CHAPTER XXITHE SURRENDER
JOSHUA COLE recovered consciousness in the railroad hospital at Ragtown, and stared blankly at a streak of light that came in between the new pine boards of the walls and pointed out a resinous knothole in the floor. The shack which bore the dignified name of hospital was on the outskirts of the settlement, a two-room affair that, if it had been a little more expensively constructed, would have served well as a stable for mountain horses, who do not need shelter except when rare blizzards rage. Each workman on the entire job contracted for by Demarest, Spruce and Tillou had a dollar of his pay subtracted each month whether he approved or not, and this was his hospital fee. It assured him of medical attention without other charges if he became ill. There were perhaps fifteen hundred men working directly or indirectly under Demarest, Spruce and Tillou. That made fifteen hundred dollars to be divided between the doctor and the main contractors, the latter, of course, being entitled to something for permitting the doctor to conduct the hospital. And Joshua Cole was the fifth man to be sent to the hospital since it had been established. No wonder that Dr. J. Miles Stanhope had much leisure and much money to spend in the Silver Dollar, where his preferences were roulette, and whisky with a dash of angostura bitters, and a blonde Jezebel named Gladys, who waltzed rather well.
He was at his favorite haunt, it appeared, when his patient awoke, for Joshua not knowing where he was, called feebly again and again, but received no answer. Hestrove to get out of the single white-enamel iron bed in which he found himself, but discovered that he was sore all over and rather weak. His efforts had made him sleepy, and he sank back on the pillow and floated into coma again.
When he awoke the second time night had fallen, for no sunlight streamed in at the crack where the loose batten hung. Lamplight, however, came in through the quarter-way-open door between his “ward” and the dispensary, or whatever the other room was called. He lifted his voice again, and was answered by a shuffle of feet.
In came Dr. J. Miles Stanhope, and one of the frames of the door showed an inclination to come with him. The doc righted himself, however, and swayed toward his patient, his face beaming with solicitude.
Dr. J. Miles Stanhope was a young man inclined to corpulency. He affected a Van Dyke beard, as all medical men should. His gray eyes were kindly and he could not have injured a mouse—nor could he have cured one. But he was a jolly good fellow and wished nobody ill. Who couldn’t be like that, with a monthly income of over a thousand dollars from a two-hundred-dollar investment?—and the doc had kicked like a bay steer when the carpenters presented their bill for the erection of the hospital. It might be pointed out that the time and money spent by the doctor in acquiring his medical education would bring his investment to a higher figure, but as he displayed no diploma from a medical college on the wall, it may be assumed that he considered the price of a diploma too insignificant to be taken into consideration.
At any rate, here he was at Joshua’s bedside, good-natured, democratic, breezily cheerful, and a trifle shaky on his feet.
“Well, well, well! So you’re conscious, eh? Thash th’ stuff, ol’-timer! How d’ye feel by now?”
“I’m sore as hell,” growled Joshua. “Where am I? Who are you?”
The last question seemed to grieve Dr. J. Miles Stanhope, and he reprovingly explained that he was the medical adviser of the community, something that Joshua should have known merely by glancing at his Van Dyke beard. As to where Joshua was, he was in the hospital conducted by the medical adviser of the community. And if he was sore, there was good reason for it, since he had been shot to hell with a thirty-thirty rifle. But he—the medical adviser of the community—had found the bullet and extracted it, and he was of the opinion that his patient was on the mend. Did he want some chow? The Silver Dollar’s cook was out of fresh meat, and the doctor supposed the rest of the joints were in the same fix, since no freighters had arrived for three days. But there was salt meat in plenty to be had, storage eggs, bread, and oleomargarine. Concerning the question of where Joshua had been shot, it was in the left shoulder, very low, and well in toward the heart. The doc had no idea who had shot him or why, and it seemed that it had not occurred to anybody to investigate this phase of the matter. Two stiffs walking up the grade from Camp Two to Camp One had found him lying in the trail, and, after appropriating two dollars found in his pockets and his flannel shirt and belt—these facts were discovered later—they had dutifully carried him to the hospital, had called Dr. J. Miles Stanhope from the fondling arms of Gladys, and had gone their way rejoicing. Now what about the bacon and eggs?
Despite the bungling services of Dr. Stanhope, Joshua Cole’s wound healed quickly, for he was in the pink of health and a stranger to dissipation. While he was confined to the little bed in the hospital, left alone for hours on hours at a time, he was allowed to read and study, forthe doctor could not see that it would do him any harm. “Just go ahead and amuse yourself any way you feel like, ol’-timer,” was the medical man’s kind invitation; so Joshua had sent for his books and notes, and with these and his new periodicals to aid him, progressed rapidly at bringing his astronomical information up to date.
He puzzled for hours, of course, over who had shot him, and why. Naturally he thought often of The Whimperer and Slim Wolfgang—the only people in that country who could possibly have a grudge against him—but always he discarded them as his possible assailants for the reason that it seemed illogical they could harbor a hatred so fierce as to make them try to murder him. After long contemplation, he was forced to adopt the conclusion that some deer hunter had shot him by accident and had fled and left him to his fate rather than face the possible consequences.
Madge Mundy came to see him one afternoon, and apologized for not coming sooner, pleading that she was almost distracted over the grave matters in her camp and was kept busy from morn till night.
She sat beside his bed and smoothed back his raven hair with her soft, cool hand. Joshua was nearly well and suffering not at all, but immediately he convinced himself that he was very ill and needed these tender ministrations. His gray-blue eyes looked up into her reddish-brown eyes pleadingly, and Madge, too, believed that he needed these tender ministrations. At any rate she continued them, and Joshua lay with eyes closed, trembling with ecstasy, afraid to look into her face again for fear that she would see that he was in the seventh heaven of delight.
