Frontier and pioneer life -- Idaho -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction; Western stories
"I must get a doctor," she murmured, when she got control of herself.
Returning to the tent, she bathed and bandaged her brother's wounds.
The cut on his scalp was bleeding steadily, though slowly; the bruise
at the base of his skull was swollen and throbbing. He was quite
conscious now, but very weak and dizzy from pain; and, although he
answered her when she spoke, he evidently wanted to rest and sleep.
"How in the world am I ever to go after a doctor?" she thought
desperately. "I can't harness the team or even put a saddle on the
pony. If I had only, only learned! I suppose I shall have to walk to
Robinson's and get them to go to Soldier for me. It means leaving Rob
alone for hours. How can I ever do it?"
Tears blinded her as she stared down at him.
"And it's all my fault!" she groaned. "It would never have happened if
I hadn't been so hateful--hadn't made him go, had taken the homestead,
hadn't kept 'Thello in the first place!"
She felt very remorseful and penitent. When she had made Rob as
comfortable as she could, and had put water close beside him, she set
out. The fear that Rob would die haunted her. Sometimes so sharp and
heavy was the pain of leaving him there alone, and so dreadful the fear
of what she might have to face on her return, that she wavered and
looked back.
Only the knowledge that her brother's need of a doctor was greater and
more urgent than his need of her drove her on. Through the heat and the
dust and the white glare, she hurried, hurried, hurried. As she rounded
each butte in succession and saw the empty road curving far ahead round
another, she wondered passionately how much farther Robinson's was.
CHAPTER V
Harry was beginning to think that she had lost her way, when suddenly,
as she topped a rise in the road, she saw the Robinson ranch lying
below her beside the mouth of a coulee. Barns, sheds, corrals, pens,
haystacks, and ranch house lay scattered along the fence near the road.
The buildings, which were of unpainted boards, weathered to the gray of
the desert, reminded her of the houses she had seen from the train; but
the path from the gate to the door of the ranch house was bordered with
flowers, and the yard, which was separated from the farm fields by a
fence, was neatly planted with vegetables and fruit trees.
A chorus of loud barks announced Harry's arrival. At once the door of
the house was opened a crack and several children, with yellow, tousled
heads, peered out. As Harry approached, the children promptly shut the
door, but at her knock a young woman with a fat, smiling baby on her
arm, opened it.
"How do? Come in, won't you?" said the woman.
"Is this Mrs. Robinson?" asked Harry, on the threshold. "I'm Miss
Holliday."
"Glad to make your acquaintance. Set down. You look tired. Norma,
let the lady set in that chair." She drew a small girl from a plush
rocking-chair and dragged it forward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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