Part 22 (2/2)

When he came in, less familiar eyes than those of his daughter would scarcely have recognised him. He was m.u.f.fled to the heels in a long rain-coat, the muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard like a spent runner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The muscles of his face were twitching, and he was breathing hard, like a spent runner.]

”Father!” she called, softly; but he either did not hear or did not heed. He had flung the rain-coat aside and was hastily struggling into the evening dress. When he turned from the dressing-mirror she could hardly keep from crying out. With the swift change of raiment he had become himself again; and a few minutes later, when she had followed him to the library to find him lying quietly upon the reading-lounge, half-asleep, as it seemed, the transformation scene in the upper room became more than ever like the fleeting impression of an incredible dream.

”Father, are you asleep?” she asked; and when he sat up quickly she told him her tidings without preface.

”Mr. Bromley is hurt--fatally, they think--by a fall from the path into the lower canyon. Mr. Ballard has gone with the man who came to bring the news. Will you send Otto in the car to see if there is anything we can do?”

”Bromley? Oh, no, child; it can't be _Bromley_!” He had risen to his feet at her mention of the name, but now he sat down again as if the full tale of the years had smitten him suddenly. Then he gave his directions, brokenly, and with a curious thickening of the deep-toned, mellifluous voice: ”Tell Otto to bring the small car around at--at once, and fetch me my coat. Of cou'se, my deah, I shall go myself”--this in response to her swift protest. ”I'm quite well and able; just a little--a little sho'tness of breath. Fetch me my coat and the doctor-box, thah's a good girl. But--but I a.s.sure you it can't be--Bromley!”

XVI

THE RETURN OF THE OMEN

Loudon Bromley's princ.i.p.al wounding was a pretty seriously broken head, got, so said Luigi, the Tuscan river-watchman who had found and brought him in, by the fall from the steep hill path into the rocky canyon.

Ballard reached the camp at the heels of the Irish newsbearer shortly after the unconscious a.s.sistant had been carried up to the adobe headquarters; and being, like most engineers with field experience, a rough-and-ready amateur surgeon, he cleared the room of the throng of sympathising and utterly useless stone ”buckies,” and fell to work. But beyond cleansing the wound and telegraphing by way of Denver to Aspen for skilled help, there was little he could do.

The telegraphing promised nothing. Cutting out all the probable delays, and a.s.suming the Aspen physician's willingness to undertake a perilous night gallop over a barely pa.s.sable mountain trail, twelve hours at the very shortest must go to the covering of the forty miles.

Ballard counted the slow beats of the fluttering pulse and shook his head despairingly. Since he had lived thus long after the accident, Bromley might live a few hours longer. But it seemed much more likely that the flickering candle of life might go out with the next breath.

Ballard was unashamed when the lights in the little bunk-room grew dim to his sight, and a lump came in his throat. Jealousy, if the sullen self-centring in the sentimental affair had grown to that, was quenched in the upwelling tide of honest grief. For back of the s.e.x-selfishness, and far more deeply rooted, was the strong pa.s.sion of brother-loyalty, reawakened now and eager to make amends--to be given a chance to make amends--for the momentary lapse into egoism.

To the Kentuckian in this hour of keen misery came an angel of comfort in the guise of his late host, the master of Castle 'Cadia. There was the stuttering staccato of a motor-car breasting the steep grade of the mesa hill, the drumming of the released engines at the door of the adobe, and the colonel entered, followed by Jerry Blacklock, who had taken the chauffeur's place behind the pilot wheel for the roundabout drive from Castle 'Cadia. In professional silence, and with no more than a nod to the watcher at the bedside, the first gentleman of Arcadia laid off his coat, opened a kit of surgeon's tools, and proceeded to save Bromley's life, for the time being, at least, by skilfully lifting the broken bone which was slowly pressing him to death.

”Thah, suh,” he said, the melodious voice filling the tin-roofed shack until every resonant thing within the mud-brick walls seemed to vibrate in harmonious sympathy, ”thah, suh; what mo' there is to do needn't be done to-night. To-morrow morning, Mistuh Ballard, you'll make a right comfo'table litter and have him carried up to Castle 'Cadia, and among us all we'll try to ansuh for him. Not a word, my deah suh; it's only what that deah boy would do for the most wo'thless one of us. I tell you, Mistuh Ballard, we've learned to think right much of Loudon; yes, suh--right much.”

Ballard was thankful, and he said so. Then he spoke of the Aspen-aimed telegram.

”Countehmand it, suh; countehmand it,” was the colonel's direction.

”We'll pull him through without calling in the neighbuhs. Living heah, in such--ah--close proximity to youh man-mangling inst.i.tutions, I've had experience enough durin' the past year or so to give me standing as a regular pract.i.tioneh; I have, for a fact, suh.” And his mellow laugh was like the booming of bees among the clover heads.

”I don't doubt it in the least,” acknowledged Ballard; and then he thanked young Blacklock for coming.

”It was up to me, wasn't it, Colonel Craigmiles?” said the collegian.

”Otto--Otto's the house-shover, you know--flunked his job; said he wouldn't be responsible for anybody's life if he had to drive that road at speed in the night. We drove it all right, though, didn't we, Colonel? And we'll drive it back.”

The King of Arcadia put a hand on Ballard's shoulder and pointed an appreciative finger at Blacklock.

”That young cub, suh, hasn't any mo' horse sense than one of youh Dago mortah-mixers; but the way he drives a motor-car is simply scandalous!

Why, suh, if my hair hadn't been white when we started, it would have tu'ned on me long befo' we made the loop around Dump Mountain.”

Ballard went to the door with the two Good Samaritans, saw the colonel safely settled in the runabout, and let his gaze follow the winding course of the little car until the dodging tail-light had crossed the temporary bridge below the camp, to be lost among the shoulders of the opposite hills. The elder Fitzpatrick was at his elbow when he turned to go in.

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