAlpin found Scotty at camping time with a voracious appetite and a temper like a caged bear.

“Where have you kept yourself through all this blistering afternoon?” he asked, munching his food heartily.

“I can’t stay with all my patients all the time, Mr. Burns, especially as so many of them are quadrupeds, with the hoof-ail.”

“I suppose, then, that I am to be classed as a biped, with the leg-ail.”

“Exactly.”

“Ouch! oh!” he exclaimed with a grimace, as the knitting bones gave a sudden twinge, reminding him that they were awake and on duty. “These infernal bandages are loose again, I hope.”

“Your bandages are doing nicely, sir. The Captain will have your crutches ready in a day or two. Then you can take some exercise.”

“What have you done with those hideous black garments, Daphne?”

“Do you like these gray ones better?”

“Yes, I like the gray ones better.”

“So does this abounding dust. My black clothes were getting rusty, so I made a contribution of them to the water nymphs of the Platte.”

“Why did you wear those weeds?”

“They served my purpose, sir.”

“You almost provoke me into profanity, Mrs. McAlpin; you are so mysteriously non-committal.”

“Glad to hear it. Men don’t feel like swearing when death is staring them in the face.”

“Your supper is getting cold, and Mrs. Benson says you must hurry up.” The intruder, as usual, was Jean.

“I will see you later, Mr. Burns,” said Mrs. McAlpin, and she ran away, laughing.

“You seem very happy this evening, mamma,” she said, as with cup and plate in hand she seated herself on a wagon-tongue.

Mrs. Benson blushed. “Why don’t you eat?” she asked, evading her daughter’s question.

“I hardly know. But I am out of sorts. Just think of men coming out on a journey like this, with ailing wives and unborn children, with no adequate preparation for their needs! I left one woman, less than two hours ago, with newly born twins, and a yearling squalling like mad at the foot of her bed. The mother was as docile as a kitten, and a hundred times more helpless.”

“Where was the father?”

“Oh, he was shambling around, helpless and in the way. He was kindness personified; but he was as useless as a monkey. When woman’s true history shall have been written, her part in the upbuilding of this nation will astound the world. I’ve seen heroines on this journey who far outrank the Alexanders, Washingtons, and Napoleons of any of our school histories. Yonder’s a herald coming to announce another case! Will you accompany me, mamma? I can ask Captain Ranger to stay with Mr. Burns.”

“Not to-night, Daphne. I am very tired. And you know I have no patience with a woman doctor, anyway. Women were seen and not heard when I was a girl.”

XX

_THE TEAMSTERS DESERT_

“You seem to be in trouble, my little man. What can I do to help you?” asked the Little Doctor, as a shocky-headed, freckle-faced child, ragged, barefoot, and dirty, paused in her presence, balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other, and occasionally rubbing his eyes with a grimy shirt-sleeve, open at the wrist and badly out at elbow.

“I hearn tell that you was a doctor, mum. Can you come to see my mam? She’s sick, awful.”

The child led the way to a rickety wagon, which had halted at an inconvenient distance from the creek, in the blazing sunshine, though a friendly tree stood near that might have afforded a grateful shade for an hour or more if the head of the family had thought to stop the wagon in the right spot before unhitching his team. Three or four sallow, barefoot, and ragged little children were playing in the sand. The scant remains of a most uninviting repast littered the ground. A half-dozen hungry dogs, tied to the wagon-wheels, out of reach of the poor remains of food, whined piteously.

A loose-jointed man shambled aimlessly about, wiping his tear-stained face on the buttonless sleeve of a very dirty shirt. “She’s got the cholera, an’ she’ll die, an’ thar’ll be nobody left to keer fur her young uns!” he sobbed within hearing of the writhing patient.

“When did this suffering begin?” asked the Little Doctor, trying hard not to smile.

“Nigh on to half a day ago, mum. I druv like hell to git to this ’ere crick. I’d hearn of it afore I left the last camp.”

“Have you a tent?”

“Lawd, no! nor nothin’ else to speak of.”

“But dogs and children!” the visitor thought, as she ruefully surveyed the scene.

“The steers have got the foot-rot. Kin you kore ’em?”

“Yes, but we must first attend to the needs of your wife. Go to Captain Ranger. Tell him I sent you. Tell him I must borrow one of his tents and some physic and a bottle of ‘Number Six.’ Ask for Mrs. O’Dowd, and be sure to say that Mrs. McAlpin wants her badly.”

