Bob, of course, was glad to do Dave a service, and the old Scotchman, MacDuffy, promised to see that Betty did not get into any danger.
“You’ll like to see the well shot off,” he told her pleasantly. “’Tis a bonny sight, seen for the first time. The wee horse is not afraid? That is gude, then. Rein in here and keep your eye on that crowd of men. When they run you’ll know the time has come.”
Obediently Betty sat her horse and fixed her gaze on the small group of men who were moving about with more than ordinary quickness and a trace of excitement. There is always the hope that a well will “come in big” and offer substantial payment for the weeks of hard work and toil expended on it.
Suddenly the group scattered. Involuntarily Betty’s hand tightened on Clover’s rein. For a moment nothing happened. Then came a roar and a mighty rumble and the earth seemed to strain and crack.
CHAPTER XIII
THE THREE HILLS
Betty saw an upheaval of sand, followed by a column of oil, heard a shout of victory from the men, and then Clover, who had been shivering with apprehension, snorted loudly, took the bit between her teeth and began to run. MacDuffy, resting securely in the assurance Betty had given that the horse would not be frightened, was occupied with the men, and horse and rider were rapidly disappearing from sight before he realized what had happened.
“Clover, Clover!” Betty put her arms around the maddened creature’s neck and spoke to her softly. “It’s all right, dear. Don’t be afraid. I thought you had been brought up in an oil country, or I wouldn’t have let you stand where you could see the well.”
But Clover’s nerves had been sadly shaken, and she was not yet in a state to listen to reason. Betty was now an excellent horsewoman, and had no difficulty in remaining in the saddle. She did not try to pull the horse in, rather suspecting that the animal had a hard mouth, but let the reins lie loosely on her neck, speaking reassuringly from time to time. Gradually Clover slackened her wild lope, dropped to a gentle gallop, and then into a canter and from that to a walk.
“Well, now, you silly horse, I hope you feel that you’re far enough from danger,” said Betty conversationally. “I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea where we are. Bob and I have never ridden this far, and from the looks of the country I don’t think it is what the geographies call ‘densely populated’. Mercy, what a lonesome place!”
Clover had gone contentedly to cropping grass, and that reminded Betty that she was hungry.
Far away she saw the outlines of oil derricks, but the horse seemed to have taken her out of the immediate vicinity of the oil fields. Not a house was in sight, not a moving person or animal. The stillness was unbroken save for the hoarse call of a single bird flying overhead.
Suddenly Betty’s eyes widened in astonishment. She jerked up Clover’s head so sharply that that pampered pet shook it angrily. Why should she be treated like that?
“The three hills!” gasped Betty. “Grandma Watterby’s three hills! ‘Joined together like hands’ she always says, and right back of the Saunders’ house. Clover! do you suppose we’ve found the three hills and Bob’s aunts?”
Clover had no opinion to offer. She had been rudely torn from her enjoyment of the herbage, and she resented that plainly. Betty, however, was too excited to consider the subject of lunch, even though a moment before she had been very hungry.
She turned the horse’s head toward the three hills, and with every step that brought her nearer the conviction grew that she had found the Saunders’ place. To be sure, she had seen nothing of a house as yet, but, like the name of Saunders, three hills were not a common phenomenon in Oklahoma, at least not within riding distance of the oil fields.
“It’s an awful long way,” sighed Betty, when after half an hour’s riding, the hills seemed as far away as before. “I suppose the air is so clear that they seemed nearer than they are. And I guess we came the long way around. There must be a road from the Watterby farm that cuts off some of the distance.”
Betty did not worry about what Bob or the men at the wells might be thinking. They knew her for a good rider, and Clover for a comparatively easily managed horse. No one in the West considers a good gallop anything serious, even when it assumes the proportions of a runaway. Betty was sure that they would expect her to ride back when Clover had had her run, and, barring a misstep, no harm would be likely to befall the rider.
After a full hour and a half of steady going, the three hills obligingly moved perceptibly nearer. Betty could see the ribbon of road that lay at their base, and the outline of a rambling farmhouse.
“Grandma Watterby said the hills were right back of the house!” repeated Betty ecstatically. “Oh, I’m sure this must be the place. If only Bob had come with me!”
She laughed a little at the notion of such an accommodating runaway, and then pulled Clover up short as they came to a rickety fence that apparently marked the boundary line of a field.
“We go straight across this field to the road, I think,” said Betty aloud. “I don’t believe there is anything planted. Clover, can you jump that fence?”
The fence was not very high, and at the word Clover gracefully cleared it. The field was a tangled mass of corn stubble and weeds, and a good farmer would have known that it had not been under cultivation that year. At the further side Betty found a pair of bars, and, taking these down, found herself in a narrow, deserted road, facing a lonely farmhouse.
The house was set back several yards from the road and even to the casual observer presented a melancholy picture. The paint was peeling from the clapboards, leaders were hanging in rusty shreds, and the fence post to which Betty tied her horse was rotten and worm-eaten.
“My goodness, I’m afraid the aunts are awfully poor,” sighed Betty, who had cherished a dream that Bob might find his relatives rich and ready to help him toward the education he so ardently desired. “Even Bramble Farm didn’t look as bad as this.”
