The puncher handed over his flask, and the other held it before his eye and appraised the contents in approved fashion. “Don't mind if I do. Here's how!”
“How!” echoed Missou, in turn, and tipped up the bottle till the liquor gurgled down his baked throat.
“He's fanning out his men so as to, get us both at the front and back door. Lucky there ain't but four of them.”
“I guess we better lie back to back,” proposed Missou. “If our luck's good I reckon they're going to have a gay time rushing this fort.”
A few desultory shots had already been dropped among the cottonwoods, and returned by the defendants when Missou let out a yell of triumph.
“Glory Hallelujah! Here comes the boys splittin' down the road hell-for-leather. That lopsided, ring-tailed snorter of a hawss-thief is gathering his wolves for a hike back to the tall timber. Feed me a cigareet, Mac. I plumb want to celebrate.”
It was as the cow-puncher had said. Down the road a cloud of dust was sweeping toward them, in the centre of which they made out three hardriding cowboys from the ranch. Farther back, in the distance, was another dust whirl. The outlaw chief's hard, vigilant gaze swept over the reinforcements! and decided instantly that the game had gone against him for the present. He whistled shrilly twice, and began a slow retreat toward the hills. The miscreants flung a few defiant shots at the advancing cowmen, and disappeared, swallowed up in the earth swells.
The homeward march was a slow one, for Bannister had begun to show signs of consciousness and it was necessary to carry him with extreme care. While they were still a mile from the ranch house the pinto and its rider could be seen loping toward them.
“Ride forward, Denver, and tell Miss Helen we're coming. Better have her get everything fixed to doctor him soon as we get there. Give him the best show in the world, and he'll still be sailing awful close to the divide. I'll bet a hundred plunks he'll cash in, anyway.”
“DONE!”
The voice came faintly from the improvised litter. Mac turned with a start, for he had not known that Bannister was awake to his surroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all the lusty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spirit still triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman looked a faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: “Still in the ring, old man.”
Chapter 8.
In the Lazy D Hospital
Helen's first swift glance showed that the wounded man was Bannister. She turned in crisp command to her foreman.
“Have him taken to my room and put to bed there. We have no time to prepare another. And send one of the boys on your best horse for a doctor.”
They carried the limp figure in with rough tenderness and laid him in the bed. McWilliams unbuckled the belt and drew off the chaps; then, with the help of Denver, undressed the wounded man and covered him with quilts. So Helen found him when she came in to attend his wounds, bringing with her such things as she needed for her task. Mrs. Winslow, the housekeeper, assisted her, and the foreman stayed to help, but it was on the mistress of the ranch that the responsibility of saving him fell. Missou was already galloping to Bear Creek for a doctor, but the girl knew that the battle must be fought and the issue decided before he could arrive.
He had fallen again into insensibility and she rinsed and dressed his wounds, working with the quiet impersonal certainty of touch that did not betray the inner turmoil of her soul. But McWilliams, his eyes following her every motion and alert to anticipate her needs, saw that the color had washed from her face and that she was controlling herself only to meet the demands of the occasion.
As she was finishing, the sheepman opened his eyes and looked at her.
“You are not to speak or ask questions. You have been wounded and we are going to take care of you,” she ordered.
“That's right good of y'u. I ce'tainly feet mighty trifling.” His wide eyes traveled round till they fell on the foreman. “Y'u see I came back to help fill your hospital. Am I there now? Where am I?” His gaze returned to Helen with the sudden irritation of the irresponsible sick.
“You are at the Lazy D, in my room. You are not to worry about anything. Everything's all right.”
He took her at her word and his eyes closed; but presently he began to mutter unconnected words and phrases. When his lids lifted again there was a wilder look in his eyes, and she knew that delirium was beginning. At intervals it lasted for long; indeed, until the doctor came next morning in the small hours. He talked of many things Helen Messiter did not understand, of incidents in his past life, some of them jerky with the excitement of a tense moment, others apparently snatches of talk with relatives. It was like the babbling of a child, irrelevant and yet often insistent. He would in one breath give orders connected with the lambing of his sheep, in the next break into football talk, calling out signals and imploring his men to hold them or to break through and get the ball. Once he broke into curses, but his very oaths seemed to come from a clean heart and missed the vulgarity they might have had. Again his talk rambled inconsequently over his youth, and he would urge himself or someone else of the same name to better life.
“Ned, Ned, remember your mother,” he would beseech. “She asked me to look after you. Don't go wrong.” Or else it would be, “Don't disgrace the general, Ned. You'll break his heart if you blacken the old name.” To this theme he recurred repeatedly, and she noticed that when he imagined himself in the East his language was correct and his intonation cultured, though still with a suggestion of a Southern softness.
But when he spoke of her his speech lapsed into the familiar drawl of Cattleland. “I ain't such a sweep as y'u think, girl. Some day I'll sure tell y'u all about it, and how I have loved y'u ever since y'u scooped me up in your car. You're the gamest little lady! To see y'u come a-sailin' down after me, so steady and businesslike, not turning a hair when the bullets hummed—I sure do love y'u, Helen.” And then he fell upon her first name and called her by it a hundred times softly to himself.
This happened when she was alone with him, just before the doctor came. She heard it with starry eyes and with a heart that flushed for joy a warmer color into her cheeks. Brushing back the short curls, she kissed his damp forehead. It was in the thick of the battle, before he had weathered that point where the issues of life and death pressed closely, and even in the midst of her great fears it brought her comfort. She was to think often of it later, and always the memory was to be music in her heart. Even when she denied her love for him, assured herself it was impossible she could care for so shameful a villain, even then it was a sweet torture to allow herself the luxury of recalling his broken delirious phrases. At the very worst he could not be as bad as they said; some instinct told her this was impossible. His fearless devil-may-care smile, his jaunty, gallant bearing, these pleaded against the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow in his face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of the difference between what he was and what he seemed to be.
One of the things that had been a continual surprise to Helen was the short time required by these deep-cheated and clean-blooded Westerners to recover from apparently serious wounds. It was scarce more than two weeks since Bannister had filled the bunkhouse with wounded men, and already two of them were back at work and the third almost fit for service. For perhaps three days the sheepman's life hung in the balance, after which his splendid constitution and his outdoor life began to tell. The thermometer showed that the fever had slipped down a notch, and he was now sleeping wholesomely a good part