by B. M. Bower
“I think you have some interest in it yourself,” she said, without looking at him. “You don’t think I mean to—to—”
“I don’t think anything, except that it’s your picture, and I put in a little time meddling with your property for want of something else to do. All I painted doesn’t cover one quarter of the canvas, and I guess you’ve done enough for me to more than make up. I guess you needn’t worry over that cow and calf—you’re welcome to them both; and if you can get a bounty on those five wolves, I’ll be glad to have you. Just keep still about my part of it.”
Chip really felt that way about it, after the first dash of wounded pride. He could never begin to square accounts with the Little Doctor, anyhow, and he was proud that he could do something for her, even if it was nothing more than fixing up a picture so that it rose considerably above mediocrity. He had meant it that way all along, but the suspicion that she was quite ready to appropriate his work rather shocked him, just at first. No one likes having a gift we joy in bestowing calmly taken from our hands before it has been offered. He wanted her to have the picture for her very own—but—but—He had not thought of the possibility of her selling it, or of Dunk as her agent. It was all right, of course, if she wanted to do that with it, but—There was something about it that hurt, and the hurt of it was not less, simply because he could not locate the pain.
His mind fidgeted with the subject. If he could have saddled Silver and gone for a long gallop over the prairie land, he could have grappled with his rebellious inner self and choked to death several unwelcome emotions, he thought. But there was Silver, crippled and swung uncomfortably in canvas wrappings in the box stall, and here was himself, crippled and held day after day in one room and one chair—albeit a very pleasant room and a very comfortable chair—and a gallop as impossible to one of them as to the other.
“I do wish—” The Little Doctor checked herself abruptly, and hummed a bit of coon song.
“What do you wish?” Chip pushed his thoughts behind him, and tried to speak in his usual manner.
“Nothing much. I was just wishing Cecil could see ‘The Last Stand.’”
Chip said absolutely nothing for five minutes, and for an excellent reason. There was not a single thought during that time which would sound pretty if put into words, and he had no wish to shock the Little Doctor.
After that day a constraint fell upon them both, which each felt keenly and neither cared to explain away. “The Last Stand” was tacitly dismissed from their conversation, of which there grew less and less as the days passed.
Then came a time when Chip strongly resented being looked upon as an invalid, and Johnny was sent home, greatly to his sorrow.
Chip hobbled about the house on crutches, and chafed and fretted, and managed to be very miserable indeed because he could not get out and ride and clear his brain and heart of some of their hurt—for it had come to just that; he had been compelled to own that there was a hurt which would not heal in a hurry.
It was a very bitter young man who, lounging in the big chair by the window one day, suddenly snorted contempt at a Western story he had been reading and cast the magazine—one of the Six Leading—clean into the parlor where it sprawled its artistic leaves in the middle of the floor. The Little Doctor was somewhere—he never seemed to know just where, nowadays—and the house was lonesome as an isolated peak in the Bad Lands.
“I wish I had the making of the laws. I’d put a bounty on all the darn fools that think they can write cowboy stories just because they rode past a roundup once, on a fast train,” he growled, reaching for his tobacco sack. “Huh! I’d like to meet up with the yahoo that wrote that rank yarn! I’d ask him where he got his lack of information. Huh! A cow-puncher togged up like he was going after the snakiest bronk in the country, when he was only going to drive to town in a buckboard! ‘His pistol belt and dirk and leathern chaps’—oh, Lord; oh, Lord! And spurs! I wonder if he thinks it takes spurs to ride a buckboard? Do they think, back East, that spurs grow on a man’s heels out here and won’t come off? Do they think we sleep in ’em, I wonder?” He drew a match along the arm of the chair where the varnish was worn off. “They think all a cow-puncher has to do is eat and sleep and ride fat horses. I’d like to tell some of them a few things that they don’t—”
“I’ve brought you a caller, Chip. Aren’t you glad to see him?” It was the Little Doctor at the window, and the laugh he loved was in her voice and in her eyes, that it hurt him to meet, lately.
The color surged to his face, and he leaned from the window, his thin, white hand outstretched caressingly.
