The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
There was no more that she could do, and she sat down by him to wait.
Among the many and many things that came into her mind was a word he
said to her lightly a long while ago. “Cow-punchers do not live long
enough to get old,” he had told her. And now she looked at the head upon
the pillow, grave and strong, but still the head of splendid, unworn
youth.
At the distant jingle of the wagon in the lane she was out, and had met
her returning neighbors midway. They heard her with amazement, and came
in haste to the bedside; then Taylor departed to spread news of the
Indians and bring the doctor, twenty-five miles away. The two women
friends stood alone again, as they had stood in the morning when anger
had been between them.
“Kiss me, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Now I will look after him--and
you’ll need some looking after yourself.”
But on returning from her cabin with what store she possessed of lint
and stimulants, she encountered a rebel, independent as ever. Molly
would hear no talk about saving her strength, would not be in any room
but this one until the doctor should arrive; then perhaps it would be
time to think about resting. So together the dame and the girl rinsed
the man’s wound and wrapped him in clean things, and did all the little
that they knew--which was, in truth, the very thing needed. Then they
sat watching him toss and mutter. It was no longer upon Indians or
the sorrel horse that his talk seemed to run, or anything recent,
apparently, always excepting his work. This flowingly merged with
whatever scene he was inventing or living again, and he wandered
unendingly in that incompatible world we dream in. Through the medley of
events and names, often thickly spoken, but rising at times to grotesque
coherence, the listeners now and then could piece out the reference from
their own knowledge. “Monte,” for example, continually addressed, and
Molly heard her own name, but invariably as “Miss Wood”; nothing less
respectful came out, and frequently he answered some one as “ma’am.”
At these fragments of revelation Mrs. Taylor abstained from speech, but
eyed Molly Wood with caustic reproach. As the night wore on, short lulls
of silence intervened, and the watchers were deceived into hope that the
fever was abating. And when the Virginian sat quietly up in bed, essayed
to move his bandage, and looked steadily at Mrs. Taylor, she rose
quickly and went to him with a question as to how he was doing.
“Rise on your laigs, you polecat,” said he, “and tell them you’re a
liar.”
The good dame gasped, then bade him lie down, and he obeyed her with
that strange double understanding of the delirious; for even while
submitting, he muttered “liar,” “polecat,” and then “Trampas.”
At that name light flashed on Mrs. Taylor, and she turned to Molly; and
there was the girl struggling with a fit of mirth at his speech; but the
laughter was fast becoming a painful seizure. Mrs. Taylor walked Molly
up and down, speaking mmediately to arrest her attention.
“You might as well know it,” she said. “He would blame me for speaking
of it, but where’s the harm all this while after? And you would never
hear it from his mouth. Molly, child, they say Trampas would kill him if
he dared, and that’s on account of you.”
“I never saw Trampas,” said Molly, fixing her eyes upon the speaker.
“No, deary. But before a lot of men--Taylor has told me about
it--Trampas spoke disrespectfully of you, and before them all he made
Trampas say he was a liar. That is what he did when you were almost
a stranger among us, and he had not started seeing so much of you. I
expect Trampas is the only enemy he ever had in this country. But he
would never let you know about that.”
“No,” whispered Molly; “I did not know.”
“Steve!” the sick man now cried out, in poignant appeal. “Steve!” To the
women it was a name unknown,--unknown as was also this deep inward tide
of feeling which he could no longer conceal, being himself no longer.
“No, Steve,” he said next, and muttering followed. “It ain’t so!” he
shouted; and then cunningly in a lowered voice, “Steve, I have lied for
you.”
In time Mrs. Taylor spoke some advice.
“You had better go to bed, child. You look about ready for the doctor
yourself.”
“Then I will wait for him,” said Molly.
So the two nurses continued to sit until darkness at the windows
weakened into gray, and the lamp was no more needed. Their patient was
rambling again. Yet, into whatever scenes he went, there in some guise
did the throb of his pain evidently follow him, and he lay hitching his
great shoulder as if to rid it of the cumbrance. They waited for the
doctor, not daring much more than to turn pillows and give what other
ease they could; and then, instead of the doctor, came a messenger,
about noon, to say he was gone on a visit some thirty miles beyond,
where Taylor had followed to bring him here as soon as might be. At this
Molly consented to rest and to watch, turn about; and once she was over
in her friend’s house lying down, they tried to keep her there. But the
revolutionist could not be put down, and when, as a last pretext, Mrs.
Taylor urged the proprieties and conventions, the pale girl from Vermont
laughed sweetly in her face and returned to sit by the sick man. With
the approach of the second night his fever seemed to rise and master
him more completely than they had yet seen it, and presently it so raged
that the women called in stronger arms to hold him down. There were
times when he broke out in the language of the round-up, and Mrs. Taylor
renewed her protests. “Why,” said Molly, “don’t you suppose I knew they
could swear?” So the dame, in deepening astonishment and affection, gave
up these shifts at decorum. Nor did the delirium run into the intimate,
coarse matters that she dreaded. The cow-puncher had lived like his
kind, but his natural daily thoughts were clean, and came from the
untamed but unstained mind of a man. And toward morning, as Mrs. Taylor
sat taking her turn, suddenly he asked had he been sick long, and looked
at her with a quieted eye. The wandering seemed to drop from him at a
stroke, leaving him altogether himself. He lay very feeble, and inquired
once or twice of his state and how he came here; nor was anything left
in his memory of even coming to the spring where he had been found.
