The Bells of San Juan by Jackson Gregory (notion reading list txt) 📕

"Look here, Rod. . . ." expostulated Brocky.

"Shut up, Brocky," answered Norton quietly. And, passing the lantern to the girl. "If you'll carry that I'll carry Brocky. It's only a few steps and I won't hurt him. We can make him more comfortable there; and besides, we can't leave him out here in the sun to-morrow."

Somewhat mystified, Virginia took the lantern and her own surgical case from the sheriff and watched him stoop and gather the tall form of his friend into his arms. Then going the way he indicated, straight across the tiny flat, she lighted the way. She heard the wounded man groan once; then, his teeth set to guard his lips, Brocky was silent.

After a dozen steps she came to a steep-sided, narrow chasm giving passageway not six feet wide which twisted this way and that before her.

"Look out," called Norton sharply. "Watch where you step now. Go slow."

Virginia swinging her lantern up shoulder-high, looking ahead, grew instantly stock-still, a shiver tingling along her spine. The narrow defile through which she had passed had led out of the ring of peaks and now abruptly debouched into nothingness. As she had turned with the twisting passageway, expecting to see another wall of rock before her, she saw instead the sky filled with stars. She stood almost at the edge of a sheer precipice.

"Throw the light to the left now," commanded Norton. "See what looks like the entrance to a cave? We go in there."

She walked on, moving slowly, warily, a little faint from the one startled view before her, her body tight pressed to the rocks upon the left, her feet only a pace from the edge of the cliff. Now she saw the mouth of the cave, a black ragged hole just above a flat rock which thrust itself outward so that it seemed hanging, balanced insecurely, over the abyss. By the pale rays of the lantern she saw the fairly smooth, gently sloping floor of the cavern; then, stooping, she passed in, turned, and held the light for Norton.

He came on steadily, bearing his burden lightly. Still holding the lantern for him, turning as he came closer, she saw that the cave was lofty and wide, that it ran farther back into the mountain than her lantern's rays could follow.

"Back there," said Norton, "you'll find blankets. I'll hold him while you spread some out for him."

She hurried toward the farther end of the cave, came to a tumble of blankets against the wall, dragged out two or three, spreading them quickly. And then, while Norton was stooping to lay Brocky's limp form down, she busied herself with her case.

"He has fainted," she said quickly. "I'd like to examine the wound before he is conscious; it's going to hurt him. Pour me some water into any sort of basin or cup or anything else you've got here. Then stand by to help me if I need you. . . . Hold the lantern for me."

Swiftly, but Norton marked with what skilful fingers, she removed the bandage and made her examination. Norton, squatting upon his heels at her side, holding the lantern, after one frowning look at the wound, kept his eyes fixed upon her face. Brocky Lane was near his death and the sheriff knew it after that one look; his life lay, perhaps, in the hands of this girl. Norton had brought her when he might have brought Patten. Had he chosen wrongly?

He had noted her hands before; now they seemed to him the most wonderful hands ever possessed by either man or woman, strong, sure, quick, sensitive, utterly capable. He thought of Caleb Patten's hands, thick, a little inclined to be flabby.

"Open that bottle," she directed coolly. "One tablet into the water. That box has cotton and gauze in it . . . don't touch them! I want everything clean; just open the box and set it where I can get it."

One by one she gave her directions and the man obeyed swiftly and unquestioningly. He watched her probe the wound, saw her eyes narrow, knew that she had made her diagnosis. As she washed the ugly hole in the flesh and made her own bandage Brocky Lane was wincing, his eyes again open. Both men were watching her now, the same look in each eager pair of eyes. But until she had done and, with Norton's help, had made Lane as comfortable as possible upon his crude bed, she gave no answer to their mute pleading. Then she sat down upon the stone floor, caught her knees up in her clasped hands, and looked long and searchingly into Brocky Lane's face. The cowboy struggled with his muscles and triumphed over them, summoning a sick grin as he muttered:

"You're mighty good to take all this trouble. . . . I'm sure a hundred times obliged. . . ."

"And," she cut in abruptly, "you mean to tell me that you shot that man after he had put this hole in you? And then you made him crawl out of the brush and come to you?"

"I sure did," grunted Brocky. "And if my aim hadn't been sort of bad, me being all upset this way, I wouldn't have just winged old Moraga that way, either! When he's all cured up and I'm all well again. . . ."

Then he broke off and again his eyes, like Norton's, asked their question. This time she answered it, speaking slowly and thoughtfully.