When Captain Ranger and his man Limpy appeared on the scene, bringing the tent and medicines, water was already boiling in a black iron kettle, the only cooking utensil in sight. The tent was soon pitched, and a bed prepared for the sufferer, who was writhing in convulsions.

“Any woman accustomed to the comforts of a well-ordered home would have died,” said Mrs. McAlpin the next morning, after the crisis was past. “But the average specimen of the poor white trash of the original slave States has as many lives as a cat.”

“I didn’t have no doctor,” said the patient, as soon as she was able to be on her feet. “Thar was a woman yar, an’ she giv’ me some hot truck, but I jist kored myself.”

The woman was telling her story to a visitor, who had called, partly from sympathy, but chiefly from curiosity; and Mrs. McAlpin, who was assisting Captain Ranger to compound the mixture for the ailing feet of the stranger’s cattle, overheard the shrill-voiced visitor add, “I never did take no stock in them women doctors.”

“I wanted water,” continued the patient, “an’ couldn’t git none; so I waited till nobody was watchin’ and jist stole out o’ the tent in the night an’ swallered all I could hol’ from a canteen; and I mended from the word ‘go.’ The stuff was as warm as dish-water, but I wanted it so bad I didn’t stop to taste it.”

All day the convalescent wrestled with weakness; but as the afflicted cattle could not go forward till the following morning, she moved languidly about the camp and fed her family with beans and bacon, with the never-failing accompaniment of black coffee, which Captain Ranger declared was “strong enough to bear up an iron wedge.”

* * * * *

The scenery became more diversified as the travellers continued their journey up the Platte. Gradually the heat became less suffocating. Desert sands gave way to alluvial valleys, and the health of man and beast improved. On the opposite, or south side of the river, the scenery was strikingly unlike that of the plain through which the emigrant road ran, winding its sinewy length in and out, over the vast, untilled fields that lay asleep in the sunshine, awaiting the fructifying power of the autumn rains, and the future labor of plough and seedsman.

It was now the first of July. The heavy duties of the day were over, the short summer evening had come, and Captain Ranger lay upon the grass, playing with his own little ones, Susannah’s George Washington, and the three babies of Sally O’Dowd.

The evening breezes stirred his hair and beard and filed his lungs with a sensation of vigor he had not enjoyed since bidding farewell to his faithful wife.

“The story goes that some prospectors have discovered gold in the foot-hills across the big drink,” said Yank, approaching the Captain with a sort of half-military salute.

“What of it?” asked the Captain, as he shook himself loose from the little group, and arose to his knees, a vague fear tugging at his heart. “What does such a discovery mean to us?”

“Nothing; only the most of us are going to throw up our job and go off a-prospecting.”

“What! and leave me alone in this wilderness, without teamsters, a thousand miles from nowhere, with all these women and children on my hands to starve to death or be captured by Indians?”

“That’ll have to be your own lookout, I reckon. The gold fever’s as sudden as the cholera, and takes you off without warning when you get it bad.”

“What’s the matter, daddie?” asked Jean. “Are you sick?”

“I’m face to face with an awful difficulty, daughter. Our ox-drivers have caught the gold fever. They are all going to leave us in this wilderness but Scotty; and he’d go too, no doubt, if he weren’t crippled and helpless.”

“Don’t let the desertion of your teamsters worry you,” exclaimed Sally O’Dowd. “I can drive one of the teams myself.”

“What! You?”

“Yes! Didn’t I tell you that you’d never be sorry if you’d let me travel in your train to Oregon?”

“We can all drive oxen,” cried his three daughters, in a breath.

“But who will drive for Mrs. Benson and the Little Doctor? Their teamsters have joined the stampede, and they can’t drive oxen.”

“Just try us and see if we can’t,” laughed the Little Doctor.

“But you have two teams, and your mother cannot drive one of them.”

“I’ll make a trailer of one of the wagons, just as the freighters do in the Assiniboin country.”

“Does Mrs. Benson know about this?”

“Yes; we’ve talked it all over. It’s a genuine case of ‘have to,’ Captain.”

“What will you do with Scotty?”

“We’ve considered him! He’ll soon be on his feet again. Meanwhile, he’ll have to stay on in his hammock.”

“He’s not good for anything there nor anywhere else!” said the Captain, testily. “He doesn’t know beans about driving oxen, and I doubt if he can ever learn!”

“He’s great on ‘intervention’ and ‘non-intervention,’ though,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “He’s even greater on the Monroe Doctrine.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Jean, “and you ought to hear him rave over the nation’s allegiance to Mason and Dixon’s Line. It’s on the troubles over the slavery question, which he says are looming all along the national horizon, that he comes out strong.”

