Claim Number One

by Ogden, George W

  “I have it all arranged,” he persisted stubbornly, “and there will be no turning back. Tomorrow it will not look so gloomy to you. Now, you’d better go to bed.”

  He rose as he spoke, gave her his hand, and helped her to her feet. As they stood face to face Agnes placed her hand upon his shoulder gravely.

  “I am in sober earnest about this, Doctor,” said she. “We must not go on with any more planning and dreaming. It may look as if I feared the future with you for my own sake, putting the case as I do, all dependent on the winning of that fee. But you would not be able to swim with the load without that. It would sink you, and that, too, after you have fought the big battle and won new courage and hope, and a new vision to help you meet the world. Unless we weather the crisis, I must ride away alone.”

  “I’d be afraid of the future without you; it would be so bleak and lonesome,” said he simply. He gave her good night before her tent.

  “And for that reason,” said he, carrying on his thought of a minute before, “we must weather the crisis like good sailormen.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE CRISIS

  Brave words are one thing, and inflammation in a gunshot wound is another. Infection set up in Jerry Boyle’s hurt on the day after that which the doctor had marked as the critical point in his battle for life.

  Dr. Slavens was of the opinion that the bullet had carried a piece of clothing into the wound, which it was not able to discharge of itself. An operation for its removal was the one hope of saving the patient, and that measure for relief was attended by so many perils as to make it very desperate indeed.

  The doctor viewed this alarming turn in his patient with deep concern, not so much out of sympathy for the sufferer and his parents, perhaps, as on his personal account. The welfare of Jerry Boyle had become the most important thing in life to him, for his own future hinged on that as its most vital bearing.

  Agnes was firm in her adherence to the plan of procedure which she had announced. She declared that, as matters stood, she would not become a burden, with all her encumbrances, upon his slender resources. If mischance wrested the promised fee out of his hands, then they must go their ways separately. She repeated her determination to abide by that on the morning when Dr. Slavens announced the necessity of the operation.

  Slavens was hurt and disappointed. It seemed that his faith in her suffered a blighting frost.

  “In plain words,” he charged, “you will refuse to marry me because I am poor.”

  “There’s no other way to put it,” she admitted. “But I refuse only out of my boundless esteem and tenderness for you and your success. I am putting down happiness when I do this, and taking up an additional load of pain. But what peace or self-respect would ever be mine again if I should consent to add the burden of two helpless old people to what you will have to carry on your own account?”

  “My back is broad enough to be Atlas to your little world,” he declared.

  “But there’s no use strangling success,” she argued. “It can’t be many years, at the longest, until time and nature relieve my tottering charges of their dependence on me. If you would care to wait, and if I might not be too old––”

  “If there’s nothing better for it, then we’ll wait,” he cut in almost sharply. “Do you remember how I showed you to hold that cone?”

  She had consented to assist him in the operation to the extent of keeping the patient under the ether after he had administered it.

  “This way,” said she, placing the cotton-filled paper cone over the nostrils.

  From the physician’s standpoint, the operation was entirely successful. A successful operation, as the doctor defines it, means that the doctor gets what he starts after. Frequently the patient expires during the operation, but that does not subtract anything from the sum of its success.

  In the case of Jerry Boyle the matter wore a brighter aspect all around. The doctor found the bit of coat-lining which the bullet had carried in with it, and removed it. The seat of inflammation was centered around it, as he had foreseen, and the patient was still alive, even though the greater part of the day had passed since the tormenting piece of cloth was removed.

  The camp was hushed in the depression of despair. Until that day they had heard Mrs. Boyle’s hopeful voice cheering her husband, upon whom the foreboding of disaster seemed to weigh prophetically. Sometimes she had sung in a low voice as she watched beside her son. But now her courage seemed to have left her, and she sat in the tent with the Governor, huddled like two old tempest-beaten birds hiding under a frail shelter which could not shield them from the last bitter blow. They had given the care of their son over to the doctor and Agnes entirely, watching their coming and going with tearful eyes, waiting for the word that would cut the slender stay of hope.

  On the afternoon of the second day after the operation, Agnes entered the tent and looked across the patient’s cot into Dr. Slavens’ tired eyes. He shook his head, holding the sufferer’s wrist, his finger on the fluttering pulse. It seemed to Agnes that Boyle had sunk as deep into the shadow of the borderland as human ever penetrated and drew breath. From all appearances he was dead even that moment, and the solemn shake of the head with which the doctor greeted her seemed to tell her it was the end.