"Mr. Brocky Lane, I congratulate you on three things, your physique first, your luck second, and third, your nerve. They are a combination that is hard to beat. I am very much inclined to the belief that in a month or so you'll be about as good as new."

Norton expelled a deep breath of relief; he realized suddenly that whatever this gray-eyed, strong-handed girl had said would have had his fullest credence. Brocky's grin grew a shade less strained.

"When you add to that combination," he muttered, "a sure-enough angel come to doctor a man. . . ."

"Growing delirious again," laughed Virginia. "Give him a little brandy, Mr. Norton. Then a smoke if he's dying for one. Then we'll try to get a little sleep, all of us. You see, I had virtually no sleep on the train last night and to-day has been a big day for me. If I'm going to do your friend any good I've got to get three winks. And, unless you're made out of reinforced sheet-iron, it's the same for you. You can lie down close to Mr. Lane so that he can wake you easily if he needs us. Now," and she rose, still smiling, but suddenly looking unutterably weary, "where is the guest-chamber?"

She did not tell them that not only last night, but the night before she had sat up in a day coach, saving every cent she could out of the few dollars which were to give her and her brother a new start in the world; there were many things which Virginia Page knew how to keep to herself.

"This way," said Norton, taking up the lantern. "We can really make you more comfortable than you'd think."

At the very least he could count confidently on treating her to a surprise. She followed him for forty or fifty feet toward the end of the cave and to an irregular hole in the side wall, through this, and into another cave, smaller than the first, but as big as an ordinary room. The floor was strewn with the short needles of the mountain pine. As she turned, looking about her, she noted first another opening in a wall suggesting still another cave; then, feeling a faint breath of the night air on her cheek she saw a small rift in the outer shell of rock and through it the stars thick in the sky.

"May you sleep well in Jim Galloway's hang-out," said Norton lightly. "May you not be troubled with the ghosts of the old cliff-dwellers whose house this was before our time. And may you always remember that if there is anything in the world that I can do for you all you have to do is let me know. Good night."

"Good night," she said.

He had left the lantern for her. She placed it on the floor and went across her strange bedroom to the hole in the rock through which the stars were shining. It seemed impossible that those stars out there were the same stars which had shone upon her all of her life long. She could fancy that she had gone to sleep in one world and now had awakened in another, coming into a far, unknown territory where the face of the earth was changed, where men were different, where life was new. And though her body was tired her spirit did not droop. Rather an old exhilaration was in her blood. She had stepped from an old, outworn world into a new one, and with a quick stir of the pulses she told herself that life was good where it was strenuous and that she was glad that Virginia Page had come to San Juan.

"And now," she mused sleepily when at last she lay down upon heaped-up pine-needles and drew over her the blanket Norton had brought, "I am going to sleep in the hang-out of Jim Galloway and the old home of the cliff-dwellers! Virginia Page, you are a downright lucky girl!"

Whereupon she blew out her lantern, smiled faintly at the stars shining upon her, sighed wearily and went to sleep.

As full consciousness of her surroundings returned slowly to her, Virginia Page at first thought that she had been awakened by the aroma of boiling coffee. Then, sitting up, wide awake, she knew that Norton had come to the doorway of her separate chamber and had called. She threw off her blanket and got up hastily.

It was still dark. She imagined that she had merely dozed and that Norton was summoning her because Brocky Lane was worse. A dim glow shone through the cave entrance, that flickering, uncertain light eloquent of a camp-fire. As her hands went swiftly and femininely to her hair, she heard Norton's voice in a laughing remark. Only then she knew that she had slept three or four hours, that the dawn was near, that it was time for her to return to San Juan.

"Good morning," she said brightly.

Norton, squatting by the fire, frying-pan in hand, turned and answered her nod; Brocky Lane, flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, a cigarette in his mouth, twisted a little where he lay, his eyes eager upon his doctor. Virginia came on into the full light, striking the pine-needles from her riding-habit.

"Time to eat and ride," said Norton, turning again to his task. "Bacon and coffee and exercise. Have you rested?"

"Perfectly. And Mr. Lane?"

"Me?" said Brocky. "Feeling fine."

Norton gave her a cup of warm water to wash her hands. Then she made a second, very careful examination of Brocky's wound, cleansing it and adjusting a fresh bandage.

"I want to start in half an hour," said the sheriff. "There'll be light enough then so that we can make time getting