“I’d tell a man!” he said, and choked a little over it. “Silver, old boy!”
Silver, nickering softly, limped forward and nestled his nose in the palm of his master.
“He’s been out in the corral for several days, but I didn’t tell you— I wanted it for a surprise,” said the Little Doctor. “This is his longest trip, but he’ll soon be well now.”
“Yes; I’d give a good deal if I could walk as well as he can,” said Chip, gloomily.
“He wasn’t hurt as badly as you were. You ought to be thankful you can walk at all, and that you won’t limp all your life. I was afraid for a while, just at first—”
“You were? Why didn’t you tell me?” Chip’s eyes were fixed sternly upon her.
“Because I didn’t want to. It would only have made matters worse, anyway. And you won’t limp, you know, if you’re careful for a while longer. I’m going to get Silver his sugar. He has sugar every day.”
Silver lifted his head and looked after her inquiringly, whinnied complainingly, and prepared to follow as best he could.
“Silver—oh, Silver!” Chip snapped his fingers to attract his attention. “Hang the luck, come back here! Would you throw down your best friend for that girl? Has she got to have you, too?” His voice grew wistfully rebellious. “You’re mine. Come back here, you little fool—she doesn’t care.”
Silver stopped at the corner, swung his head and looked back at Chip, beckoning, coaxing, swearing under his breath. His eyes sought for sign of his goddess, who had disappeared most mysteriously. Throwing up his head, he sent a protest shrilling through the air, and looked no more at Chip.
“I’m coming, now be still. Oh, don’t you dare paw with your lame leg! Why didn’t you stay with your master?”
“He’s no use for his master, any more,” said Chip, with a hurt laugh. “A woman always does play the—mischief, somehow. I wonder why? They look innocent enough.”
“Wait till your turn comes, and perhaps you’ll learn why,” retorted she.
Chip, knowing that his turn had come, and come to tarry, found nothing to say.
“Beside,” continued the Little Doctor, “Silver didn’t want me so much— it was the sugar. I hope you aren’t jealous of me, because I know his heart is big enough to hold us both.”
She stayed a long half hour, and was so gay that it seemed like old times to listen to her laugh and watch her dimples while she talked. Chip forgot that he had a quarrel with fate, and he also forgot Dr. Cecil Granthum, of Gilroy, Ohio—until Slim rode up and handed the Little Doctor a letter addressed in that bold, up-and-down writing that Chip considered a little the ugliest specimen of chirography he had ever seen in his life.
“It’s from Cecil,” said the Little Doctor, simply and unnecessarily, and led Silver back down the hill.
Chip, gazing at that tiresome bluff across the coulee, renewed his quarrel with fate.
CHAPTER XV
The Spoils of Victory
“I wish, while I’m gone, you’d paint me another picture. Will you, please?”
When a girl has big, gray eyes that half convince you they are not gray at all, but brown, or blue, at times, and a way of using them that makes a fellow heady, like champagne, and a couple of dimples that will dodge into her cheeks just when a fellow is least prepared to resist them—why, what can a fellow do but knuckle under and say yes, espe
cially when she lets her head tip to one side a little and says “please” like that?
Chip tried not to look at her, but he couldn’t help himself very well while she stood directly in front of him. He compromised weakly instead of refusing point-blank, as he told himself he wanted to do.
“I don’t know—maybe I can’t, again.”
“Maybe you can, though. Here’s an eighteen by twenty-four canvas, and here are all the paints I have in the house, and the brushes. I’ll expect to see something worth while, when I return.”
“Well, but if I can’t—”
“Look here. Straight in the eye, if you please! Now, will you try?”
Chip, looking into her eyes that were laughing, but with a certain earnestness behind the laugh, threw up his hands—mentally, you know.
“Yes, I’ll try. How long are you going to be gone?”
“Oh, perhaps a week,” she said, lightly, and Chip’s heart went heavy.
“You may paint any kind of picture you like, but I’d rather you did something like ‘The Last Stand’—only better. And put your brand, as you call it, in one corner.”
“You won’t sell it, will you?” The words slipped out before he knew.
