'Smiles' by Eliot H. Robinson (ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📕

The return journey was quickly and silently made, and, delivering the slight bundle to Smiles when her cabin was reached, Judd set off into the night, concern lending wings to his feet.

"Grandpap, hit's Smiles back ergin'," called the girl softly. "An' I've brought leetle Lou Amos. She haint feelin' right well, an' I allows I hev got ter take keer of her here."

The old man uttered a low growl of protest, which caused Rose to run to him and tenderly lay her hand on his lips, with the words, "Hush, grandpap. The baby haint in nowise ter blame fer ... fer what Judd done. In course we hev got ter keer fer her."

Big Jerry nodded an abashed assent, and said no more.

Smiles undressed her new charge, who struck uncertain terror to her heart by drowsily talking on and on, in snatches of unrelated sentences running the gamut of her limited experiences and with the childish words often failing, half formed. She put the baby in her own bed, and, after the belated supper had been eaten and cleared away, and the old man made as comfortable as possible for the night, Smiles lay down beside the baby, whose silence and more regular breathing indicated that she was at last asleep.

The morrow's sun was well above the valley horizon before Judd returned with the country doctor, and again the former refused to enter the cabin. While the physician remained, he paced back and forth, back and forth, with weary, nervous strides; but even in his stress of mind he unconsciously kept out of view from the window in Big Jerry's room.

At last Rose and Dr. Johnston reappeared, and, breathing hard, Judd hastened to join them.

"It's brain fever, the doctor says, Judd," said Smiles at once. "He's left some medicine for me to give her, and you know that I'll nurse her for you like she was my own baby."

"Air hit ... air hit bad, doctor?" asked the mountaineer, with a catch in his voice.

"Well, of course it ain't an ... er ... exactly easy thing to cure, but I reckon she'll get well of it. By the way, Amos, how long has she been a-goin' on like that?"

"I kaint rightly say, doctor. She hes acted kind er strange-like fer quite er spell, now thet I comes ter think on hit; but I didn't pay no pertickler attention to hit ontil er day er two back," answered the man contritely.

"Hmmm," said the doctor. "Oh, I guess we can pull her through all right, and I will get up here as often as I can. Well, I reckon I'll be stepping along back."

But little Lou did not fulfil the country practitioner's optimistic prophecy. The change in her condition, as day after day crept by, growing longer and colder, was almost imperceptible; but it was steadily for the worse. The mountain winter closed in with unusual rigors, and Smiles' cabin continued to be a hospital where she passed her hours ministering equally to the keen-minded, but bodily tortured old man—whose heart pained constantly and with growing severity, and whose breathing became daily more labored—and the child whose mind steadily became more clouded and her physical functions more weak.

Like a gaunt, miserable dog which had been driven from his home, Judd haunted the cabin. When she stole out one morning, to speak with him about Lou, Smiles cried, "Oh, if Doctor Mac were only here now! He would know what to do, I'm sure."

Judd's hands, blue with cold, clenched so violently that the knuckles grew a bloodless white, and the look of pain, lying deep down in his eyes, changed to a flash of burning hate.

"Don't never speak thet man's name ter me, gal."

The words were spoken in a harsh voice and he strode abruptly away.

At more and more infrequent intervals, the village doctor made his toilsome way up the slippery mountain side, sat regarding the little patient with a hopelessly puzzled look, and finally departed, shaking his head; but he never failed to leave behind him another bottle of obnoxious medicine on the chance that if one did not produce an improvement, another might. Even to the girl it was all too apparent, however, that he was aiming blindly into the dark.

There came a time when the child spoke scarcely at all, save to moan piteously something about the pain in her head; her emaciated legs barely carried her on her uncertain course; her vague, sweet eyes turned inward more and more; and it was with the greatest difficulty, and only by the exercise of infinite patience that Smiles could feed her. The little mountain blossom was wilting and fading slowly away.

On the afternoon of the first day of January Dr. Johnston spent a long time at the cabin, striving against the impossible to solve the problem which confronted him like an appalling mystery, far too deep to be pierced by the feeble ray of science at his command.

At last he arose with a gesture of finality, and announced to the anxiously waiting girl, "I reckon I'm done. I won't go so fur as to say that a city specialist might not be able to help her; but hanged if I can. The trouble is too much for me, and I guess Lou is just a-goin' to die."

Sudden tears welled into Smiles' luminous eyes, and ran unheeded down her cheeks, now unnaturally thin and wan.

"Hit haint so," she cried in a choked voice. "Lou haint ergoin' ter die, Dr. Johnston!"

Suddenly she stopped, as her thoughts flew backward on the wings of memory. Her eyes grew larger, a strange light came into them. Then, speaking slowly, almost as though the words were impelled by a will other than her own, she added with a tone of absolute certainty:

"Yo' allows yo' don't know what the trouble air, but I does."

The doctor was startled and looked as though he thought that he was about to have another patient on his hands.

"Hit air a brain tumor thet she hes got, I knows it, an' I knows one of the few doctor men in this hyar country what kin cure hit. He air ergoin' ter cure hit fer me, an' leetle Lou haint ergoin' ter die."

Uncertain what to make of this outburst, the doctor departed rather hastily. Smiles caught up her shawl and ran immediately to Judd's lonely, cheerless abode, which she entered without a thought of knocking. She found the man sitting dejectedly before a feeble fire.

He sprang up, voiceless terror apparent in the look which he turned upon her white face, but, without pausing for any preliminaries, Rose said, "The doctor, he's been ter see our little Lou again, Judd. He allows thet he can't do anything more for her, and thet she has got ter die."

The man—whose whole world was now centred in the child to whom he had, for a year, been father and mother as well as brother—sank down on his chair and buried his face in his hands.

"I knowed hit," he muttered in a dead voice.

"Hit haint so," cried the girl, who had by this time wholly relapsed into the mountain speech, as she frequently did still, when laboring under the stress of emotion. "Hit haint so, Judd. We kin save her. We hev got ter save her."

"Thar haint no way." The words were tuned to despair.

"Thar air a way. Thar's one man who kin save Lou's life fer ye, an' we must get him ter do hit.".

She had mentioned no name, but Judd sprang swiftly erect, fists clenched and shaking above his head. "Do yo' think thet I'd be beholden ter thet man, after what I done ter him? Do yo' think thet I'd accept even my sister's life et his hands? I hates him like I does the devil what, I reckon, air ergoin' ter git my soul!"

"Judd!" cried the girl, "yo' don't know what yo'r ersayin'. Hit's blasphemy. Ef Doctor Mac kin save Lou's life—an' he kin—yo'd be a murderer,—yes, a murderer uv yo'r own flesh an' blood, ter forbid him."

Spent by the force of his previous passionate outburst, the man sank tremblingly back into the chair again.

"I kaint do hit, Smiles," he answered piteously. "I kaint do hit, an' hit's a foolish thought anyway. He wouldn't come hyar. Hit takes money fer ter git city doctors, an' I haint got none."

"He will come ef I asks him, an' I hev money, Judd," she said with a pleading voice.

"No, no, no. Ef Lou dies, I reckon I'll kill myself, too; but I forbids ye ter call the man I wronged, an' hates."

Slowly the girl turned away, with a compassionate glance at the bent, soul-tortured youth, went out of the cabin, and softly closed the door.