  She went to her own tent and sat in the sun, which still fell hot and bright. The Governor and his wife had let down the flap of their tent, as if they could no longer bear the pain of watching. Tears came into Agnes’ eyes as she waited there in the wreckage of so many human hopes; tears for the mother who had borne that unworthy son, but whose heart was tender for him as if his soul had been without a stain; tears for the old man whose spirit was broken, and tears for herself and her own dreams, and all the tender things which she had allowed to spring within her breast.

  After a long time Dr. Slavens came out of the hospital-tent and let the flap down after him. The sun was striking long, slanting shadows across the barrens; the fire was dying out of its touch. Agnes’ heart sank as she saw the doctor draw away a little distance, and then turn and walk a little beat, back and forth, back and forth, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind him in an attitude of thorough disappointment and deep gloom. She got up and went to him, a feeling that all was over.

  “Never mind,” she consoled, lifting her tear-streaked face to meet his haggard look. “You’ve lost, but I have come to tell you that it makes no difference between us. We will go on with our life together as we planned it; we will take up our dreams.”

  “Agnes, you have come in good time,” said he, lifting his hand to his forehead wearily.

  “I am not noble enough to sacrifice my happiness for your good,” she continued. “I am too weak and common, and womanly frail for that. I cannot carry out my brave resolution, now that you’ve lost. We will go away together, according to your plan, and I will live by your plan, always and forever.”

  “You have come in good time–in good time,” said he again, as one speaking in a daze.

  Then he drew her to his breast, where her head lay fair and bright, her straying hair, spread like a shattered sunbeam, lifting in the young wind that came from the hills beyond the river.

  There she rested against the rock of his strength, his hand caressing her wild tresses, the quiver of her sobbing breast stirring him like a warm and quickening draught.

  “You did well to come and tell me this,” said he, “for, as I love you, my dear, dear woman, I would not have had you on the other terms. But I have not lost. Jerry Boyle has emerged from the shadow. He will live.”

  * * *

  After that day when his adventuring soul strayed so near the portal which opens in but one direction, Boyle’s recovery was rapid. Ten days later they loaded him into a wagon to take him to Comanche, thence to his father’s home by rail.

  Young Boyle was full of the interest of life again, and his stock of audacity did not appear to be in the least diminished by his melancholy experience. He trea
ted Dr. Slavens on the footing of an old friend, and if there was any shame in his heart at his past behavior toward Agnes, his colorless cheeks did not betray it.

  With the exception of one flying visit to the capital city of the state, Governor Boyle had remained in camp faithfully since the day of the tragedy. But the slow days in those solitudes were galling to his busy mind once the safety of his boy’s life was assured. He became in a measure dictatorial and high-handed in his dealings with the doctor, and altogether patronizing.

  Dr. Slavens considered his duty toward the patient at an end on the morning when they loaded him into the spring wagon to take him to Comanche. He told the Governor as much.

  “He’ll be able to get up in a few days more,” said the doctor, “and inside of a month he’ll be riding his horse as if daylight never had been let through him.”

  Governor Boyle took this announcement as the signal for him to produce his checkbook, which he did with considerable ostentation and flourish.

  “How much did you expect to get out of this pile of rocks?” he asked the doctor, poising his fountain-pen over the page.

  Dr. Slavens colored under the question, which came so sharply and indelicately, although he had rehearsed in his mind for that moment an uncounted number of times. He said nothing, fumbling as he was for a reply.

  Jerry, lying back on his cot in the wagon, his head propped up, laughed shortly and answered for him.

  “It was about twenty thousand, wasn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Somewhere around there,” admitted Slavens, as if confessing some wild folly.

  “Well, I said I’d give you half as much as you expected to get out of it if you pulled Jerry through, and I’m here to keep my word,” said the Governor, beginning to write.

  Agnes looked at the doctor, indignant amazement in her face. Then she turned to the Governor sharply.

  “I beg your pardon, Governor Boyle, but I was present when you made that promise; you said you’d pay him twice as much as he hoped to get out of the claim if he saved Jerry’s life,” said she.

  Governor Boyle raised his eyes with a cold, severe look on his bearded face.

  “I beg your pardon!” said he with withering rebuke, which carried with it denial and challenge of proof. That said, he bent to his writing again.

  Jerry Boyle laughed.

  “Oh, jar loose a little, Governor–be a sport!” he urged.

  “Here is my check for ten thousand dollars, Doctor,” said the Governor, handing the slip to Slavens; “I consider that pretty good pay for two weeks’ work.”

  The Governor mounted his horse, and gave the driver the word to proceed slowly to the station.