“No—no, I won’t sell it, for it won’t be mine. It’s for yourself this time.”
“Then there won’t be any picture,” said Chip, shortly.
“Oh, yes, there will,” smiled the Little Doctor, sweetly, and went away before he could contradict her.
Perhaps a week! Heavens, that was seven days, and every day had at least sixteen waking hours. How would it be when it was years, then? When Dr. Cecil Granthum—(er—no, I won’t. The invective attached to that gentleman’s name was something not to be repeated here.) At any rate, a week was a long, long time to put in without any gray eyes or any laugh, or any dimples, or, in short, without the Little Doctor. He could not see, for his part, why she wanted to go gadding off to the Falls with Len Adams and the schoolma’am, anyway. Couldn’t they get along without her? They always had, before she came to the country; but, for that matter, so had he. The problem was, how was he going to get along without her for the rest of his life? What did they want to stay a week for? Couldn’t they buy everything they wanted in a day or so? And the Giant Spring wasn’t such great shakes, nor the Rainbow Falls, that they need to hang around town a week just to look at them. And the picture—what was he such a fool for? Couldn’t he say no with a pair of gray eyes staring into his? It seemed not. He supposed he must think up something to daub on there—the poorer the better.
That first day Chip smoked something like two dozen cigarettes, gazed out across the coulee till his eyes ached, glared morosely at the canvas on the easel, which stared back at him till the dull blankness of it stamped itself upon his brain and he could see nothing else, look where he might. Whereupon he gathered up hat and crutches, and hobbled slowly down the hill to tell Silver his troubles.
The second day threatened to be like the first. Chip sat by the window and smoked; but, little by little, the smoke took form and substance until, when he turned his eyes to the easel, a picture looked back at him—even though to other eyes the canvas was yet blank and waiting.
There was no Johnny this time to run at his beckoning. He limped about on his crutches, collected all things needful, and sat down to work.
As he sketched and painted, with a characteristic rapidity that was impatient of the slightest interruption yet patient in its perfectness of detail, the picture born of the smoke grew steadily upon the canvas.
It seemed, at first, that “The Last Stand” was to be repeated. There were the same jagged pinnacles and scrubby pines, held in the fierce grip of the frozen chinook. The same? But there was a difference, not to be explained, perhaps, but certainly to be felt. The Little Doctor’s hills were jagged, barren hills; her pines were very nice pines indeed. Chip’s hills were jagged, they were barren—they—were desolate; his pines were shuddering, lonely pines; for he had wandered alone among them and had caught the Message of the Wilderness. His sky was the cold, sinister sky of “The Last Stand”—but it was colder, more sinister, for it was night. A young moon hung low in the west, its face half hidden behind a rift of scurrying snow clouds. The tiny basin was shadowy and vague, the cut-bank a black wall touched here and there by a quivering shaft of light.
There was no threatening cow with lowered horns and watchful eye; there was no panic-stricken calf to whip up her flagging courage with its trust in her.
The wolves? Yes, there were the wolves—but there were more of them. They were not sitting in a waiting half circle—they were scattered, unwatchful. Two of them in the immediate foreground were wrangling over a half-gnawed bone. The rest of the pack were nosing a heap pitifully eloquent.
As before, so now they tricked the eye into a fancy that they lived. One could all but hear the snarls of the two standing boldly in the moonlight, the hair all bristly along the necks, the white fangs gleaming between tense-drawn lips. One felt tempted to brace oneself for the rush that was to come.
For two days Chip shut himself in his room and worked through the long hours of daylight, jealous of the minutes darkness stole from him.
He clothed the feast in a merciful shade which hid the repugnance and left only the pathos—two long, sharp horns which gleamed in the moonlight but were no longer threatening.
He centered his energy upon the two wolves in the foreground, grimly determined that Slim should pray for a Gatling gun when he saw them.
The third day, when he was touching up the shoulders of one of the combatants, a puff of wind blew open the door which led to the parlor. He did not notice it and kept steadily at work, painting his “brand” into a corner. Beneath the stump and its splinter he lettered his name—a thing he had never done before.
