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 n 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