Chip of the Flying U Page 9

  There was a week when the house was kept very still, and the south room very cool and shadowy, and Chip did not much care who it was that ministered to him—only that the hands of the Little Doctor were always soft and soothing on his head and he wished she would keep them there always, when he was himself enough to wish anything coherently.

  CHAPTER XII. "The Last Stand."

  To use a trite expression and say that Chip "fought his way back to health" would be simply stating a fact and stating it mildly. He went about it much as he would go about gentling a refractory broncho, and with nearly the same results.

  His ankle, however, simply could not be hurried or bluffed into premature soundness, and the Little Doctor was at her wits' end to keep Chip from fretting himself back into fever, once he was safely pulled out of it. She made haste to explain the bit of overheard conversation, which he harped on more than he dreamed, when his head went light in that first week, and so established a more friendly feeling between them.

  Still, there was a certain aloofness about him which she could not conquer, try as she might. Just so far they were comrades—beyond, Chip walked moodily alone. The Little Doctor did not like that overmuch. She preferred to know that she fairly understood her friends and was admitted, sometimes, to their full confidence. She did not relish bumping her head against a blank wall that was too high to look over or to climb, and in which there seemed to be no door.

  To be sure, he talked freely, and amusingly, of his adventures and of the places he had known, but it was always an impersonal recital, and told little of his real self or his real feelings. Still, when she asked him, he told her exactly what he thought about things, whether his opinion pleased her or not.

  There were times when he would sit in the old Morris chair and smoke and watch her make lacey stuff in a little, round frame. Battenberg, she said it was. He loved to see her fingers manipulate the needle and the thread, and take wonderful pains with her work—but once she showed him a butterfly whose wings did not quite match, and he pointed it out to her. She had been listening to him tell a story of Indians and cowboys and with some wild riding mixed into it, and—well, she used the wrong stitch, but no one would notice it in a thousand years. This, her argument.

  "You'll always know the mistake's there, and you won't get the satisfaction out of it you would if it was perfect, would you?" argued Chip, letting his eyes dwell on her face more than was good for him.

  The Little Doctor pouted her lips in a way to tempt a man all he could stand, and snipped out the wing with her scissors and did it over.

  So with her painting. She started a scene in the edge of the Bad Lands down the river. Chip knew the place well. There was a heated discussion over the foreground, for the Little Doctor wanted him to sketch in some Indian tepees and some squaws for her, and Chip absolutely refused to do so. He said there were no Indians in that country, and it would spoil the whole picture, anyway. The Little Doctor threatened to sketch them herself, drawing on her imagination and what little she knew of Indians, but something in his eyes stayed her hand. She left the easel in disgust and refused to touch it again for a week.

  She was to spend a long day with Miss Satterly, the schoolma'am, and started off soon after breakfast one morning.

  "I hope you'll find something to keep you out of mischief while I'm gone," she remarked, with a pretty, authoritative air. "Make him take his medicine, Johnny, and don't let him have the crutches. Well, I think I shall hide them to make sure."

  "I wish to goodness you had that picture done," grumbled Chip.

  "It seems to me you're doing a heap of running around, lately.

  Why don't you finish it up? Those lonesome hills are getting

  on my nerves."

  "I'll cover it up," said she.

  "Let it be. I like to look at them." Chip leaned back in his chair and watched her, a hunger greater than he knew in his eyes. It was most awfully lonesome when she was gone all day, and last night she had been writing all the evening to Dr. Cecil Granthum— damn him! Chip always hitched that invective to the unknown doctor's name, for some reason he saw fit not to explain to himself. He didn't see what she could find to write about so much, for his part. And he did hate a long day with no one but Johnny to talk to.

  He craned his neck to keep her in view as long as possible, drew a long, discontented breath and settled himself more comfortably in the chair where he spent the greater part of his waking hours.

  "Hand me the tobacco, will you, kid?"

  He fished his cigarette book from his pocket. "Thanks!" He tore a narrow strip from the paper and sifted in a little tobacco.

  "Now a match, kid, and then you're done."

  Johnny placed the matches within easy reach, shoved a few magazines close to Chip's elbow, and stretched himself upon the floor with a book.