They talked of Shanty Madge’s problem, but with Joshua, at least, the words, “slide” and “tunnel” and “dynamite” were spoken with a caressing cadence that carried an undercurrent of meaning.
“I guess all is lost,” Madge had told him when first the subject was brought up.
And now she continued: “The entire top of the hill keeps slipping in an easterly direction directly into the tunnel. We are able to stop it with timbers and baled hay—which last we are using now as likely to form a more solid wall to hold the slide—but as soon as we attempt to go ahead and fire a shot, no matter how light, the roof caves again, and down comes another avalanche. Of course we are working toward the slide from the other end of the tunnel, too, and so far the roof holds there. But it’s a long tunnel, and where we’re losing time is in not being able to progress a foot with this end.
“Another big engineer has come from New York, and he says nothing more can be done than has been done. Everybody is up in the air. And—and, Joshua, I have given up and turned the outfit over to Demarest, Spruce and Tillou. I’m on salary now. I’m through. I know when I’m whipped, and I must make the best of it. In the end, of course, we’ll have to sign over everything to them, and I guess they’re no more anxious than I am to continue the heart-breaking work. That slide is like the heads of the Hydra that Hercules slew. Its heads grew as fast as one was lopped off, you know, until Hercules applied a firebrand to prevent their growth. And I—I’m just through forever with railroading, Joshua—that’s all. Joshua, we’ll be broke.”
She was near to tears, and Joshua cursed the bullet that had laid him in a bed in Dr. J. Miles Stanhope’s flimsy hospital.
“Madge,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something; though, if you are convinced, it will perhaps hurt you. Maybe I’m the Hercules to apply the firebrand to your nine-headed monster. I firmly believe that I could havestopped that slide when it first occurred. I believed so the day I went to your camp and examined the top of the hill and the tunnel. But there were big engineers on the job as well as two old-time contractors, and I thought surely they would find a way to solve the problem. Then when days and days passed and nothing was accomplished I hated to offer my services for fear I’d be laughed at and told to mind my business. I’m only a construction stiff in the eyes of those fellows, you know, and they would have put me in my place in short order.
“But things looked different when Demarest offered twenty-five hundred dollars to the man who could stop the slide. Then it seemed to be open to anybody, and I was on my way to your camp when I picked up this bullet. If I had succeeded I would have felt wretched, to think that I could have done the same at the first and had failed to offer my services until the reward was announced. But I guess you would have understood.
“Anyway, I still think that I may be able to hold the thing. What it will cost to try my plan will be as nothing compared with the money that is being expended now in fruitless efforts. So, to make good with you, I’m going to give you my plan right now, and you can put it up to the engineers and see what they think of it. And the reward, of course, will be yours. Will you see if you can find a piece of paper and a pencil out in that lean-to that the doctor calls his office and dispensary?”
“Joshua,” she said, “I will do nothing of the sort. Your plan is yours, whatever it is, and, knowing you as I do, I fully believe that it is worth something or you would not consider it. In other words, boy, you convinced me years ago, when you told me about the stars, that you are not given to talking through your hat. I firmly believe”—she forced a wan smile—“that—in how many centuries isit?—the big dipper will look like a steamer chair, simply because you told me so. And now the reward for stopping that famous slide has been raised to five thousand, and if you can win it we’ll let her slide until you’re ready to show us. That’s that!”
“But, Madge, listen to me. Take my plan now and, if it works, stop the thing at once. A pile of money will have been spent before I’m out of this confounded shack. Take it, and save your outfit. Then if you care to split the reward with me—”
“I’ll split nothing with you, young feller! Neither will I take your plan and present it to anybody! And as for losing the outfit, let her rip! I’m through—me! Trying to stop the slide has cost so much that, even if we pulled through, we’d be so badly in debt that it would require years to get on our feet again. No, the outfit must go to give us a clean slate, and we’ll let the future take care of itself.
“I’ve been too cocksure—too swell-headed. And now I’m being slapped on the wrist for my presumption in strutting around with old-time railroaders, old enough to be my grandfather, and talking wisely about this and that thing about which I knew nothing. How they must have laughed in their sleeves at me. Oh, it makes me sick now! I tell you the past few weeks have taken all the pep and bravado out of me. I’m whipped, and I’m through.
“And Ma tells me that you and she connived together against me and got her a homestead here in the mountains. Well, I’m glad. I’m for that. And I’m going to get out while the gettin’s good, and save what I can of tools and teams and cash to run the homestead with. Back to the farm for little Madge!”
“But—”
“I tell you I’m through—stubbornly through, Joshua.I bit off a chunk and couldn’t swallow it. Now let’s drop that aspect of the matter. When can you totter around, does the doctor think?”
“Why, Doc doesn’t think at all, except when he’s over the roulette wheel. I can go any time I myself think that I can, and the sooner the better for him. It’s a great strain for him to carry my meals to me three times a day. I guess I’ll try it in about a week. I’ve been up four times, I believe, and walked about a little. I won’t be able to work myself, but I can put others to work. Three men will be enough to put my idea across.”
“Then you get on the job as soon as you can and stop that slide. You need the money.”
“I do,” fervently agreed Joshua. “But I’ll probably never get it. I expect my big idea will prove a frost.”
“I’ll see that you get a chance to try it, anyway,” Madge promised.
As she took her leave Dr. J. Miles Stanhope came in with Joshua’s slim mail—a scientific magazine and a letter from the land office. The letter informed him that his claim to a hundred and sixty acres in the San Antonio Mountains had been allowed.