“Get me the Little Doctor’s paint and truck, over on that table, and slide that easel up here.”
Johnny stared, opened his mouth to speak, then wisely closed it and did as he was bidden. Philosophically he told himself it was Chip’s funeral, if the Little Doctor made a kick.
“All right, kid.” Chip tossed the cigarette stub out of the window. “You can go ahead and read, now. Lock the door first, and don’t you bother me—not on your life.”
Then Chip plunged headlong into the Bad Lands, so to speak.
A few dabs of dirty white, here and there, a wholly original manipulation of the sky—what mattered the method, so he attained the result? Half an hour, and the hills were clutched in the chill embrace of a “frozen chinook” such as the Little Doctor had never seen in her life. But Johnny, peeping surreptitiously over Chip’s shoulder, stared at the change; then, feeling the spirit of it, shivered in sympathy with the barren hills.
“Hully gee,” he muttered under his breath, “he’s sure a corker t’ paint cold that fair makes yer nose sting.” And he curled up in a chair behind, where he could steal a look, now and then, without fear of detection.
But Chip was dead to all save that tiny basin in the Bad Lands—to the wolves and their quarry. His eyes burned as they did when the fever held him; each cheek bone glowed flaming red.
As wolf after wolf appeared with what, to Johnny, seemed uncanny swiftness, and squatted, grinning and sinister, in a relentless half circle, the book slipped unheeded to the floor with a clatter that failed to rouse the painter, whose ears were dulled to all else than the pitiful blat of a shivering, panic-stricken calf whose nose sought his mother’s side for her comforting warmth and protection.
The Countess rapped on the door for dinner, and Johnny rose softly and tiptoed out to quiet her. May he be forgiven the lies he told that day, of how Chip’s head ached and he wanted to sleep and must not be disturbed, by strict orders of the Little Doctor. The Countess, to whom the very name of the Little Doctor was a fetich, closed all intervening doors and walked on her toes in the kitchen, and Johnny rejoiced at the funeral quiet which rested upon the house.
Faster flew the brush. Now the eyes of the cow glared desperate defiance. One might almost see her bony side, ruffled by the cutting north wind, heave with her breathing. She was fighting death for herself and her baby—but for how long? Already the nose of one great, gray beast was straight uplifted, sniffing, impatient. Would they risk a charge upon those lowered horns? The dark pines shook their feathery heads hopelessly. A little while perhaps, and then—
Chip laid down the brush and sank back in the chair. Was the sun so low? He could do no more—yes, he took up a brush and added the title: “The Last Stand.”
He was very white, and his hand shook. Johnny leaned over the back of the chair, his eyes glued to the picture.
“Gee,” he muttered, huskily, “I’d like t’ git a whack at them wolves once.”
Chip turned his head until he could look at the lad’s face. “What do you think of it, kid?” he asked, shakily.
Johnny did not answer for a moment. It was hard to put what he felt into words. “I dunno just how t’ say it,” he said, gropingly, at last, “but it makes me want t’ go gunnin’ fer them wolves b’fore they hamstring her. It—well—it don’t seem t’ me like it was a pitcher, somehow. It seems like the reel thing, kinda.”
Chip moved his head languidly upon the cushion.
“I’m dead tired, kid. No, I’m not hungry, nor I don’t want any coffee, or anything. Just roll this chair over to the bed, will you? I’m—dead-tired.”
Johnny was worried. He did not know what the Little Doctor would say, for Chip had not eaten his dinner, or taken his medicine. Somehow there had been that in his face that had made Johnny afraid to speak to him. He went back to the easel and looked long at the picture, his heart bursting with rage that he could not take his rifle and shoot those merciless, grinning brutes. Even after he had drawn the curtain before it and stood the easel in its accustomed place, he kept lifting the curtain to take another look at that wordless tragedy of the West.
CHAPTER XIII
Art Critics
It was late the next forenoon when the Little Doctor, feeling the spirit of artistic achievement within her, gathered up brushes and paints for a couple hours’ work. Chip, sitting by the window smoking a cigarette, watched her uneasily from the tail of his eye. Looking back to yesterday’s “spasm,” as he dubbed it mentally, he was filled with a great and unaccountable shyness. What had seemed so real to him then he feared today to face, as trivial and weak.
He wanted to cry “Stop!” when she laid hand to the curtain, but he looked, instead, out across the coulee to the hills beyond, the blood surging unevenly through his veins. He felt when she drew the cloth aside; she stopped short off in the middle of telling him something Miss Satterly had said—some whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, and the clock ticked merrily on.
One minute—two—the silence was getting unbearable. He could not endure another second. He looked toward her; she stood, one hand full of brushes, gazing, white-faced, at “The Last Stand.” As he looked, a tear rolled down the cheek nearest him and compelled him to speech.
“What’s the matter?” His voice seemed to him rough and brutal, but he did not mean it so.
The Little Doctor drew a long, quivering breath.
“Oh, the poor, brave thing!” she said, in a hushed tone. She turned sharply away and sat down.
“I expect I spoiled your picture, all right—but I told you I’d get into mischief if you went gadding around and left me alone.”
The Little Doctor stealthily wiped her eyes, hoping to goodness Chip had not seen that they had need of wiping.
“Why didn’t you tell me you could paint like that?” She turned upon him fiercely. “Here you’ve sat and looked on at me daubing things up—and if I’d known you could do better than—” Looking again at the canvas she forgot to finish. The fascination of it held her.
“I’m not in the habit of going around the country shouting what I don’t know,” said Chip, defensively. “You’ve taken heaps of lessons, and I never did. I just noticed the color of everything, and—oh, I don’t know— it’s in me to do those things. I can’t help trying to paint and draw.”
“I suppose old Von Heim would have something to say of your way of doing clouds—but you got the effect, though—better than he did, sometimes. And that cow—I can see her breathe, I tell you! And the wolves—oh, don’t sit there and smoke your everlasting cigarettes and look so stoical over it! What are you made of, anyway? Can’t you feel proud? Oh, don’t you know what you’ve done? I—I’d like to shake you—so now!”
“Well, I don’t much blame you. I knew I’d no business to meddle. Maybe, if you’ll touch it up a little—”
“I’ll not touch a brush to that. I—I’m afraid I might kill the cow.” She gave a little, hysterical laugh.
“Don’t you think you’re rather excitable—for a doctor?” scoffed Chip, and her chin went up for a minute.
“I’d like t’ kill them wolves,” said Johnny, coming in just then.
“Turn the thing around, kid, so I can see it,” commanded Chip, suddenly. “I worked at it yesterday till the colors all ran together and I couldn’t tell much about it.”
Johnny turned the easel, and Chip, looking, fell silent. Had his hand guided the brush while that scene grew from blank canvas to palpitating reality?