“He’s taught me a lot about law and equity, courts and criminals, constitutions and codes,” said Hal.

“You make light of the peril of our situation because you do not comprehend its gravity,” exclaimed Captain Ranger. “We need our teamsters. Scotty is a capital theorist, but he’ll never set a river afire.”

“That’s a feat you’ve never accomplished yet, daddie,” laughed Jean.

“I’ve come as near it as any living man; for I boiled the Illinois dry, once!” replied the Captain, alluding to an experience of a former year of drouth, when a steam sawmill he was operating on the river-bank had to be closed down for a season for want of water.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” cried Sally O’Dowd. “The women and children won’t forsake you.”

“Because they can’t,” was the curt response, and he walked away to be alone.

* * * * *

The next morning, the teamsters, notwithstanding the strike, were standing around the camp-fires, waiting for breakfast. Some of them looked a little ashamed, some were a little concerned as to the fate of the train, and two or three seemed to enjoy the Captain’s predicament.

“Clear out, every last one of you!” he exclaimed, as they made a move for the mess-boxes as soon as breakfast was ready. “The women folks are my teamsters now, and they shall have the first seats at my table.”

As the men turned away, crestfallen and hungry, their resolution to “get rich quick” began to drop toward zero; but their leader and spokesman hurried them away, explaining that they would find a trading-post and plenty of “grub” across the river.

Mrs. McAlpin paused to visit Scotty a moment at his hammock; and as Mrs. Benson was busy with some duties at the fire, the couple were alone.

“Why these groanings, Mr. Burns?” she asked, placing her cool hand upon his corrugated forehead.

“Because I’m a fool!”

“Did anybody ever dispute it?” she asked with a silvery laugh. “There! Not another word. You are my patient, remember. You mustn’t talk back.”

“Your touch is the touch of an angel.”

“Did you ever see an angel?”

“I’m _vis-à-vis_ with one this holy minute. Ouch! Confound that pain!”

“I thought you enjoyed my surgery. You said you did.”

“I have just said I was a fool.”

“Did I dispute it?”

He laughed in spite of his pain. “Say, Little Doctor, are you never going to let me talk it out?”

“Talk what out?”

“Our personal affairs.”

“Not yet. You must be patient. I am not a free woman yet.”

“But you’ll let me hope?”

“I cannot say. I am determined to obey the letter of the law.”

“I could leap for joy, Daphne!”

“Better not try it; might injure your knitting-bones.”

“Here,” said Mrs. Benson, who had been purposely busy at the fire, “is a dish of savory stew. And here is some hardtack, soaked till it is light and soft. It is hot and nicely buttered. The coffee is guiltless of cream, but it is fresh and good.”

“And black and aromatic and Frenchy,” exclaimed Scotty. “Mrs. McAlpin, will you dine with me to-day?”

“No, Mr. Burns; my meal awaits me at the fire.”

“What sort of game is this?” he asked, as he ate with relish.

“Captain Ranger called it a prairie bird.”

“Birds in my country don’t wear hair, but feathers,” he said, holding to the light the hind-quarter of a prairie dog, and pointing to bits of hair afloat in the gravy.

“Ask me no questions, for conscience’ sake,” cried Mrs. Benson, who was laughing heartily. “It may be a prairie dog, or it may be a prairie squirrel. But it is good for food, and much to be desired to make you well and wise.”

“It is all right,” laughed Mrs. McAlpin. “When Lewis and Clark were on the Oregon trail, nearly fifty years ago, away yonder to the north of us, they were glad to trade with the Indians for mangy dogs, sometimes, if they got any food at all.”

* * * * *

When Scotty awoke the following morning, after a sleep that was as refreshing as it seemed brief, the sun was creeping over the wide expanse of the Platte, making it shine like a gigantic mirror. The women and girls, who had been up for an hour, were bringing in the stock. Susannah, who had been detailed to cook the breakfast and mind the children, was baking flapjacks, and the aroma of coffee was in the air.

“We can all eat at the first table now,” said Jean, as they knelt around the mess-boxes.

Before the repast was finished, they were surprised to see the men who had left them for the gold mines reappear at camp, looking cheap and ashamed.

Sawed-off was the first to speak. “We talked it over with Brownson and Jordan, and the four of us concluded that we couldn’t desert you, Captain. So the rest of ’em joined in.”

“I reckon you got hungry,” said the Captain, dryly.

“No, Captain. It wasn’t hunger; it was conscience that sent us back.”

