Part 3

The banging of the unfixed section of the rickety sidewalk roused the Judge at last. And as the loose boards nearer at hand flapped and creaked under a light tread he sat up and got stiffly to his feet.

The knob of the front door turned and a slender figure in white appeared in the doorway. Then, “Gid!” called an anxious voice--a girl’s voice. “Gid! Are you there?”

“Yas,” answered the Judge. “I’m here. Is it--Alicia?”

“Gid!” she cried tremulously; “poor, poor Gid!”

He walked toward her slowly. “What you pore Giddin’ me for?” he asked.

“Mrs. Luce told me--about what Homer’s done.”

The Judge came short. “She did? Can’t that woman keep nothin’ to herself? W’y”--pleadingly and reaching out a hand--“let me explain before you--w’y, that boy, Alicia, he only----”

“Oh, it wasn’t a joke!” she interrupted. “Mrs. Luce thinks it was. But I know. Oh, you dear old Gid, you’re trying to shield him. And he doesn’t deserve it.”

“Now, Alicia, he didn’t----”

“He did--and right at a time when it could hurt your chance to be district attorney.”

“District attorney?” repeated the Judge and laughed--a little sadly, but bravely. “Aw, wal! I can wait t’ be district attorney.”

“You see! It’s so! It’s so! He’s taken your money to get himself out of his trouble! The coward!”

“Alicia! You’re turnin’ on the boy! Please don’t let a little thing like this come between you an’ Homer.”

“Between me and Homer!” she exclaimed in surprise. “What makes you say that, Gid?”

“W’y, you come here that day an’ tole me about him gamblin’, an’ cried.”

She laid a white hand on his sleeve. “I knew this whole thing was coming, Gid, and you’d be the one to suffer.”

“Me?” he questioned.

“Homer Scott! I never did like him, and I’ve hated to see you wasting yourself on him. What does he care about you, or your ambitions, or your dreams?”

He was silent for a moment--so silent that he seemed to be holding his breath. Then he spoke gently: “There’s only one dream I got that counts. An’--an’ I don’t dare t’ hope it might come true.”

Her face was lifted to his almost appealingly; his eyes eagerly searched hers in the dimness. Presently he reached down and took the hand that was hanging at her side and lifted it, pressing it against his breast.

She smiled up at him. And, little by little, her other hand began to creep its way to his shoulder. There it rested, and she whispered to him softly: “Gid! Dear Gid!”

A smothered cry of great happiness answered her. The next moment he dropped her hand and his arms went out, sweeping her slender figure to him.

DOC

It was a long-distance call and the voice was a man’s, impatient, peremptory and curiously unsteady: “Hello! Hello! Hello! I say! Is this Doctor Hunter?”

“Yas, this is me,” answered the doctor, making an arc of his stalwart length as he leaned down to the receiver on his table; “this is Hunter.”

“This is the Blue Top Mine--the Blue Top. Do you understand? We want you up here.”

“The Blue Top!” repeated the doctor. And of a sudden his boyish face grew eager. “All right. What kind of a case is it?”

“Never mind--come. Get a good horse.”

“But look a-here,” expostulated the doctor. “Is it surgical? I’d like to know just what to bring.”

“Come prepared for anything. Can you hear me? This is Eastman.”

“Oh--Mr. Eastman.” The doctor fell back a little, then, still holding the receiver to his ear with one hand, hastily smoothed at his hair with the other--as if to make himself more presentable for his conversation with the distant speaker. “I’ll start in fifteen minutes,” he promised.

“Good-bye.” The line closed.

The doctor was in his shirt-sleeves. He reached one long arm out for the coat hanging on the back of his office chair, the other for his wide, soft hat. Then he caught up a canvas case that held both medicines and instruments, and hurried out.

Half a block up the street was a low, flower-covered cottage that stood among wide-spreading fig trees. There was a strip of clover lawn before the little house. He halted when he reached it, and took off his hat. “Oh, Miss Letty!” he called.

