St. Landry democrat., 1894-02-17
RIaTH tom.
A STORY OF THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Chow is Bill this morning, doctor?'
''Just left him badly olf-tvphoid
fever-needs careful nursing more than
visits from me, replied the post-surgeon
as he pushed back his gray campaign hat
to wipe his dusty face.
Now this was June aud the land Ari-
IONA, where summer is secure but ice i'm
possible, and trained nurses taunting
vision of days. unasso4iated with sage
brush, accomplished in pleasant Eastern
hospitals
"On place like this. a sensible man
would die first and have his typhoid
fever afterward,' growlcd the post
surgeon, still sweltering from twenty
mile ride across the dusty mesa in the
face of the hot morning sun, where he
had gone, after surgeons Call, on char
ity visit to Bill Meron, rancher in the
Sierra Bonita foothills.
Once he had been a nild-spoken man,
this surgeon, as he was still mild hearted
For, even while speaking, he resolved to
telegraph for ice and to send man
away miles across the desert to the
station after it. His brusque-
ness was the shell a sensitive nature
had acquired in adjusting itself to the
wear and tear of garrison life in a super
heated climate. He wondered at it him
self, and often, when he had spoken, felt
startled as one feels surprised to find 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 can be any good, III lend a
hand. My bronco's outside, an | ain t
doing nuthn' particular
The speaker was a Young cowboy,
clad in blue cottonade and high. .heeled
boots, after the fashion of the country
he stood uneasilg on one foot near the
door of the officers club, in the general
storeroom where the NIeXicans loiter and
the ranchers buy their bacon and tobac-
co. The surgeon glanced at the boy
and his eyes rested on him moment
without reply.
''Riata Toms all right, doctor He
cooked for NlcCann on the round up
thi. spring, and is handy as a woman
about place" added a bystander
VERY well, Tom; tell the steward |
sent you to the hospital for a lesson in
nursing typhoid fever. This evening go
over to Sierra Bonita aud take charge of
Bill Meron. I'll call tomorrow. after
muster"
. "Aln't there aEJs=.ag l can send
Bill2' asked the trader.
4 mo; nothing now, Williams. May
want a little champagne later" lie
was thinking of ice In crossing the
hot parade to the hospital, he wondered
if the Pullman car supply could possibly
last across the desert.
In the dispensary he wrote a telegram.
and told the steward to send it to the
operator and to tell Morrisy to put the
ambulance mules in the blackboard and
drive to the Needles. Then he visited
the sick ward.
The next afternoon DR.. Davis rode to
Aleron's ranch. The sun shone hotly,
and the sparse sage tufts plumed the
mesa bowlder mounds in thin, half clad
gray. The Berenice hair tossed in the
heat-waves and the mountain profiles
trembled, fretting on a horizon of un-
broken blue. There were no clouds
above and the g ARE was intense caus-
ing 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
breath 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
memory-where details are recorded,
then remembered or forgotten. He no
longer saw the stretch of trail ilnme-
diatelg- before him; he saw the whole
trail-saw It WneTe It left tie post ara
wandered across the weary mesa; saw it
span the arroyo to enter the broken
table-land and then wind higher and
higher among tho ascending foothills.
Then he strained his eyes against the
shimmering heat and fancied the foot
hills were swaying with the motion of
billows; 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
Bonita, tossing On brown billow of this
barren sea. Four--tive-swell mere
and the rancho will be dashed in the
face of the Sierra. No, it is not the sea,
it is only the desert. Yet how like the
sea-so monotonous, so desolate
Here the billows 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 a poetic nature. Seen in a
more inhabited country, this same poor
little lanch would have been to him but
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 Il solitude 50
infinite this seemed inadeauate--to him
such self-imposed banishment suggested
rather than said, and left the mind eron.
ing.
His horse stopped to drink the cool