“How much cash can you put up as collateral, if I conclude to trust you again?”

The crestfallen men were silent.

“Seeing the risk is all mine, and all the provisions and other parts of the entire outfit are mine, and you are foot-loose and can play quits at any time, I guess we’d better not make any new deal. My gals and these widders can help drive the teams.”

The self-discharged teamsters withdrew beyond hearing of the camp, and parleyed long and earnestly.

“We’ve got to do something!” exclaimed Sawed-off. “Just watch them gals handle them cattle! They’ve the true grit.”

“Do you s’pose the Cap’n ’d take us back if we’d pungle say fifty dollars apiece?” asked Limpy.

“We can’t do better than make the offer,” said Yank.

“This cash’ll come handy at the other end of the line,” said the Captain, intrusting the gold to the care of his daughters and reinstating his men, after a sharp exhortation to avoid repeating the offence.

XXI

_AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER_

“Oh, this wonderful Western country!” wrote Jean in her diary, under date of midnight, July 4. “After travelling so long on the banks of the Platte that we had come to look upon it as a familiar friend, we left it to the southward and turned our course up the valley of the Sweet Water, through a succession of low, wooded hills. This little river, though not more than a hundred feet wide, is quite deep, and runs like a mill-race. The water is as clear as ether, and agreeably cold.

“Nobody can conceive the vastness of this country, or imagine its future possibilities, until he has crossed the great unsettled part of this continent to the westward and seen it for himself.

“Some days we move for many hours over great stretches of alluvial soil, which only needs the impulse of cultivation to make it yield of the fruits of the earth like magic. Again, we are in the midst of big fields of crude saleratus, or salt, or sulphur. Now and then our cattle are compelled to wade through an alkali swamp, suggesting more foot-ail; but our Little Doctor says that danger is past for this year; she has not stated why, and maybe she doesn’t know.

“We encamped last night near Independence Rock,—a huge pile of gray basalt, covering an area of perhaps ten acres, and looking to be about three hundred feet high. Its sides are formed of great irregular bowlders, worn smooth by the warring elements of ages.

“July 5. Yesterday was Independence Day, and as we had camped near Independence Rock, daddie laid over to celebrate.

“About noon, Mary, Marjorie, and I concluded that we would climb the rock to its summit, carrying with us the only star-spangled banner the train could boast. But our scheme failed through the fickleness and fury of the same elements that have been smoothing the surface of the rock during the ages gone.

“We had climbed over halfway to the top when a low, dense cloud, as blue-black as a kettle of indigo dye, enveloped us. It came upon us so suddenly that we hardly realized our danger till we were surrounded by semi-darkness in the midst of a pelting hailstorm. We retreated so blindly and hastily that it is a miracle we didn’t break our necks.

“Thunder and lightning followed, or rather accompanied the hail, and were succeeded by a deluge of rain. Sudden squalls of wind would fairly lift us off our feet at times as we hurried downward, making the descent doubly perilous. But the storm soon spent its fury, leaving the air as clear and sweet as a chime of bells.

“A roaring fire welcomed us at camp, by which we warmed our chilled marrow-bones and dried our sodden toggery.

“Daddie scolded; Mame charged our mishap all to me; Marj blamed both of us, and excused herself. It is the way of the world, or of most people in it, but it is sometimes very provoking. I hadn’t thought of attempting the climb till the other girls proposed it; but I took the brunt of the blame, and, as usual, got all the scolding.

“The storm wouldn’t let us try to float the flag, but it got very wet, and we had our labor for our pains.

“Sally and Susannah prepared a Fourth of July banquet of antelope steaks, to go with our regulation diet of beans and coffee. After dinner Mrs. McAlpin sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ the rest of us joining in the chorus. Susannah sang a lot of negro melodies, and George Washington danced for us, his white teeth shining, and eyeballs gleaming. Hal read the Declaration of Independence, and daddie ‘made the eagle scream.’

“He was in the midst of his oration, and I was wondering where all the men of valor came from, seeing they had had no mothers to assist in getting up this spread-eagle scheme we call a republic, when I was compelled to leave the crowd and poise myself on a wet wagon-tongue to write the thing up. Scotty, who is still on crutches, delivered an oration on the side, of which I heard but little, owing to my banishment.

“But I won’t always be so meek and silent on the Fourth of July. I’ll write a Declaration of Independence for women some day.

