The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
dancing the night away, he lay on his rumpled blankets in the hay and endured the agony of that injured knee, and planned feverishly how he would dismount just so, in the station, and not touch that foot to the ground at all. He could manage, all right, if Walt held his horse just so. And he wouldn't try to use his right stirrup at all. He wouldn't need to. He'd take a lot of aspirin to deaden the pain, and he'd make it. Only two more rides and he'd be through.
The bronk riding—well, of course he could take his time about getting on—let himself down easy into the saddle, so it wouldn't hurt his leg. Maybe he wouldn't draw a very salty one. If his luck only held, in that one point, he'd maybe put it over all right. He could stand anything for a minute or two, if he set himself to stand it. They couldn't call him a quitter, anyway!
That was the burden of his weary, half-delirious thought: He wouldn't be called a quitter. His dad couldn't have that to throw at him, anyway. Nor the Native Son. He'd show them he just couldn't be whipped! (He was a fool, of course; but with something splendid in his foolishness for all that.)
Groggy with sedatives, glassy-eyed with fever, his face red and looking somehow bloated and yet haggard, he rode out to the relay next day and even his mother had the sickening conviction that her son was two-thirds drunk. And she a doctor too! He reeled a bit in the saddle when he reined Stardust around for the start. The crowd laughed and made wise remarks, some of which he might easily have heard if his ears had not roared so.
Yet he rode that race. Walt was seen to steady him when he rolled off at the station between laps, and the judges fined him ten seconds for that breach of the rules. But the Kid did not know or care. He was staying with it—he wasn't quitting.
How he got back into the stables he did not know, but it seemed to him in a vague sort of way that men stepped back hastily out of his way, looking at him strangely. He remembered looking at the box where his folks sat—oh, he always knew they were there watching every move he made!—and taking off his hat to give them an elaborate and mocking salute. He knew that when he bowed to them he somehow lost his balance and was going right on down, when some one grabbed him and pushed him upright in the saddle. He had trouble then getting his hat to stay on. It had kept slipping off—and why shouldn't it, when his head was big as a barrel? He heard the crowd laughing at something, but he didn't know they were laughing at him, because he was so amusingly "lit up."
"You damn fool, you've got to go to the hospital with that leg!" cried Walt, almost in tears over him. "I'm going to tell Tex! If you go out there to climb a bronk, I'll—"
"You'll stick along and see me through," the Kid said grimly, opening his eyes that looked perfectly black as he stared fixedly at the other's face. "I'm all right, Walt. I made it, didn't I? This is the finals, man! I can't quit now—I'm not going to quit! Get that—and get it right. Hand me that aspirin."
Out in the arena the calf roping had begun.
"Walter Myers!" boomed the amplifiers. "Wal-ter My-ers!" There was a wait and then, "Not present! Al Gilette, the next roper!" And so Walt was disqualified while he knelt in the hay beside the Kid and swore and pleaded by turns.
Dimly they heard the laughing and shouting that always accompanied the Indian squaw race.
"Bronk riding's next," the Kid said with slurred syllables and an eager intensity in his voice. "Help me on my horse, Walt—we gotta get over there."
"You can't!" wailed Walt. "Have some sense, Kid!"
"Damn you," gritted the Kid, "you do as I say!"
So Walt led Blazes over beside the Kid, helped him pull on his bat-winged, silver-trimmed chaps, buckled them for him because the Kid's fingers fumbled so, and put on his spurs.
"You can't do it!" muttered Walt, and steadied the Kid and half lifted him into the saddle.
"Shut your croaking!" mumbled the Kid. "Give me some aspirin!"
"You'll kill yourself with that dope!"
"Aw, dry up! Where's Billy and Beck? Tell 'em to hurry; we're late as it is."
Walt gave him a startled look and made a sound in his throat as if he were choking back a sob, but he didn't say anything. He just walked close alongside the Kid with his hand on the Kid's well leg, ready to catch him if he fell.
"Mon-tana Kid, riding Overall Bill—outa chute Number One! Montana Kid, folks, riding Overall Bill outa chute Number One!"
"Say, that guy's spifflicated!" one of the men at the chutes told his companion. "He can't ride."
"Let 'im take a spill, then!" The other laughed expectantly. "Do 'im good. I knowed he wouldn't last through the finals. All them rah-rahs is layin' down, yuh notice."
"Okay!" shouted the Kid deliriously. "Throw wide the pearly gates—I'm going to flew!"
So they laughed and opened the gate. And Overall Bill, a big brown who was a fighter from nose to wicked heels, lunged out with a high, crooked jump and a kick for good measure. Dead silence, then a prolonged "O-o-oh!" like a groan. Overall Bill took a final kick at the limp figure on the ground and went careening down toward the gate by the Indian camp, kicking at the saddle as he went.
"Sit still, Dell!" Chip commanded sternly, over in the press box. "He had a fall coming to him. Gee whiz, do you think he's the first fellow to be piled?"
"Oh, I know, but—but he isn't getting up! He—oh, let me out! Let me out, I tell you! He's hurt!"
Over there by Chute Number One, men were bending over the Kid. Other men were running to the spot. The black ambulance came shrieking through the gate and over to the place.
In the press box ten people rose like a pew full of singers in a church, and started for the gate. Oddly enough, when the Little Doctor pressed through, she glimpsed Dulcie Harlan a good ten feet ahead of her. Yet the Little Doctor would have sworn she was the first person out.
"Up this way," cried Harlan, mysteriously appearing at her elbow, though she had not seen him before that day. "It's quicker—I've a car that'll take you around in half the time you could walk it." He urged her up and out through the gate, the Old Man and Chip following. But Boy and the Happy Family streaked it straight across the arena, where the ambulance was already disappearing into the tunnel from which it had emerged.
How it happened no one knew, but Dulcie Harlan was riding inside, with Walt and the doctor. Walt talked fast. So the ambulance kept right on going until it backed up to the surgical entrance of St. Luke's hospital. At that, two cars followed close and arrived before the stretcher was wheeled into the corridor. Wherefore Harlan could speak for a private room and the attendance of the best surgeon in the place.
They wheeled him down other corridors and around turns and finally out of sight into a room where only his father and mother were permitted to accompany him, the anxious-eyed little procession coming to a helpless stand. But in five minutes or less they wheeled him out again—now robed in immaculate white—and into another room where two surgeons waited to receive him. His small procession again waited outside the closed door, until a nurse took pity on them and led them into a near-by room where they could sit down. Many and many another group had sat there, waiting for news from the closed room beyond, hoping and fearing and sometimes praying. And at last Chip, paler than they had ever seen him, came out to them.
"Darned mutt," he said huskily, "he's been riding with a smashed knee for God knows how long. They're taking X-rays now to see whether he loses his leg or keeps it."
"Oh, then he wasn't—" Dulcie had no intention of finishing the sentence. "I knew all the while—"
"No, it's that leg. The doctors in there said it was a hospital case from the start. They can't see how he kept going."
"I know," said Walt, and cast a reproachful look toward the Native Son. "Just nerve, that's how. He was bound nobody should call him a quitter."
"Good Lord!" muttered the Native Son, and turned to stare out of the window.
The Old Man suddenly struck