BILLY LOUISE waited another minute or two, weighing the possibilities. She saw Ward's fingers drop away from the gun, but they remained close enough for a dangerously quick gripping of it again, if the whim seized him. Still – surely to goodness, Ward would never get crazy enough to hurt her! Perhaps her feminine assurance of her hold on him, more than her courage, kept her nerves fairly steady. She bit the pencil absently, watching him.
Ward turned his head restlessly on the pillow and coughed again. Billy Louise got up quietly, went close to the bed, and laid her hand on his forehead. His head was hot, and the veins were swollen and throbbing on his temples.
"Brave Buckaroo got a headache?" she queried softly, stroking his temples soothingly. "Got the hookin'-cough, too. Get every measly thing he can think of. Even got a grouch against the Flower of the Ranch-oh!" Her voice was crooningly soft and sweet, as if she were murmuring over a sleepy baby.
Ward closed his eyes, opened them, and looked up into her face. One hand came up uncertainly and caught her fingers closely. "Wilhemina-mine!" he said, in his hoarse voice. His eyes cleared to sanity under her touch.
Billy Louise drew a small sigh of relief and reached unobtrusively with her free hand for the gun. She slid it down away from his fingers, and when he still paid no attention, she picked it up quite openly and laid it against the footboard. Ward did not say anything. He seemed altogether occupied with the amazing reality of her presence. He clung to her fingers and looked at her with that intent stare of his, as if he were trying to hold her there by the sheer power of his will.
"Well, how am I going to doctor you and feed you and make you all comfy, with one hand?" asked Billy Louise with quavering flippancy.
"Kiss me!"
"Ah – might catch the hookin'-cough," bantered Billy Louise, leaning a bit closer.
"Kiss me!"
"Oh, well, I s'pose sick folks have to be humored." Billy Louise leaned closer still. "Mighty few kissy places left," she observed with the same shaky flippancy, a minute later. "Say, Ward, you look for all the world like old Sourdough Williams!" Sourdough Williams, it may be remarked, was a particularly hairy and unkempt individual who lived a more or less nomadic life in the hills, trapping.
"You look like – " Ward groped foggily for a simile. Angel was altogether too commonplace.
"Like the lady who 's going to get busy right now, making you well. What have you been doing to yourself? Never mind; I don't want you talking yourself crazy again. Do you know you tried to shoot me up when I came in? And you made me start in to write a record of my sins. But that 's all right, seeing you 've got the hookin'-cough, I 'll forgive you this once. Lie still – and let go my hand. I want to put a wet cloth on your head."
"Did I – "
"You did; and then some. Forget it. You 've got a terrible cold; and from the looks of things, you 've had it for about six months." Her eyes went comprehensively about that end of the cabin, with the depleted cracker-box, the half-emptied boxes of peaches and tomatoes, and the buckets that were all but empty of water. She was shocked at the pitiful evidence of long helplessness. She did not quite understand. Surely Ward's cold had not kept him in bed so long.
"Well, this is no time for mirth or laughter," she said briskly, to hide how close she was to hysteria, "since it looks very much like 'the morning after.' First, we 've got to tackle that fever of yours." She picked up a water-pail and started for the door. As she passed the foot of the bunk, she confiscated the two revolvers and took them outside with her. She had no desire to be mistaken again for Buck Olney.
When she came back, Ward's eyes were wild again, and he started up in bed and glared at her. Billy Louise laughed at him and told him to lie down like a nice buckaroo, and Ward, recalled to himself by her voice, obeyed. She got the wash-basin and a towel and prepared to bathe his head. He wanted a drink. And when she saw how greedily he drank, a little sob broke unexpectedly from her lips. She gritted her teeth after it and forced a laugh.
"You 're sure a hard drinker," she bantered and wet her handkerchief to lay on his brow.
"That 's the first decent drink I 've had for a month," he told her, dropping back to the pillow, refreshed to the point of clear thinking. "Old Lady Fortune 's still playing football with me, William. I 've been laid up with a broken leg for about six weeks. And when I got gay and thought I could handle myself again, I put myself out of business for awhile, and caught this cold before I came to and crawled back into bed. I 'm – sure glad you showed up, old girl. I was – getting up against it for fair." He coughed.
"Looks like it." Billy Louise held herself rigidly back from any emotional expression. She could not afford to "go to pieces" now. She tried to think just what a trained nurse would do, in such a case. Her hospital experience would be of some use here, she told herself. She remembered reading somewhere that no experience is valueless, if one only applies the knowledge gained.
"First," she said cheerfully, "the patient must be kept quiet and cheerful. So don't go jumping up and down on your broken leg, Ward Warren; the nurse forbids it. And smile, if it kills you."
Ward grinned appreciatively. Sick as he was, he recognized the gameness of Billy Louise; what he failed to realize was the gameness of himself. "I 'm a pretty worthless specimen, right now," he said apologetically. "But I 'm yours to command, Bill-the-Conk. You 're the doctor."