The fig trees formed a dense screen against the noon heat. Under one was a girl, bareheaded and barearmed, with a half-filled basket of the purple fruit at her feet. As the doctor spoke she turned and came toward him swiftly across the clover. She was tall, nearly as tall as he, and the great knot of crisp and dusky hair on her small head added to her slender height. Her eyes were like her hair--dark and shining. They made vivid contrast with the clear paleness of her cheek and throat.

“You’re going out of town,” she said, with a glance at the canvas case.

“What do you think!” he answered, his face flushing with pleasure. “They want me at Blue Top!”

She stopped. “The regular mine doctor left last week. They’ll have to have somebody in his place. Maybe----” Her eyes questioned his.

“It was Eastman ’phoned me.” He said it proudly.

“The owner of the mine!”

“‘We want you up here’ is what he said. And ‘Come prepared for anything.’ But a-course----” It was his turn to break off. His grey eyes were anxious.

“They want you to stay!” she declared excitedly. “Won’t that be splendid! Now you’ll be able to buy all the books you’ve been wanting. You know, they give a good salary at Blue Top, and--and house rent free.” A wave of colour swept her face then, tinting it a delicate rose.

He had come nearer her. “It’d mean more’n books to me,” he said in a low voice.

“You’re the best doctor in the country; that’s why they’ve sent for you. But what’ll _this_ town do without you?” She smiled up at him, forgetting her embarrassment. “Every baby in the place’ll miss ‘Doc’.”

Like a man who is summoning his courage he set his teeth together for a moment and took a deep breath. Then: “The part of the town that I like best I want to take with me,” he said, his tone significant.

There was a moment’s silence. She retreated a step, her face rosier than before. He kept his eyes fixed earnestly on her lowered lashes, waiting for them to rise.

“I’ve--I’ve wanted to ask you before, Letty--lots of times. But I couldn’t as long as I knowed I’d have to take you to a boardin’-house; I’ve waited till I thought I could see a home in sight. If this comes true----” He reached out a big, sunburned hand and touched her slender one where it hung at her side.

She raised her eyes and they were misty with hope. “Do your level best at the mine!” she half-whispered.

“Letty--you care!” He let her hand fall, for his own was trembling. “Oh, you bet I’ll do my best. This is my chance. I’m bankin’ on it.”

“Take my horse for the trip. Bobby wasn’t out of the barn yesterday, and I’m pickling figs to-day. Please do.”

“All right, I’ll be glad to.”

A few minutes later, when he rode out of the corral, canvas case tight-strapped to his back, he was mounted on a spirited little mustang whose bright eyes watched through a bushy forelock. The gate was left in a rushing gallop. And from down the street, where the doctor turned into the Blue Top road, he waved a hand back to Letty. Then he cantered on.

It was fifteen miles to the mine, all up grade and rough going. But Bobby kept a quick pace; and his rider, fixing his look hopefully ahead, gave no thought to the road. Two things ran constantly in the doctor’s mind: “We want you up here” and “Come prepared for anything.” The more he thought of the statements the more he felt certain about the success of his trip. They surely meant him to remain at the mine. That was why he had been asked to bring as much of his equipment as possible.

“Halt!”

It was Bobby who obeyed the command. Out of the thick brush that lined the grade had stepped three men, blocking his way. The trio carried rifles across their arms.

“Who are you?” demanded one of the three. He was a smooth-shaven, thick-set, middle-aged man with hard, milky-blue eyes and soft, fat cheeks that pouched heavily, drawing his under lids down to show a scarlet lining.

“Doctor.”

“Oh!--I see. Good work.” The thick-set man fell back a step and gave a sidewise jerk of the head. It was permission to ride on. Then he led his companions across the road and into the chaparral.

A moment later the doctor forgot the occurrence. The road divided, and he turned into the less used one of the two. Rounding a sharp turn in it he came in sight of a tiny, shingled bungalow built upon a spot that had been made level by digging into the side of the mountain. This was the residence of the regular physician at the mine. It was vacant now, and through the uncurtained window he could see the pretty living room, with its low, raftered ceiling and its great fireplace of stone.