She went up the weedy path to the house, and then for the first time noticed that all the shades were drawn and the doors and windows closed. It was a warm day and there was every reason for having all the fresh air that could be obtained.
“They must be away from home!” thought Betty. “Or—doesn’t anybody live here?”
A cackle from the hen yard answered her question and put her mind at ease. Where there were chickens, there would be people as a matter of course. They might have gone away to spend the day.
“I’ll take Clover out to the barn and give her a drink of water,” decided Betty. “No one would mind that. Grandma Watterby says a farmer’s barn is always open to his neighbor’s stock.”
So, Clover’s bridle over her arm, Betty proceeded out to the barnyard.
“Why—how funny!” she gasped.
The unearthly stillness which had reigned was broken at her approach by the neighing of a horse, and at the sound the chickens began to beat madly against the wire fencing of their yard, cows set up a bellowing, and a wild grunting came from the pig-pen.
Betty hurried to the barn. Three cows in their stanchions turned imploring eyes on her, and a couple of old horses neighed loudly. Something prompted Betty to look in the feed boxes. They were empty.
“I believe they’re hungry!” she exclaimed. “Clover, I don’t believe they’ve been fed or watered for several days! They wouldn’t act like this if they had.”
There wasn’t a drop of water anywhere in or about the barn, and a hasty investigation of the pig troughs and the drinking vessels in the chicken yard showed the same state of affairs.
“I don’t know how much to feed you,” Betty told the suffering animals compassionately, “but at any rate I know what to feed you. And you shall have some water as fast as I can pump it.”
She was thankful for the weeks spent at Bramble Farm as she set about her heavy tasks. She was tired from her long ride and the excitement of the morning, but it never entered her head to go away and leave the neglected farm stock. There was no
other house within sight where she could go for help, and if the animals were fed and watered that day it was evidently up to her to do it.
She worked valiantly, heaping the horses’ mangers with hay, carrying cornstalks to the cows and feeding the ravenous pigs and chickens corn on the cob, for there was no time to run the sheller. She had some difficulty in discovering the supplies, and then, when all were served, she discovered that not one of the animals had touched the food.
“Too thirsty,” she commented wisely.
Watering them was hard, tiresome work, for one big tub in the center of the yard evidently served the whole barn. When she had pumped that full—and how her arms ached!—she led the horses out, and after them, the cows. She was afraid to let either horses or cows have all they wanted, and jerking them back to their stalls before they had finished was not easy. She carried pailful after pailful of water to the pigs and the chickens and it was late in the afternoon before she had the satisfaction of knowing that every animal, if not content, was much more comfortable than before her arrival.
“Now I think I’ve earned something to eat!” she confided to Clover, when, hot and tired and flushed with the heat, she had filled the last chicken yard pan. “And I’m going up to the house and help myself from the pantry. I’m ’most sure the kitchen door is unlocked; no one around here ever locks the back door.”
She was very hungry by this time, having had nothing since an early breakfast, and she had no scruples about helping herself to whatever edibles she might find.
“I begin to sympathize with all the hired men,” she thought, making her way to the kitchen door. “I don’t wonder they eat huge meals when they have to do such hard work.”
The door, as she had expected, was not locked. A slight turn on the knob opened it easily, and Betty stepped cautiously into the kitchen. The drawn shades made it dark, but it was not the darkness that caused Betty to jump back a step.
She listened intently. Would she hear the noise again, or had it been only her nervous imagination?
No—there it was again, plain and unmistakable. Some one had groaned!
CHAPTER XIV
TWO INVALIDS
Betty, for a single wild instant, had an impulse to slam the door shut and gallop off the place on Clover. She was all alone, and miles from help of any sort, no matter what happened. Then, as another groan sounded, she bravely made up her mind to investigate. Some one was evidently sick and in pain; that explained the state of affairs at the barns. Could she, Betty Gordon, run away and leave a sick person without attempting to find out what was needed?
It must be confessed that it took a great deal of courage to pull open the grained oak door that led from the kitchen and behind which the groans were sounding with monotonous regularity, but the girl set her teeth, and opened it softly. In the semi-darkness she was able to make out the dim outlines of a bed set between the two windows and a swirl of bedclothes, some of which were dragging on the floor.
“I’m just Betty,” she quavered uncertainly, for though the groans had stopped no one spoke. “I heard you groaning. Are you sick, and is there anything I can do for you?”
“Sick,” murmured a woman’s voice. “So sick!”
At the sound of utter weariness and pain, Betty’s fear left her and all the tenderness and passionate desire for service that had made her such a wonderful little “hand” with ill and fretful babies in her old home at Pineville came to take its place.
“I’ll have to put the shades up,” she explained, stepping lightly to the windows and pulling up the green shades. “Then I can see to make you more comfortable.”
She spoke clearly and yet not loudly, knowing that a sick person hates whispering.
The afternoon sunlight streamed into the room, revealing a clean though most sparsely furnished bedroom. A rag rug on the floor, two chairs, a washstand and mirror and the bed were the only articles of furniture.