"Nope, I 'm the cook, right now. I 've got a hunch. How would you like a cup of tea, patient?"
"I 'd rather have coffee – Doctor William."
"Tea, you mean. I 'll have it ready in ten minutes." Then she weakened before his imploring eyes. "You really ought n't to drink coffee, with that fever, Ward. But, maybe if I don't make it very strong and put in lots of cream – We 'll take a chance, buckaroo!"
Ward watched her as intently as if his life depended on her speed. He had lain in that bunk for nearly six weeks with the coffee-pot sitting in plain sight on the back of the stove, twelve feet or so from his reach, and with the can of coffee standing in plain sight on the rough board shelf against the wall by the window. And he had craved coffee almost as badly as a drunkard craves whiskey.
The sound of the fire snapping in the stove was like music to him. Later, the smell of the coffee coming briskly to the boiling-point made his mouth water with desire. And when Billy Louise jabbed two little slits in a cream can with the point of a butcher knife and poured a thin stream of canned milk into a big, white granite cup, Ward's eyes turned traitor to his love for the girl and dwelt hungrily upon the swift movements of her hands.
"How much sugar, patient?" Billy Louise turned toward him with the tomato-can sugar-bowl in her hands.
"None. I want to taste the coffee, this trip."
"Oh, all right! It 's the worst thing you could think of, but that 's the way with a patient. Patients always want what they must n't have."
"Sure – get it, too." Ward spoke between long satisfying gulps. "How 's your other patient, Wilhemina? How 's mommie?"
"Oh, Ward! She 's dead – mommie 's dead!" Billy Louise broke down unexpectedly and completely. She went down on her knees beside the bed and cried as she had not cried since she looked the last time at mommie's still face, held in that terrifying calm. She cried until Ward's excited mutterings warned her that she must pull herself together. She did, somehow, in spite of her sorrow and her worry and that day's succession of emotional shocks. She did it because Ward was sick – very sick, she was afraid – and there was so much that she must do for him.
"You be s-still," she commanded brokenly, fighting for her former safe cheerfulness. "I 'm all right. Pity yourself, if you 've got to pity somebody. I – can stand – my trouble. I have n't got any broken leg and – hookin'-cough." She managed a laugh then and took Ward's hand from her hair and laid it down on the blankets. "Now we won't talk about things any more. You 've got to have something done for that cold on your lungs." She rose and stood looking down at him with puckered eyebrows.
"Mommie would say you ought to have a good sweat," she decided. "Got any ginger?"
"I dunno. I guess not," Ward muttered confusedly.
"Well, I 'll go out and find some sage, then, and give you sage tea. That 's another cure-all. Say, Ward, I saw Rattler down the creek. He 's looking fine and dandy. He came whinnying down out of that draw, to meet us; just tickled to death to see somebody."
"Don't blame him," croaked Ward. "It 's enough to tickle anybody." Her voice seemed to steady his straying fancies. "How 're – the cattle – looking?"
"Just fine," lied Billy Louise. "You 're the skinniest thing I 've seen on the ranch. Now do you think you can keep your senses, while I go and pick some nice, good meddy off a sage bush?"
"I guess so." Ward spoke drowsily. "Give me some more coffee and I can."
"Oh, you 're the pesteringest patient! I told you coffee is n't good for what ails you, but I suppose – " She poured him another cup of coffee, weakened it with hot water, and let him drink it straight. After all, perhaps the hot drink would induce the perspiration that would break the fever. She pulled up the wolf-skins and the extra blankets he had tossed aside in his feverish restlessness and covered him to his chin.
"If you don't move till I come back," she promised, "I 'll maybe give you another cup – after you 've filled up on sage tea." With that qualified hope to cheer him, she left him.
She did not spend all her time picking sage twigs. A bush grew at the corner of the cabin within easy reach. She went first down to the stable and led Blue inside and unsaddled him. Rattler was standing near, and she tried to lead him in also, but he fled from her approach. She found the pitchfork and managed to scratch a few forkfuls of hay down from a corner of the stack; enough to fill a manger for Blue and to leave a little heap beside the stable for Rattler.
When she was leaving the stable to return to the house, however, she changed her plan a little. She went back, carried the small pile of hay into the stable, and filled another manger. Then she took down the wire gate of the hay corral and laid it flat alongside the fence. Rattler would go in to the stack, and she would shut him in. That would simplify the catching of him when he was needed. She would find something in which to carry water to him, if he was too frisky to lead to the creek. Billy Louise was no coward with horses, but she recognized certain fixed limitations in the management of a snuffy brute like Rattler. He was not like Blue, whom she could bully and tease and coax. Rattler was distinctly a man's saddlehorse. Billy Louise had never done more than pat his shoulder after he was caught and saddled and, therefore, prepared for handling. She foresaw some perturbation of spirit in regard to Rattler.