  Chip lay back against the cushions and smoked lazily, his eyes half closed, dreaming rather than thinking. The unfinished painting stood facing him upon its easel, and his eyes idly fixed upon it. He knew the place so well. Jagged pinnacles, dotted here and there with scrubby pines, hemmed in a tiny basin below—where was blank canvas. He went mentally over the argument again, and from that drifted to a scene he had witnessed in that same basin, one day—but that was in the winter. Dirty gray snow drifts, where a chinook had cut them, and icy side hills made the place still drearier. And the foreground—if the Little Doctor could get that, now, she would be doing something!—ah! that foreground. A poor, half-starved range cow with her calf which the round-up had overlooked in the fall, stood at bay against a steep cut bank. Before them squatted five great, gaunt wolves intent upon fresh beef for their supper. But the cow's horns were long, and sharp, and threatening, and the calf snuggled close to her side, shivering with the cold and the fear of death. The wolves licked their cruel lips and their eyes gleamed hungrily—but the eyes of the cow answered them, gleam for gleam. If it could be put upon canvas just as he had seen it, with the bitter, biting cold of a frozen chinook showing gray and sinister in the slaty sky—

  "Kid!"

  "Huh?" Johnny struggled reluctantly back to Montana.

  "Get me the Little Doctor's paint and truck, over on that table, and slide that easel up here."

  Johnny stared, opened his mouth to speak, then wisely closed it and did as he was bidden. Philosophically he told himself it was Chip's funeral, if the Little Doctor made a kick.

  "All right, kid." Chip tossed the cigarette stub out of the window. "You can go ahead and read, now. Lock the door first, and don't you bother me—not on your life."

  Then Chip plunged headlong into the Bad Lands, so to speak.

  A few dabs of dirty white, here and there, a wholly original manipulation of the sky—what mattered the method, so he attained the result? Half an hour, and the hills were clutched in the chill embrace of a "frozen chinook" such as the Little Doctor had never seen in her life. But Johnny, peeping surreptitiously over Chip's shoulder, stared at the change; then, feeling the spirit of it, shivered in sympathy with the barren hills.

  "Hully gee," he muttered under his breath, "he's sure a corker t' paint cold that fair makes yer nose sting." And he curled up in a chair behind, where he could steal a look, now and then, without fear of detection.

  But Chip was dead to all save that tiny basin in the Bad Lands—to the wolves and their quarry. His eyes burned as they did when the fever held him; each cheek bone glowed flaming red.

  As wolf after wolf appeared with what, to Johnny, seemed uncanny swiftness, and squatted, grinning and sinister, in a relentless half circle, the book slipped unheeded to the floor with a clatter that failed to rouse the painter, whose ears were dulled to all else than the pitiful blat of a shivering, panic-stricken calf whose nose sought his mother's side for her comforting warmth and protection.

  The Countess rapped on the door for dinner, and Johnny rose softly and tiptoed out to quiet her. May he be forgiven the lies he told that day, of how Chip's head ached and he wanted to s
leep and must not be disturbed, by strict orders of the Little Doctor. The Countess, to whom the very name of the Little Doctor was a fetich, closed all intervening doors and walked on her toes in the kitchen, and Johnny rejoiced at the funeral quiet which rested upon the house.

  Faster flew the brush. Now the eyes of the cow glared desperate defiance. One might almost see her bony side, ruffled by the cutting north wind, heave with her breathing. She was fighting death for herself and her baby—but for how long? Already the nose of one great, gray beast was straight uplifted, sniffing, impatient. Would they risk a charge upon those lowered horns? The dark pines shook their feathery heads hopelessly. A little while perhaps, and then—

  Chip laid down the brush and sank back in the chair. Was the sun so low?

  He could do no more—yes, he took up a brush and added the title:

  "The Last Stand."

  He was very white, and his hand shook. Johnny leaned over the back of the chair, his eyes glued to the picture.

  "Gee," he muttered, huskily, "I'd like t' git a whack at them wolves once."

  Chip turned his head until he could look at the lad's face. "What do you think of it, kid?" he asked, shakily.

