Part 11

“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.