“Oh, if this only comes true!” he said aloud. Already he pictured Letty’s face at the window.

At the side porch of the superintendent’s house he dismounted quickly, dropped the bridle reins to the ground and sprang up the steps, unbuckling his case as he went.

A Chinese in spotless white answered his ring and, without a question, went pattering away to a closed door at the end of a long hall, where he paused and knocked softly.

A man opened the door. He was perhaps thirty-five, with the bearing that marks the city-bred. But his dress was dishevelled, his haggard face showed a one-day’s growth of beard, and his eyes were hollow, as if from sickness, and bloodshot. “Is this Doctor Hunter?” he questioned, whispering.

“Yas, sir.”

“My name is Eastman.” He motioned the doctor to enter.

In the darkened room there was discernible only the outlines of a bed, upon which someone was tossing. The patient was moaning, too, and hoarsely repeating a name: “Laurie! Laurie! Laurie! Laurie!” The tone was insistent and full of anguished appeal.

The doctor went to the bedside. The face on the pillow was that of a young woman--a woman of perhaps twenty-five. It was a face that reminded him of Letty’s. There was the same delicate outline of cheek and chin, the same full, sweet mouth and girlish throat. But the dark head was moving from side to side with each repeating of the name, and the dark eyes were staring wildly. As he leaned down she turned them full upon him.

“Laurie! Laurie! Laurie!” she entreated.

“Nervous shock,” said the doctor. He lifted a white wrist. It was rigid and the pulse hard. The hand was knotted, too, and shook with its very tenseness. “What put her into this shape?”

Eastman did not reply at once. He began to walk the room. Presently he halted behind the doctor. “Mrs. Eastman is--is worried,” he explained.

“Wal, I should judge so,” remarked the doctor coldly. He laid an open hand upon the sick woman’s forehead to quiet the constant wagging. “How long’s she been like this?”

“Twenty-four hours. Give her something to make her sleep. She’ll go crazy.”

“In a case like this you got to remove the cause.” The doctor spoke severely. The whole thing looked bad to him.

Eastman made no answer, but left the room, for the Chinese had summoned him noiselessly from the door.

Left alone, the doctor prepared an opiate and administered one draught of it, after which he took a chair beside the bed and again lifted a tense wrist. Presently Mrs. Eastman ceased to murmur her heart-broken plaint. Her clenched fingers relaxed their hold on the counterpane. Then the strained lids of the sufferer fluttered down.

When she was breathing deep and regularly, with a peaceful smile on the sweet mouth and her hands folded on her breast, he leaned back. And, looking at her, his thoughts returned to Letty and to the tiny bird’s-nest of a house perched below in a niche of the mountain. He could see a strong young figure going to and fro through the cozy rooms; himself beside a wood fire, with his books about him. Spring came a trifle later here on the tilted crown of Blue Top, fall arrived a little early, which meant many evenings cool enough for a cheery blaze. And if the mine was off the line of the railroad, that did not----

Eastman entered hurriedly, leaving the door open behind him.

The doctor rose, the look of day-dreaming still in his eyes. “She’s quiet,” he said in a low voice. “What else can I attend to up here?”

“This is all.” As Eastman answered his own look was averted. “Our new physician’s due to-day--Doctor Fowler, of San Francisco.”

“I--I see.” A surge of red deepened the tan on the doctor’s face. “I s’pose you won’t need me no more.”

“How much do I owe you?” There was dismissal in Eastman’s tone.

The other closed the canvas case and picked up his hat. Then he leaned over the sleeper for a moment. When he started slowly toward the door the spring was gone from his step. He seemed not to have heard the question.

“Will ten be satisfactory?” Eastman had run a hand into a pocket. Now he held a goldpiece.

The doctor turned. A troubled light was in the grey eyes. “Five’d be a fair charge for Blue Top,” he said. As the smaller coin was proffered him he took it, bowed and went out.