“Well—I’ll be—doggoned!”
Chip jumped half out of his chair, giving his lame ankle a jolt which made him grind his teeth.
“Darn it, Chip, did you do that?”
“It kind of looks that way, don’t it?” Chip was plainly disconcerted, and his ankle hurt.
“H—m-m.” The Old Man eyed it sharply a minute. “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t paint in a howl or two, while you’re about it. I suppose that’s a mate to—doggone you, Chip, why didn’t yuh tell us you painted that other one?”
“I didn’t,” said Chip, getting red and uncomfortable, “except the cow and—”
“Yes, except the part that makes the picture worth the paint it’s done with!” snorted the Old Man. “I must say I never thought that uh Dell!”
“Thought what?” flared Chip, hotly, forgetting everything but that the Little Doctor was being censured. “It was her picture, she started it and intended to finish it. I painted on it one day when she was gone, and she didn’t know it. I told her not to tell anyone I had anything to do with it. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Huh!” grunted the Old Man, as if he had his own opinion on that matter. “Well, it’s a rattling good picture—but this one’s better. Poor ole Diamond Bar—she couldn’t come through with it, after all. She put up a good fight, out there alone, but she had t’ go under—her an’ her calf.” He stood quiet a minute, gazing and gazing. “Doggone them measly wolves! Why in thunder can’t a feller pump lead into ’em like he wants t’?”
Chip’s heart glowed within him. His technique was faulty, his colors daring, perhaps—but his triumph was for that the greater. If men could feel his pictures—and they did! That was the joy of it—they did!
“Darn them snarlin’ brutes, anyway! I thought it was doggone queer if Dell could dab away all her life at nice, common things that you only think is purty, an’ then blossom out, all of a sudden, with one like that other was—that yuh felt all up an’ down yer back. The little cheat, she’d no business t’ take the glory uh that’n like she done. I’ll give her thunder when she gits back.”
“You won’t do anything of the kind,” said Chip, quietly—too quietly not to
be menacing. “I tell you that was my fault—I gave her all I did to the picture, and I told her not to say anything. Do you think I don’t know what I owe to her? Do you think I don’t know she saved Silver’s life—and maybe mine? Forty pictures wouldn’t square me with the Little Doctor—not if they were a heap better than they are, and she claimed every darned one. I’m doing this, and I’ll thank you not to buy in where you’re not wanted. This picture is for her, too—but I don’t want the thing shouted from the housetops. When you go out, I wish you’d shut the door.”
The Old Man, thoroughly subdued, took the hint. He went out, and he shut the door.
CHAPTER XVI
Weary Advises
“I have a short article here which may interest you, Miss Della,” said Dunk, coming out on the porch a few days later with a Butte paper in his hand. The Little Doctor was swinging leisurely in the hammock.
“It’s about the picture,” he added, smiling.
“The picture? Oh, let me see!” The Little Doctor stopped the hammock with her toe and sat up. The wind had tumbled her hair about her face and drawn extra color to her cheeks, and she looked very sweet, Dunk thought. He held out the paper, pointing a well-kept finger at the place he wished her to read. There was a rather large headline, for news was scarce just then and every little thing was made the most of. The eyes of the Little Doctor clung greedily to the lines.
“It is reported that ‘The Last Stand’ has been sold. The painting, which has been on exhibition in the lobby of the Summit Hotel, has attracted much attention among art lovers, and many people have viewed it in the last week. Duncan Gray Whitaker, the well-known mine owner and cattleman, who brought the picture to Butte, is said to have received an offer which the artist will probably accept. Mr. Whitaker still declines to give the artist’s name, but whoever he is, he certainly has a brilliant future before him, and Montana can justly feel proud of him. It has been rumored that the artist is a woman, but the best critics are slow to believe this, claiming that the work has been done with a power and boldness undoubtedly masculine. Those who have seen ‘The Last Stand’ will not easily forget it, and the price offered for it is said to be a large one. Mr. Whitaker will leave the city tomorrow to consult the unknown artist, and promises, upon his return, to reveal the name of the modest genius who can so infuse a bit of canvas with palpitating life.”
