Winning the Wilderness. McCarter Margaret Hill
below the red scarf. So he changed his course and hurried around a bend in the stream to the other side of the brush where Virginia Aydelot stood beside Juno.
“I’m afraid there isn’t even a stone to rest on here, Madam. Can I be of any service to you?” he said, lifting his hand toward his cap in semi-military salute.
Virginia stood looking at the stranger with a half-comprehending gaze. She had been less than an hour beside the bushes, but it had seemed to her like many hours. And the terrifying certainty of a night alone on the prairie made the sudden presence of a human being unreal to her.
“I beg your pardon; I am Dr. Carey, of Carey’s Crossing, and I was striking across the prairie to the Big Wolf settlement when I saw your scarf and heard your singing. I took them both to be distress signals and came over to see if you needed me.”
One had only to listen to Dr. Carey’s voice to understand why Darley Champers should accuse him of laying a charm on the whole settlement.
Virginia recovered herself quickly, saying with a wan smile:
“You came just in time, Doctor. I am lost and need help. I was going to you, anyhow.”
Each one’s face was so muffled against the wind that the eyes and lips and a bit of the cheeks alone were visible.
“Not a bad-looking woman for all the Kansas tan,” the doctor thought. “She has a voice like a true Virginian and fine eyes and teeth. But any woman who bundles up for a horseback ride across the plains on a day like this isn’t out for a beauty show contest. I’ve seen eyes like that before, though, and as to her voice – ”
“I am Mrs. Asher Aydelot from the Grass River Valley,” Virginia went on. “There are only three settlers out there now, Mr. Shirley and my husband and myself. Mr. Shirley is very sick with pneumonia, and Mr. Aydelot could not leave him, so I started to Carey’s Crossing to see if you could come to him. I missed the trail somewhere. I was trying to help, but I failed, you see.”
The doctor was looking at her with a puzzled expression which she thought was born of his sympathy. To the mention of her failing he responded quickly:
“No, Mrs. Aydelot, you succeeded. I had started to Shirley’s myself on personal business, and I was letting some whim turn me aside. If you had kept the trail we should have missed each other, for I was on my way to Big Wolf Creek, a good distance away, and your leaving the trail and wandering down here was providential for Shirley. Shall I show you on to the Crossing?”
“Oh, no, Doctor, if you will only come back with me. I don’t want to go on,” Virginia insisted.
“You are a regular westerner, Mrs. Aydelot,” Carey declared. “But you haven’t been out here long. I heard of your passing through our town late last summer. I was up on Big Wolf then and failed to see you. I know something of your husband, but I have never met him.”
He helped her to mount her horse and together they sought the trail and followed it westward in the face of the wind.
Near midnight down in Jim Shirley’s cabin Asher Aydelot turned from a lull in the sick man’s ravings to see Dr. Horace Carey entering the door with a pair of saddle bags in his hand.
“Hello, sir! Aydelot? I’m Carey, the doctor.”
Then as his quick eye took in the haggard face of the man before him, he said cheerily:
“Everything fit as a fiddle up your way. I left your cabin snug and warm as a prairie dog’s hole, and your wife is sound asleep by this time, with a big dog on guard. Yes, I understand,” he added, as Asher silently gripped his hand. “You’ve died a thousand deaths today. Forget it, and give me a hand here. My own are too stiff, and I must get these wet boots off. I always go at my work dry shod.”
He had pulled a pair of heavy shoes from the saddle bags, and was removing his outer coat and sundry scarfs, warming his hands between whiles and seemingly unconscious of the sick man’s presence.
“You are wet to the knees. You dared the short trail and the strange fords of rivers on a night so dark as this,” Asher declared as he helped Carey to put off his wrappings.
“It’s a doctor’s business to forget himself when he sees a distress signal.” Then Carey added quietly: “Tell me about Shirley. What have you been doing for him?”
He was beside Jim’s bunk now and his presence seemed to fill the whole cabin with its subtle strength.
“You know your business, doctor; I’m a farmer,” Asher said, as he watched this frontier physician moving deftly about his work.
“Well, if you mean to farm so far from pill bags you have done well to follow my trade a little, as you seem to have done with Shirley,” Carey asserted, as he noted the evidences of careful nursing.
“Oh, Virginia – Mrs. Aydelot – helped me,” Asher assured him. “She’s a nurse by instinct.”
“What did you call your wife?” the doctor inquired.
“Virginia – from her own state. Pretty sick man here.” Asher said this as Dr. Carey suddenly bent over Shirley with stern eyes and tightening lips. But the eyes grew tender when Jim looked up into his face.
“You’re all right, Shirley. You must go to sleep now.”
And Shirley, who in his delirium had fought his neighbor all day, became as obedient as a child, as a very sick child, that night under Horace Carey’s hand.
The next morning Virginia Aydelot was not able to rise from her bed, and for many days she could do nothing more than to sit in the rocking chair by the windows and absorb sunshine.
On the fourth day after Carey had reached Shirley’s Asher went down the river in the early afternoon to find how Jim’s case was progressing, leaving his wife comfortably tucked up in the rocking chair by the west window. The snow was gone and the early December day was as crisp and beautiful as an Indian summer day in a colder climate. Virginia sat watching the shadows of the clouds flow along the ground and the prairie hues changing with the angle of the afternoon sunlight. Suddenly a sound of ponies’ feet outside was followed by a loud rap on the door.
“Come in!” Virginia called. “Lie down, Pilot!”
Pilot did not obey, but sat up alert before his mistress as Darley Champers’ bulk filled the doorway.
“Excuse me, Madam,” the real estate dealer said, lifting his hat, “Me and my friend, Mr. Smith out there, are looking up a claim for a friend of ours somewhere out in the Grass River settlement. Can you tell me who owns the last claim taken up down the river, and how far it is from here?”
“Mr. Shirley’s claim is a few miles down the river, if you go by the short trail and ford at the bends, but much longer if you go around by the long trail,” Virginia explained.
“Is it occupied?” Champers put the question in a careless tone.
Pilot’s bristles, that had fallen at the sound of Virginia’s voice, rose again with the query. It is well to be wary of one whom a dog distrusts. But the woman’s instinct in Virginia responded little to the dog’s uneasiness, and she replied courteously:
“Yes, Mr. Shirley is there, very sick.”
“Um, who have I the honor of addressing now?” Champers asked awkwardly, as if to change the subject.
“Mrs. Asher Aydelot.”
“Well, now, I’ve heard of Aydelot. Where is your man today? I’d like to meet him, Mrs. A.”
It was the man’s way of being friendly, but even a duller-fibred man than Champers would have understood Mrs. Aydelot’s tone as she said:
“You will find him at Shirley’s, or on the way. Only the long trail winds around some bluffs, and you might pass each other without knowing it.”
“How many men in this settlement now?” Champers asked.
“Only two,” Virginia replied, patting Pilot’s head involuntarily.
“Only two!