Someone followed him--he did not look back to see who. But as he reached the front door his eyes fell upon a photograph that lay on a table beside the hatrack. It was the photograph of a child--a handsome, fair-haired little boy in gingham rompers, standing on a garden path amid chrysanthemums that reached above his tumbled curls. “Is that your baby?” asked the doctor, and, with the inquiry, turned to the one behind.

It was not Eastman, but the Chinese servant who had followed him out. As he opened the door he made no reply.

Bobby was waiting dutifully at the steps; and when he was headed down the mountain he went single-footing away eagerly, his bit-chains rattling with his swaying gait. But the doctor rode with his chin on his breast and his soft hat pulled to his brows. And when a bend in the road brought the shingled bungalow near, instead of looking at it he turned his face toward the long, level valley. In the distance, on the tree-strewn river-bottom, was a cluster of white specks--the town he had left in the early afternoon. He had come from it hopefully: he was returning unsuccessful. But his jaw was set resolutely.

It was past sundown when he reined at the gate leading to Bobby’s corral. Letty had seen him ride up. Now she came hurrying across the garden toward him. “Is it good news?” she called.

He was down and standing beside his horse. “I counted my chickens ahead of time,” he answered, and smiled ruefully. “They’re gittin’ a city doc for Blue Top.”

As he slipped off saddle and bridle she stood in silence, her eyes on the ground. But when he came over and paused beside her she looked up at him bravely, for all the tears on her lashes. “Never mind about Blue Top,” she said. “Think what a fine doctor you are now. And you’re so young. If you go on with your studying----”

“I’ll tell you what’s the matter with me,” he said very earnestly. “I cure, don’t I? But I don’t dress good enough. I don’t know how to talk. And I ain’t one of them stylish, top-buggy physicians.” He looked up the street to his own gate. A man had pulled up before it--a queer-looking individual mounted on a raw-boned mule and wearing a long, tan linen duster and a black slouch hat. “The fact is,” he went on, “I’m not Doctor Hunter. That’s it. I’m just ‘Doc.’”

The man on the mule was advancing toward them. Letty hastened to inquire about Blue Top. “You didn’t tell me who was sick at the mine,” she reminded.

“Mrs. Eastman. But--she wasn’t sick.”

“She wasn’t sick?” Letty raised a puzzled face.

“Just unhappy. Eastman didn’t say what about. But her poor heart’s a-breakin’.”

The man on the mule pulled up for a second time, near by. “Are you Doc Hunter?” he demanded. The voice sounded muffled.

“I’m the Doc.”

“A friend of mine is sick--out of town here a little ways.”

“Take Bobby again,” Letty urged in an undertone. “You know how tough he is. He won’t mind, if the trip is short.”

“But he ain’t had his feed,” said the doctor.

“I’ll tie some oats to the saddle.”

As she hurried off the doctor went up to the man on the mule. “What kind of a case is it?” he inquired, and noticed that the stranger had a handkerchief tied under his jaws and over his ears.

“That’s what I expect you to tell me.” There was a note of sneering in the retort.

“I mean, is it surgical?” explained the other.

“Well, suppose you come fixed so’s you’ll be ready for any kind of a case.”

The doctor stared. It was Eastman’s reply--with a different wording. And the coincidence seemed a strange one. Then: “You’d better let me do somethin’ for that toothache,” he said kindly.

“Oh, it don’t amount to anything,” was the short answer.

The doctor had not unbuckled his case. Now he crossed the corral to Bobby and picked up bridle and saddle.

The stranger led the way out of town, hurrying his mule forward with voice, switch and heels, and taking the main traveled road that led south beside the railroad track. Night was already settling, and to the left the scattered shafts of a cemetery gleamed white through the gathering dusk. Beyond the cemetery, where a dim road branched eastward across the rails toward the river, the guide drew up and dismounted and busied himself for a moment with the bridle of his mule. The doctor also reined and waited.