Betty, after one swift glance, turned toward the occupant of the bed. She saw a woman apparently about sixty years old, with mild blue eyes, now glazed by fever, and tangled gray hair. As Betty watched her a terrible fit of coughing shook her.
“You must have a doctor!” said Betty decidedly, wondering what there was about the woman that seemed familiar. “How long have you been like this? Have you been alone? How hard it must have been for you!”
She put out her hand to smooth the bedclothes, and the sick woman grasped it, her own hot with fever, till Betty almost cried out.
“The stock!” she gasped. “I took ’em water till I couldn’t get out of bed. How long ago was that? They will die tied up!”
“I fed and watered them,” Betty soothed her. “They’re all right. Don’t worry another minute. I’ll make you tidy and get you something to eat and then I’m going for a doctor.”
What was there about the woman—Betty stared at her, frowning in an effort to recollect where she had seen her before. If Bob were only here to help her—Bob! Why, the sick woman before her was the living image of Bob Henderson!
“The Saunders place!” Betty clapped her hand to her mouth, anxious not to excite her patient. “Why, of course, this is the farm. And she must be one of Bob’s aunts!”
As if in answer to her question, the sick woman half rose in bed.
“Charity!” she stammered, her hands pressed to her aching head. “Charity! She was sick first.”
She pointed to an adjoining room and Betty crossed the floor feeling that she was walking in a dream and likely to wake up any minute.
The communicating room was shrouded in darkness like the other, and when Betty had raised the shades she found it furnished as another bedroom. Evidently the old sisters had chosen to live entirely on the first floor of the house.
The woman in the square iron bed looked startlingly like Bob, too, but, unlike her sister, her eyes were dark. She lay quietly, her cheeks scarlet and her hands nervously picking at the counterpane. When she saw Betty she struggled to a sitting posture and tried to talk. It was pitiable to watch her efforts for her voice was quite gone. Only when Betty put her ear close down to the trembling lips could she hear the words.
“Hope!” murmured the sick woman hoarsely. “Hope—have you seen her?”
“Yes, she asked for you, too.” Betty tried to nod brightly. “I’m going to do a few things here first and get you both something to eat, and then I’m going for a doctor.”
Miss Charity sank back, evidently satisfied, and Betty hurried out to the kitchen. The wood box was well-filled and she had little difficulty in starting a fire in the stove. Like the rest of the farm homes, the only available water supply seemed to be the pump in the yard, and Betty pumped vigorously, letting a stream run out before she filled the teakettle. She thought it likely that no water had been pumped for several days.
There was plenty of food in the house, though not a great variety, and mostly canned goods at that. Betty, who by this time was really faint with hunger, made a hasty lunch from crackers and some cheese before she carried a basin of warm water in to the two patients and sponged their faces and hands. She wanted to put clean sheets on the beds, but wisely decided that was too much of an undertaking for an inexperienced nurse and contented herself with straightening the bedclothes and putting on a clean counterpane from the scanty little pile of linen in a bottom drawer of the washstand in Miss Hope’s room. She was slightly delirious for brief intervals, but was able to tell Betty where many things were. Neither of the sisters seemed at all surprised to see the girl, and, if they were able to reason at all, probably thought she was a neighbor’s daughter.
When Betty had the two rooms arranged a bit more tidily, and she was anxious to leave them looking presentable for she planned to send the doctor on ahead while she found Bob and brought him out with her, she brushed and braided her patients’ hair smoothly, and then fed them a very little warm milk. Neither seemed at all hungry, and Betty was thankful, for she did not know what food they should have, and she longed fo
r a physician to take the responsibility. She had given each a drink of cool water before she did anything else, knowing that they must be terribly thirsty.
She stood in the doorway where she could be seen from both beds when she had done everything she could, and the two sisters, if not better, were much more comfortable than she had found them.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to get a doctor. No, I won’t leave you all alone—not for long,” she added hastily, for Miss Charity was gazing at her imploringly and Miss Hope’s eyes were full of tears. “I’ll come back and stay all night and as long as you need me. But I must get some things and I must tell the Watterbys where I am. I’ll hurry as fast as I can.”
She ran out and saddled Clover, for she had been turned out to grass to enjoy a good rest, and, having got the proper direction from Miss Hope, urged her up the road at a smart canter. She knew where the Flame City doctor lived; that is, the country doctor who had practised long before the town was the oil center it was now. There were good medical men at the oil fields, but Betty knew that they were liable to be in any section and difficult to find. She trusted that Doctor Morrison would be at home.
He lived about two miles out of the town and a mile from the Watterby farm, and, as good luck would have it, he had come in from a hard case at dinner time, taken a nap, and was comfortably reading a magazine on his side porch when Betty wheeled into the yard. She knew him, having met him one day at the oil wells, and when she explained the need for him, he said that he would snatch a bit of supper and go immediately in his car.
“I know these two Saunders sisters,” he said briefly. “They’ve lived alone for years, and now they’re getting queer. It’s a mercy they ever got through last winter without a case of pneumonia. Both of ’em down, you say? And impossible to get a nurse or a housekeeper for love or money.”
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 218
