Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1893-12-29

visits from me, " replied the post surgeon
as he drained a frothy glass of warm bot
tied beer in the hot adobe clubroom, and
then pushed back his gray campaign hat
to wipe his dusty face.
Now this was Jrne and the land Ari
IONA, where summer is secure but ice i'm
possible, and trained nurses haunting
vision of days, unassociated with sage
brush, accomplished in pleasant, eastern
hospitals
"On "A place like this, n sensible man
would die first and have his typhoid fever
in hell afterward, where he'd be more
comfortable" growled the post surgeon,
still weltering from 90 mile ride across
the dusty mesa in the face of the hot
morning sun, where he had gone. after
surgeons call, on a charity visit to III
MerOn, rancher in the Sierra Bonita
foothills.
Once he had been mild spoken man,
this surgeon, as he was still mild hearted.
For, even while speaking, he resolved to
telegraph for ice and to send Il man away
miles across the desert to the station after
it. His brusqueness was the shell II sensi-
tive nature had acquired in adjusting itself
TO the wear and tear of garrison life in a
superheated climate. He wondered at it
himself, and often, when lie had spoken,
felt startled as one feels surprised to fad
the voice suddenly grown coarse with cold.
Yet he could have told you accurately why
the skin on the hand thickens in time of
toll to keep the nerves quick within.
"Doc, | don't know nuthin bout nurs-
ing, but if l can lie any good I'll lend
hand. My bronchos outside, an | amt
doing nuthin particular"
The speaker was Il young cowboy, clad
in blue cottonade and high heeled boots,
after the fashion of the country. lie stood
uneasily on one foot near the door of the
officers club, in the general storeroom
where the MeXicans loiter and the ranch
ers buy their bacon and tobacco. The sur
geon glanced at the boy, and his eyes rest
ed on him moment without reply.
"Riata Toms all right, doctor. He
cooked for Mccain on the roundup this
spring and is handy as woman about q
place, " added "A bystander.
VERY well, Tom; tell the steward ! sent
you to the hospital for Il lesson in nursing
typhoid fever This evening go over to
Sierra Bonita and take charge of Bill Mer-
on. I'll call tomorrow, after MUSTER
"Ain't there anything | can send BILE"
asked the trader
"No; nothing now, Williams. May
want little champagne later" He was
thinking of ice. In crossing the hot pa
rade to the hospital, he wondered if the
Pullman car supply could possibly last
across the desert.
In the dispensary he wrote n telegram
and told the steward to send it TO the op
orator and to tell Morrisy to put the am
bulance mules in the blackboard and drive
to the Needles. Then he visited the sick
ward.
The next afternoon DR.. Davis rode to
Meron s ranch. The sun shOne hOtly, and
the sparse sage tufts pumed the mesa bowl
der mounds in thin, half clad gray. The
Berenice hair tossed in the heat waves, and
the mountain profles trembled. fretting
on IL horizon of unbroken blue. There were
no clouds above, and the glare was in
tense, causing the eye to recoil and strain
itself in the effort to contract and shut out
all the light, while the quick, throbbing
pulse of the heat laden air felt like fever
breSth on the face.
In such strong light, as in great fogs,
the outside world escapes us and vision
turns inward on the brain. The doctor
was now following that curious chart
remembered or forgotten He no longer
saw the stretch of trail immediately be-
fore him; he saw the whole trail-saw it
where it left the post and wandered across
the weary mesa saw it span the arroyo
to enter the broken table land and then
wind higher and higher among the ascend
ing foothills. Then he strained his eyes
against the shimmering heat and fancied
tho foothills were swaying with the motion
of pillows; he could see their crests reach
ing toward the black scarp of the Sierra,
like crests of breakers toward beach of
frs; while below the Sierra was Rancho
Bonito, tossing on brown billow of this
barren sea. FOur-iive-swells more and
the rancho will be dashed i'm the face of
the Sierra NJ, it is not the sea, it is only
the desert Yet how like the sea-so mo
notonous, so desolate.
Here the pillows ceased tossing, and the
map on the brain was folded away. Now
the doctor saw only the rancho. He was
thinking it SO like bark on an unsailed
ocean, that would meet no other vessel.
The doctor was an imaginative man, with
poetic nature. Seen in more inhabited
country, this same poor little ranch would
have been to him but a simple version of
poverty, pitiful but all told, but here, in
the desert, where the aid which does not
come from self must come from God-in a
solitude so infnite-this seemed made
quate TO him such self imposed Danish
ment suggested rather than said, and left
the mind cropping
His horse stopped to drink the cool
water which crept out from Imdera blank
ct of sand, where, for a few yards, a trap
dixie crossed the canyon and forced the
aqua perdida to the surface. The ranch
was in view, with Tom standing barefoot
oil in the trail leading from it to the water.
"Glad you've come, doctor. Bills
mighty loco in his talk today. Pears
something seems to be bothering him in
his mind. From his talk, judged his
life has been streakylike-full o. black
and white, like the wood agate in the Mo
gallons. took my boots and spurs off, ="
Tom continued, looking apologetically at
his bare feet. "Bill mistook the spur
Jingle for the cowhell on the range cause