  “And if I croak on the road over the Governor’ll stop payment on the check,” said Jerry facetiously.

  “Well, unless you get busy with that little gun of yours and somebody puts another hole through you on the way,” the doctor assured him, “I’ll make it to the bank door with a perfectly good check in my hand.”

  Young Boyle held out his hand in farewell, his face suddenly sober and serious.

  “The gun has been cached,” said he. “I promised mother I’d never sling it on a man again, and I’m going to stick to it. I’m going to get a bill put through the Legislature making it a felony to pack one, if it can be done. I’m cured, Doctor, in more ways than one.”

  The cavalcade moved off down the winding road. Agnes was ablaze with indignation.

  “The idea of that man going back on his solemn word, given in the very presence of death!”

  “Never mind; that’s the way he made his money, I suppose,” said the doctor. “I’ve got more out of it than I ever expected to get without a row, and I’m going to make a line for that bank in Cheyenne and get the money on his check before he changes his mind. He may get to thinking before he gets home that Jerry isn’t worth ten thousand dollars.”

  As they rode up to the rise of the hill, Agnes reined in and stopped.

  “Here is where we changed places on the coach that day when Smith thought there was going to be a fight,” she recalled.

  “Yes, this is the place,” he said, looking around with a smile. “Old Hun Shanklin was up here spying out the land.”

  “Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he picked you out as a man who would put up a fight,” said she.

  “Well, let us hope that he made a good guess,” Slavens said, “for here’s where we take up the racket with the world again.”

  “We changed places on the coach that day; you took the post of danger,” she reflected, her eyes roaming the browning hills and coming back to his face with a caress in their placid depths.

  “Yes,” he said, slowly, gravely; “where a man belongs.”

  Dr. Slavens gathered up his reins to go, yet lingered a little, looking out over the gray leagues of that vast land unfolded with its new adventures at his feet. Agnes drew near, turned in her saddle to view again the place of desolation strewn over with its monumental stones.

  “This is my Gethsemane,” she said.

  “It was cursed and unholy when I came to it; I leave it sanctified by my most precious memory,” said he.

  He rode on; Agnes, pressing after, came yet a little way behind, content to have it so, his breast between her and the world. And that was the manner of their going from the place of stones.

  * * *

  EDGAR RICE BURROUGH’S NOVELS

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

  TARZAN THE UNTAMED

  Tells of Tarzan’s return to the life of the ape-man in his search for vengeance on those who took from him his wife and home.

  JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN

  Records the many wonderful exploits by which Tarzan proves his right to ape kingship.

  A PRINCESS OF MARS

  Forty-three million miles from the earth–a succession of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American, finds himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on horses like dragons.

  THE GODS OF MARS

  Continuing John Carter’s adventures on the Planet Mars, in which he does battle against the ferocious “plant men,” creatures whose mighty tails swished their victims to instant death, and defies Issus, the terrible Goddess of Death, whom all Mars worships and reveres.

  THE WARLORD OF MARS

  Old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reappear, Tars Tarkas, Tardos Mors and others. There is a happy ending to the story in the union of the Warlord, the title conferred upon John Carter, with Dejah Thoris.

  THUVIA, MAID OF MARS

  The fourth volume of the series. The story centers around the adventures of Carthoris, the son of John Carter and Thuvia, daughter of a Martian Emperor.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,NEW YORK

  * * *

  FLORENCE L. BARCLAY’S NOVELS

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

  THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER

  A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she had lost her lover, enters a convent. He returns, and interesting developments follow.

  THE UPAS TREE

  A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful author and his wife.

  THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE

  The story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of abiding love.

  THE ROSARY

  The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life’s greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward.

  THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE

  The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine,
clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other. When he learns her real identity a situation of singular power is developed.

  THE BROKEN HALO

  The story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted.

  THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR

  The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the conditions of her uncle’s will, and how they finally come to love each other and are reunited after experiences that soften and purify.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,NEW YORK

  * * *

  ETHEL M. DELL’S NOVELS

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

  THE LAMP IN THE DESERT

  The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through all sorts of tribulations to final happiness.

  GREATHEART

  The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.

  THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE

  A hero who worked to win even when there was only “a hundredth chance.”

  THE SWINDLER

  The story of a “bad man’s” soul revealed by a woman’s faith.

  THE TIDAL WAVE

  Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the false.

  THE SAFETY CURTAIN

  A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other long stories of equal interest.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,NEW YORK

  * * *

  ZANE GREY’S NOVELS

  May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.