Part 24 (1/2)
Samuelson, an hour later when the girl had finished recounting her part in the night's adventure, ”there'll be you and Mr. Christie, and Doctor Mallory, and the boys from the bunk house, and Vil Holland, and it will be in honor of Mr. Samuelson's turn for the better, and your escape, and the successful routing of the horse-thieves.”
”Too late to count Vil Holland in,” smiled the doctor, who had returned to the veranda in time to hear the arrangement, ”said he had important business in town, and pulled out as soon as I'd got his arm rigged up.” And, in the doorway, the Reverend Len Christie smiled behind a screen of cigarette smoke as he noted the toss of the head, and the decided tightening of the lips with which Patty greeted the announcement.
”But, he's wounded!” protested Mrs. Samuelson. ”In his condition, ought he attempt a ride like that?”
The doctor laughed: ”You can't hurt these clean-blooded young bucks with a flesh wound. As far as fitness is concerned, he can ride to Jericho if he wants to. Too bad he won't quit prospecting and settle down. He'd make some girl a mighty fine husband.”
Christie laughed. ”I don't think Vil is the marrying kind. In the first place he's been bitten too deep with the prospecting bug. And, again, women don't appeal to him. He's wedded to his prospecting. He only stops when driven to it by necessity, then he only works long enough to save up a grub-stake and he's off for the hills again. I can't imagine that high priest of the pack horse and the frying pan living in a house!”
And so the talk went, everyone partic.i.p.ating except Patty, who sat and listened with an elaborate indifference that caused the Reverend Len to smile again to himself behind the gray cloud of his cigarette smoke.
”You haven't forgotten about my school?” asked Patty next morning, as Christie and the doctor were preparing to leave for town.
”Indeed, I haven't!” laughed the Bishop of All Outdoors. ”School opens the first of September, and that's not very far away. But badly as we need you, somehow I feel that we are not going to get you.”
”Why?” asked the girl in surprise.
”A whole lot may happen in ten days--and I've got a hunch that before that time you will have made your strike.”
”I hope so!” she exclaimed fervidly. ”I know I shall just hate to teach school--and I'd never do it, either, if I didn't need a grub-stake.”
As she watched him ride away, Patty was joined by Mrs. Samuelson who stepped from the house and thrust her arm through hers. ”My husband wants to meet you, my dear. He's so very much better this morning--quite himself. And I must warn you that that means he's rough as an old bear, apparently, although in reality he's got the tenderest heart in the world. He always puts his worst foot foremost with strangers--he may even swear.”
Patty laughed: ”I'm not afraid. You seem to have survived a good many years of him. He really can't be so terrible!”
”Oh, he's not terrible at all. Only, I know how much depends upon first impressions--and I do want you to like us.”
Patty drew the old lady's arm about her waist and together they ascended the stairs: ”I love you already, and although I have never met him I am going to love Mr. Samuelson, too--you see, I have heard a good deal about him here in the hills.”
Entering the room, they advanced to the bed where a big-framed man with a white mustache and a stubble of gray beard lay propped up on pillows. Sickness had not paled the rich mahogany of the weather-seamed face, and the eyes that met Patty's from beneath their bushy brows were bright as a boy's. ”Good morning! Good morning! So, you're Rod Sinclair's daughter, are you? An' a chip of the old block, by what mama's been tellin' me. I knew Rod well. He was a real prospector. Knew his business, an' went at it business fas.h.i.+on. Wasn't like most of 'em--makin' their rock-peckin' an excuse to get out of workin'. They tell me you ain't afraid to live alone in the hills, an'
ain't afraid to make a midnight ride to fetch the doc for an old long-horn like me. That's stuff! Didn't know they bred it east of the Mizoo. The ones mama an' I've seen around the theaters an' restaurants on our trips East would turn a man's stomach. Why, d.a.m.n it, young woman, if I ever caught a daughter of mine painted up like a Piute an' stripped to the waist smokin' cigarettes an' drinkin' c.o.c.ktails in a public restaurant, I'd peel the rest of her duds off an' turn her over my knee an' take a quirt to her, if she was forty!”
”Why, _papa_!”
”I would too--an' so would you!” Patty saw the old eyes twinkling with mischief, and she laughed merrily:
”And so would I,” she agreed. ”So there's no chance for any argument, is there?”
”We must go, now,” reminded Mrs. Samuelson. ”The doctor said you could not see any visitors yet. He made a special exception of Miss Sinclair, for just a few minutes.”
”I wish you would call me Patty,” smiled the girl. ”Miss Sinclair sounds so--so formal----”
”Me, too!” exclaimed the invalid. ”I'll go you one better, an' call you Pat----”
”If you do, I'll call you Pap--” laughed the girl.
”That's a trade! An' say, they tell me you live over in Watts's sheep camp. If you should happen to run across that reprobate of a Vil Holland, you tell him to come over here. I want to see him about----”
”There, now, papa--remember the doctor said----”
”I don't care what the doctor said! He's finished his job an' gone, ain't he? It's bad enough to have to do what he says when you're sick--but, I'm all right now, an' the quicker he finds out I didn't hire him for a guardian, the better it'll be all round. As I was goin'