When the doctor arrived, he pronounced that it would be long--or very
short. He praised their clean water treatment; the wound was fortunately
well up on the shoulder, and gave so far no bad signs; there were not
any bad signs; and the blood and strength of the patient had been as
few men’s were; each hour was now an hour nearer certainty, and
meanwhile--meanwhile the doctor would remain as long as he could. He had
many inquiries to satisfy. Dusty fellows would ride up, listen to him,
and reply, as they rode away, “Don’t yu’ let him die, Doc.” And Judge
Henry sent over from Sunk Creek to answer for any attendance or medicine
that might help his foreman. The country was moved with concern and
interest; and in Molly’s ears its words of good feeling seemed to unite
and sum up a burden, “Don’t yu’ let him die, Doc.” The Indians who had
done this were now in military custody. They had come unpermitted from
a southern reservation, hunting, next thieving, and as the slumbering
spirit roused in one or two of the young and ambitious, they had
ventured this in the secret mountains, and perhaps had killed a trapper
found there. Editors immediately reared a tall war out of it; but from
five Indians in a guard-house waiting punishment not even an editor
can supply spar for more than two editions, and if the recent alarm
was still a matter of talk anywhere, it was not here in the sick-room.
Whichever way the case should turn, it was through Molly alone (the
doctor told her) that the wounded man had got this chance--this good
chance, he related.
And he told her she had not done a woman’s part, but a man’s part, and
now had no more to do; no more till the patient got well, and could
thank her in his own way, said the doctor, smiling, and supposing things
that were not so--misled perhaps by Mrs. Taylor.
“I’m afraid I’ll be gone by the time he is well,” said Molly, coldly;
and the discreet physician said ah, and that she would find Bennington
quite a change from Bear Creek.
But Mrs. Taylor spoke otherwise, and at that the girl said: “I shall
stay as long as I am needed. I will nurse him. I want to nurse him. I
will do everything for him that I can!” she exclaimed, with force.
“And that won’t be anything, deary,” said Mrs. Taylor, harshly. “A year
of nursing don’t equal a day of sweetheart.”
The girl took a walk,--she was of no more service in the room at
present,--but she turned without going far, and Mrs. Taylor spied her
come to lean over the pasture fence and watch the two horses--that one
the Virginian had “gentled” for her, and his own Monte. During this
suspense came a new call for the doctor, neighbors profiting by his
visit to Bear Creek; and in his going away to them, even under promise
of quick return, Mrs. Taylor suspected a favorable sign. He kept his
word as punctually as had been possible, arriving after some six hours
with a confident face, and spending now upon the patient a care not
needed, save to reassure the bystanders. He spoke his opinion that all
was even better than he could have hoped it would be, so soon. Here was
now the beginning of the fifth day; the wound’s look was wholesome, no
further delirium had come, and the fever had abated a degree while he
was absent. He believed the serious danger-line lay behind, and (short
of the unforeseen) the man’s deep untainted strength would reassert
its control. He had much blood to make, and must be cared for during
weeks--three, four, five--there was no saying how long yet. These next
few days it must be utter quiet for him; he must not talk nor hear
anything likely to disturb him; and then the time for cheerfulness and
gradual company would come--sooner than later, the doctor hoped. So
he departed, and sent next day some bottles, with further cautions
regarding the wound and dirt, and to say he should be calling the day
after to-morrow.
Upon that occasion he found two patients. Molly Wood lay in bed at Mrs.
Taylor’s, filled with apology and indignation. With little to do, and
deprived of the strong stimulant of anxiety and action, her strength
had quite suddenly left her, so that she had spoken only in a sort of
whisper. But upon waking from a long sleep, after Mrs. Taylor had taken
her firmly, almost severely, in hand, her natural voice had returned,
and now the chief treatment the doctor gave her was a sort of scolding,
which it pleased Mrs. Taylor to hear. The doctor even dropped a phrase
concerning the arrogance of strong nerves in slender bodies, and of
undertaking several people’s work when several people were at hand to do
it for themselves, and this pleased Mrs. Taylor remarkably. As for the
wounded man, he was behaving himself properly. Perhaps in another week
he could be moved to a more cheerful room. Just now, with cleanliness
and pure air, any barn would do.
“We are real lucky to have such a sensible doctor in the country,” Mrs.
Taylor observed, after the physician had gone.
“No doubt,” said Molly. “He said my room was a barn.”
“That’s what you’ve made it, deary. But sick men don’t notice much.”
Nevertheless, one may believe, without going widely astray, that
illness, so far from veiling, more often quickens the perceptions--at
any rate those of the naturally keen. On a later day--and the interval
was brief--while Molly was on her second drive to take the air with Mrs.
Taylor, that lady informed her that the sick man had noticed. “And I