“Daddie burned some powder after dark, ‘to amuse the children,’ he said, but I noticed that the men enjoyed the noise even more than the children did. Poor Bobbie got some powder burns about the face, and Sadie and the babies gave us a squalling chorus, prompted by fright, causing me to wonder why men must always celebrate our patriotism with the emblems of death and destruction.”

On July 6 she wrote: “We have reached the edges of the Rocky Mountains now; and as we climb slowly and almost imperceptibly toward their summits, our road winds in and out along the meandering bases of a great divide, down which many little streams of icy water dash with foam and roar, forever in a hurry, always trying to go somewhere, and never reaching any settled goal.

“Now and then we get glimpses of distant summits, but we are reaching them by an ascent so gradual that daddie says we shall not realize that we have crossed the great divide till we see the water has changed its course from east to west.

“We passed a trading-post to-day, belonging to a company having its headquarters at Salt Lake. The men in charge wore big sombreros, buckskin trousers, and moccasins of buffalo hide. They all smoked incessantly and affected the airs of the genus cowboy, or _vaquero_ of the plains, of whom we often see specimens roving over hill and plain on horseback, their shoulders covered with gayly colored serapes, flapping in the wind like wings.

“We pass daily from six to a dozen graves, but not so newly made as those noticed heretofore; so we conclude the cholera is abating.

“There, old Journal! I’ve done my level best to write you up to date. But it’s like climbing these mountains,—uphill work, and dreadfully monotonous!”

* * * * *

“Did you buy a fresh stock of provisions, Captain?” asked Sally O’Dowd, as they were preparing to leave the trading-post which Jean had mentioned, after he had held a long parley with a big, bronzed, and heavily bearded mountaineer, who was strikingly handsome despite his peculiar make-up.

“Yes, Sally. I bought a couple o’ hundred pounds o’ flour, for which I paid a twenty-dollar gold-piece.”

“I was feeding the children, and didn’t get a chance to make my purchases at the proper time. Won’t you hold the teams back a few minutes for me?”

“Yes, but hurry up.”

“Let me have a hundred pounds of flour, sir,” she said, approaching the counter, behind which the trader stood, smoking a huge meerschaum.

“Anything else?”

“Yes; the balance of this twenty-dollar gold-piece in dried peaches, please.”

In filling her order, the trader raised the cloth partition of the tent to reach his base of supplies, and in the middle of the tent Sally espied an unkempt squaw and half-a-dozen dusky children.

“I’ll be compelled to hurry,” she said, as he leisurely weighed her fruit. “Captain Ranger is always demanding haste.”

The trader started suddenly, his face blanching.

“Where does your train hail from?” he asked.

“From the middle West, sir. We are going from the West to the West.” The trader balanced two sacks of Salt Lake flour on his shoulders, and grasping the smaller package of peaches, strode out hurriedly toward the wagon near which Captain Ranger was standing, impatient to be gone.

“These purchases are for the lady, sir. Where will you have them dumped?”

“Any place where there’s room, and don’t let any grass grow under your feet!”

“The lady tells me your name is Ranger, sir.”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Will you walk with me a little way ahead of the wagons? I have something important to say to you alone.”

“We are scarce of drivers,” replied the Captain, hesitating. “Two of my men are out hunting.”

“I can drive,” exclaimed Jean, reaching for the whip, which she handled with the skill of a freighter, finishing her flourishes with a series of snaps at the end of a deerskin cracker, like the explosion of a bunch of fire-crackers.

“If we’ll take this cut-off, we’ll come out a mile or more ahead of the wagons,” said the trader. “Then we can rest by the roadside till they catch up.”

The Captain strode by his side in silence.

“Don’t you know me, John?” asked the stranger, grasping him by the arm, and speaking in a hoarse whisper.

Captain Ranger eyed him earnestly, his cheeks paling.

“Can it be possible that you are—Joe?” he asked, seizing his hand with a vise-like grip.

“I am indeed your brother Joe,—an outlaw, now and always.”

“No, you are not an outlaw; the fellow over whom you got into that trouble is alive and well. You’d have got out of that scrape all right if you hadn’t jumped your bail and left all the rest of us in the lurch. Why didn’t you stand your trial, like a man?”

John Ranger’s feelings overcame him, and he sank upon the ground, filled with old-time memories. He buried his face in his hands. Time and distance faded away, and he saw, with eyes of memory, the gentle, fading face of his toiling, uncomplaining wife, whose life had been for years a sacrifice to penury through the debt entailed by this brother’s cowardice.

“Do you mean to tell me that Elmer Edson is not dead?”

The question called him back to present conditions with a sudden start.