XVIIITHE 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 thedrivers’ 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 LittleDoctor. “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.”
“AmI?” 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 anewly 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. Whata 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.”