  Johnny did not answer for a moment. It was hard to put what he felt into words. "I dunno just how t' say it," he said, gropingly, at last, "but it makes me want t' go gunnin' fer them wolves b'fore they hamstring her. It—well—it don't seem t' me like it was a pitcher, somehow. It seems like the reel thing, kinda."

  Chip moved his head languidly upon the cushion.

  "I'm dead tired, kid. No, I'm not hungry, nor I don't want any coffee, or anything. Just roll this chair over to the bed, will you? I'm—dead- tired."

  Johnny was worried. He did not know what the Little Doctor would say, for Chip had not eaten his dinner, or taken his medicine. Somehow there had been that in his face that had made Johnny afraid to speak to him. He went back to the easel and looked long at the picture, his heart bursting with rage that he could not take his rifle and shoot those merciless, grinning brutes. Even after he had drawn the curtain before it and stood the easel in its accustomed place, he kept lifting the curtain to take another look at that wordless tragedy of the West.

  CHAPTER XIII. Art Critics.

  It was late the next forenoon when the Little Doctor, feeling the spirit of artistic achievement within her, gathered up brushes and paints for a couple hours' work. Chip, sitting by the window smoking a cigarette, watched her uneasily from the tail of his eye. Looking back to yesterday's "spasm," as he dubbed it mentally, he was filled with a great and unaccountable shyness. What had seemed so real to him then he feared to-day to face, as trivial and weak.

  He wanted to cry "Stop!" when she laid hand to the curtain, but he looked, instead, out across the coulee to the hills beyond, the blood surging unevenly through his veins. He felt when she drew the cloth aside; she stopped short off in the middle of telling him something Miss Satterly had said—some whimsical thing—and he could hear his heart pounding in the silence which followed. The little, nickel alarm clock tick-tick-ticked with such maddening precision and speed that Chip wanted to shy a book at it, but his eyes never left the rocky bluff opposite, and the clock ticked merrily on.

  One minute—two—the silence was getting unbearable. He could not endure another second. He looked toward her; she stood, one hand full of brushes, gazing, white-faced, at "The Last Stand." As he looked, a tear rolled down the cheek nearest him and compelled him to speech.

  "What's the matter?" His voice seemed to him rough and brutal, but he did not mean it so.

  The Little Doctor drew a long, quivering breath.

  "Oh, the poor, brave thing!" she said, in a hushed tone. She turned sharply away and sat down.

  "I expect I spoiled your picture, all right—but I told you I'd get into mischief if you went gadding around and left me alone."

  The Little Doctor stealthily wiped her eyes, hoping to goodness Chip had not seen that they had need of wiping.

  "Why didn't you tell me you could paint like that?" She turned upon him fiercely. "Here you've sat and looked on at me daubing things up—and if I'd known you could do better than—" Looking again at the canvas she forgot to finish. The fascination of it held her.

  "I'm not in the habit of going around the country shouting what I don't know," said Chip, defensively. "You've taken heaps of lessons, and I never did. I just noticed the color of everything, and—oh, I don't know— it's in me to do those things. I can't help trying to paint and draw."

  "I suppose old Von Heim would have something to say of your way of doing clouds—but you got the effect, though—better than he did, sometimes. And that cow—I can see her breathe, I tell you! And the wolves—oh, don't sit there and smoke your everlasting cigarettes and look so stoical over it! What are you made of, anyway? Can't you feel proud? Oh, don't you know what you've done? I—I'd like to shake you—so now!"

  "Well, I don't much blame you. I knew I'd no business to meddle.

  Maybe, if you'll touch it up a little—"

  "I'll not touch a brush to THAT. I—I'm afraid I might kill the cow."

  She gave a little, hysterical laugh.

  "Don't you think you're rather excitable—for a doctor?" scoffed Chip, and her chin went up for a minute.

  "I'd like t' kill them wolves," said Johnny, coming in just then.

  "Turn the thing around, kid, so I can see it," commanded Chip, suddenly. "I worked at it yesterday till the colors all ran together and I couldn't tell much about it."