Ward was lying quiet when she went in, except that he was waving her handkerchief to and fro by the corners to cool it. Billy Louise took it from him, wet it again with cold water, and scolded him for getting his arms from under the covers. That, she said, was no nice way for a hookin'-cough man to do.
Ward meekly submitted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.
"Ward Warren, you 're a perfectly awful hookin'-cough man! There. Now that 's going to be the very last one – Oh, Ward it is n't!" She knelt and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again. "I do love you, Ward. I 've been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I 'm ashamed to the middle of my bones. You 're my own brave buckaroo always – always! You 've done what no other man would do, and you don't whine about it; and I 've been weak and – horrid; and I 'll have to love you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She kissed him again with a passion of remorse for her doubts of him.
"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an arm, so that he could hold her closer.
"No, I 'm just beginning. Just beginning right. I 'm your pal for keeps. But – "
"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When are you going to – marry me?"
"Oh, when you get over the hookin'-cough, I s'pose." Once more Billy Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe flippancy – that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.
"Now it 's up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately – to once."
She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward's eyes worshiping her. She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his lungs.
She hunted through the cupboards and found a bottle of turpentine; syrupy and yellowed with age, but pungent with strength. She found some lard in a small bucket and melted half a teacup. Then she tore up a woolen undershirt she found hanging on a nail and bore relentlessly down upon him.
"You gotta be greased all over your lungs," she announced with a matter-of-factness that cost her something; for Billy Louise's innate modesty was only topped by her good sense.
Ward submitted without protest while she bared his chest – as white as her own – and applied the warm mixture with a smoothly vigorous palm. "That 'll fix the hookin'-cough," she said, as she spread the warm layers of woolen cloth smoothly from shoulder to shoulder. "How does it feel?"
"Great," he assured her succinctly, and wisely omitted any love-making.
"Will your game leg let you turn over? Because there 's some dope left, and it ought to go between your shoulders."
"The game leg ought to stand more than that," he told her, turning slowly. "If I had n't got this cold tacked onto me, I 'd have been trying to walk on it by now."
"Better give it time – since you 've been game enough to lie here all this while and take care of it. I don't believe I 'd have had nerve enough for that, Ward." She poured turpentine and lard into her palm, reached inside his collar and rubbed it on his shoulders. "Good thing you had plenty of grub handy. But it must have been awful!"
"It was pretty damned lonesome," he admitted laconically, and that was as far as his complainings went.
Billy Louise then poured the water off of the sage leaves she had been brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a carefully dampened broom and restored the room to its most cheerful atmosphere of livableness.
"Wan' a drink," mumbled Ward, with a blanket over his mouth and a raveled thread tickling his nose so that he squirmed.
Billy Louise went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell whether it 's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little. "What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't mind that little, harmless raveling? If you would n't go on breathing, it would n't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the tormenting thread and threw it on the floor.
"Gimme – drink," Ward mumbled again.
"There 's more sage tea – "
"Waugh!"
"I suppose that means you are n't crazy about sage tea. Well, I might give you a teenty-weenty speck more of coffee. You can't have water yet, you know. You 've – you 've got to sweat like a nigger in a cotton patch first." (Billy Louise could talk very nicely when she wanted to do so. The Billy of her could also be humanly inelegant when she felt like it, as you see.)
Ward grunted something and afterwards signified that he would take the coffee and call it square.
The next time she went near him, he was wrinkling his lean nose because beads of perspiration were standing there and slipping occasionally down to his cheeks.
"Fine! You 're two niggers in a cotton patch now," she announced cheeringly. "And Mr. Hookin'-cough will have to hunt another home, I reckon. You were n't half as hoarse when you swore that last time."
It was physically impossible for Ward to blush, since he was already the color of a boiled beet; but he looked guilty when she uncovered the rest of his face and wiped off the gathered moisture. "I did n't think you 'd hear," he grinned embarrassedly.
"I was listening for it, buckaroo. I 'd have been scared to pieces if you had n't cussed a little. I 'd have thought sure you were going to die. A man," she added sententiously, "always has a chance as long as he 's able to swear. It 's like a horse wiggling his ears."
The comparison reminded her that she intended to shut Rattler in the hay corral; she dried Ward's hands hastily, pulled the wolf-skins off the bed, and commanded him to keep covered until she came back. She ran down bareheaded to the stable, saw Rattler industriously boring his nose into the stack, and put up the gate.
When she went into the cabin again, Ward gave a start and opened his eyes like one who has been dozing. Billy Louise smiled with gratification. He was better. She knew he was better. She did not speak, but went over to the stove and pretended to be busy there, though she was careful to make no noise. When she turned finally and glanced toward the bed, Ward was asleep.
Billy Louise took a deep breath, tiptoed over to the bench beside the table, sat down, and pillowed her head on her folded arms. She wanted to cry, and she needed to think, and she was deadly, deadly tired.
This chapter has been put on-line as part of the
BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the
Celebration of Women Writers.
Initial text entry and proof-reading of this chapter were the work of volunteer
Evangeline Bays.