Presently his companion came walking back, leaving the mule tied to the railroad fence. “Doc,” he began, putting one hand on Bobby’s bridle and the other on the doctor’s knee, “don’t misunderstand what I’m going to say to you.”

“Yas? What’s that?” Of a sudden the doctor felt dislike and suspicion.

“Where I’m going,” continued the man deliberately, “you’ll have to travel blindfolded.”

The doctor did not speak for a moment. Again he was staring at the other, not so startled as he was amazed at this, the second queer call in a single day! Before he had finished puzzling over the half-crazed woman at Blue Top and the trio of armed men who had halted him, here was another mystery. Was the county gone mad?

“You’ve barked up the wrong tree, Mister,” he said finally, looking into the small eyes that were glinting up at him. “I’ve got just five dollars with me. Let me show y’.” He reached into a pocket. “That ain’t worth cuttin’ my throat for.”

A boisterous laugh greeted this. Then: “Cut your throat! Why, I’m not after money. I want a doctor. And I’m going to have a doctor.” Still holding to Bobby’s rein the stranger reached down and patted his right thigh. “I’ve never heard of taking a doctor to a sick man at the end of a gun,” he added, “but if you hold back that’s the way I’ll take you. Get down.”

The doctor dismounted.

“Turn around,” was the next order.

As the doctor obeyed a large, soft handkerchief was laid across his eyes and bound tight.

He climbed back into his saddle then, and found his stirrups. But as he picked up his rein once more he felt his hands gripped in a firm hold and brought forward to the pommel.

“I’ll tie your wrists now,” said his companion.

The doctor straightened and jerked his arms to his sides. “You don’t need to,” he declared. “I’ll let my eyes alone.”

“Put out your hands!” came the stern command.

There was nothing to do but comply.

When they moved on again the doctor sat with every faculty on the alert, determined to discover which way they were travelling. But first they circled two or three times, then took a zigzag course. And after so much forethought on his guide’s part the doctor was completely turned around. So that, starting forward finally along a comparatively straight course, he did not know in what direction they were headed. Soon he forgot to note any veering to right or left. A feeling of intense nausea came over him, caused by the sway of his horse and his inability to see.

The going was smooth enough for the first half-hour. Afterward it became rough, when they ceased to canter, even over short distances. At the end of the first long hour they wound down a steep and evidently narrow path. This brought them to rushing water, which they crossed when the mule and Bobby had drunk. Then a long climb began--to level ground again. At last a sharp turn was made to the left. Once more they descended. Then came a halt.

“Get down,” said the guide.

“I will when you let loose my hands,” returned the doctor crossly. “This is a dickens of a way to treat a white man!”

When he was down and his eyes were unbound he saw that they were in the bottom of a deep cañon, for on either side of him, against the lighter background of the sky, was the black, pine-topped line of a ridge. There was a small clearing in the cañon, circled by a wall of underbrush, and at the centre of the clearing a squat shanty, beyond which showed a patch of light from a window on its farther side.

Bridles were taken off and girths loosened. Then the doctor folded down the top of the feed-sack so that Bobby could eat, and left the little horse devouring his oats.

Now the two men made toward the shanty and silently entered a small, low room lighted by a single kerosene lamp. The walls of the room were of rough pine boards, smoke-stained; the ceiling was of blackened cheesecloth that sagged low overhead. There was a rough board table beside the door, and two benches, as unplaned as the table, for seats. A small stove stood in one corner, rusted by the rain that had trickled down upon it from the pipe-opening in the roof; against a wall stood a bed of boards--a bed only wide enough for one person. Upon it, under a grey blanket, lay a figure.

The doctor picked up the lamp, crossed to the bedside, and let the light shine down upon his patient--a man not more than twenty-eight years of age. The fevered face was ugly, almost apelike; the forehead bulged, the cheek-bones were high, the nose so flat that the nostrils were two wide, black holes; and the mouth was full and coarse. The doctor recoiled as he looked, and turned to the man standing at his shoulder.