  Johnny turned the easel, and Chip, looking, fell silent. Had HIS hand guided the brush while that scene grew from blank canvas to palpitating reality? Verily, he had "builded better than he knew." Something in his throat gripped, achingly and dry.

  "Did anybody see it yesterday?" asked the Little Doctor.

  "No—not unless the kid—" "I never said a word about it," denied Johnny, hastily and vehemently. "I lied like the dickens. I said you had headache an' was tryin' t' sleep it off. I kep' the Countess teeterin' around on her toes all afternoon." Johnny giggled at the memory of it.

  "Well, I'm going to call them all in and see what they say," declared she, starting for the door.

  "I don't THINK you will," began Chip, rebelliously, blushing over his achievement like a girl over her graduation essay. "I don't want to be—"

  "Well, we needn't tell them you did it," suggested she.

  "Oh, if you're willing to shoulder the blame," compromised Chip, much relieved. He hated to be fussed over.

  The Little Doctor regarded him attentively a moment, smiled queerly to herself and stood back to get a better view of the painting.

  "I'll shoulder the blame—and maybe claim the glory. It was mine in the first place, you know." She watched him from under her lashes.

  "Yes, it's yours, all right," said Chip, readily, but something went out of his face and lodged rather painfully in the deepest corner of his heart. He ignored it proudly and smiled back at her.

  "Do such things really happen, out here?" she asked, hurriedly.

  "I'd tell a man!" said Chip, his eyes returning to the picture. "I was riding through that country last winter, and I came upon that very cow, just as you see her there, in that same basin. That's how I came to paint it into your foreground; I got to thinking about it, and I couldn't help trying to put it on canvas. Only, I opened up on the wolves with my six-shooter, and I got two; that big fellow ready to howl, there, and that one next the cut-bank. The rest broke out down the coulee and made for the breaks, where I couldn't follow. They—"

  "Say? Old Dunk's comin'," announced Johnny, hurrying in. "Why don't yuh let 'im see the pitcher an' think all the time the Little Doctor done it? Gee, it'd be great t' hear 'im go on an' praise it up, like he always does, an' not know the diffrunce."

  "Johnny, you're a genius," cried she, effusively. "Don't tell a soul that Chip had a brush in his hand yesterday, will you? He—he'd rather not have anyone know he did anything to the p
ainting, you see."

  "Aw, I won't tell," interrupted Johnny, gruffly, eying his divinity with distrust for the first time in his short acquaintance with her. Was she mean enough to claim it really? Just at first, as a joke, it would be fun, but afterward, oh, she wouldn't do a thing like that!

  "Don't you bring Dunk in here," warned Chip, "or things might happen. I don't want to run up against him again till I've got two good feet to stand on."

  Their relation was a thing to be watched over tenderly, since Chip's month of invalidism. Dunk had notions concerning master and servant, and concerning Chip as an individual. He did not fancy occupying the back bedroom while Chip reigned in his sunny south room, waited on, petted (Dunk applied the term petted) and amused indefatigably by the Little Doctor. And there had been a scene, short but exceeding "strenuous," over a pencil sketch which graphically portrayed an incident Dunk fain would forget—the incident of himself as a would- be broncho fighter, with Banjo, of vigilante fame, as the means of his downfall—physical, mental and spiritual. Dunk might, in time, have forgiven the crippled ankle, and the consequent appropriation of his room, but never would he forgive the merciless detail of that sketch.

  "I'll carry easel and all into the parlor, and leave the door open so you can hear what they all say," said the Little Doctor, cheerfully. "I wish Cecil could be here to-day. I always miss Cecil when there's anything especial going on in the way of fun."

  "Yes?" answered Chip, and made himself another cigarette. He would be glad when he could hobble out to some lonely spot and empty his soul of the profane language stored away opposite the name of Dr. Cecil Granthum. There is so little comfort in swearing all inside, when one feels deeply upon a subject.

  "It's a wonder you wouldn't send for him if you miss him that bad," he remarked, after a minute, hoping the Little Doctor would not find anything amiss with his tone, which he meant should be cordial and interested—and which evinced plenty of interest, of a kind, but was curiously lacking in cordiality.