The Long Dim TrailHooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
General
The Long Dim Trail
Hooker, Forrestine C. (Forrestine Cooper)
Arizona -- Fiction; Cowboys -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
The reaction from three days of anxiety and responsibility aided the
sedative in bringing sorely needed mental and physical relaxation. The
door leading into the sitting-room was open, and after a short interval
the doctor moved softly to satisfy himself that she was sleeping. A
chill was creeping through the house. He went to the bedroom and lifted
an extra coverlet from the foot-board of the bed, and carried it to the
other room. The light from the bed-room fell upon her face and throat,
and as the doctor carefully placed the coverlet over her, he saw dark
bruises against the pallor of the skin. In repose, the lines of
suffering were revealed plainly, and the pathetic droop of the mouth
like that of a sorrowing child. Through her half-parted lips he heard
the quivering sound of a suppressed sob. He gazed at her, a world of
love and pity in his eye, then he glanced through the open door at the
man who lay on the bed.
Slowly the doctor returned to the chair at the bedside, he leaned over
and looked at Glendon intently. The crisis was not very far off. Powell
studied the heart action, took count of the pulse, then his eyes went to
the medicine on the table. No sound except the ticking of the clock and
the stentorian breathing of Glendon broke the silence. In the other room
Katherine slept quietly. The doctor's eyes did not move now from the
face of the man on the bed. The pulse beats were growing weaker.
Powell's hand reached toward the medicine, paused a second, then
withdrew and fell heavily in his lap. Moments went by, and still the
woman in the other room rested quietly; the man on the bed drifted more
closely to the whirlpool of Eternity, and the man beside the bed, with
white face, tightly set mouth and eyes like smouldering flame, sat
waiting. Once the doctor rose and walked softly back and forth across
the room, the hands clasped behind him were bruised by the nails that
cut into the flesh. On the mantel of the living room was a picture of
Donnie. The child's eyes looked into his own, they followed him as he
moved about.
Powell returned to the bed and sank into the chair, then his face was
buried in his hands. With a quick movement he roused himself and watched
Glendon steadily. At last he turned slowly to the table and grasped the
vial. He held it before him and looked once again at Glendon, but this
time the doctor's eyes were untroubled.
Slowly and carefully he poured a few drops of the fluid that would drive
the sluggish blood to the heart that had almost ceased to beat. Slowly
it responded. Then, in the silence of the night Powell began his battle
to save Katherine Glendon's husband. Dawn like a shadowy grey wolf,
crawled over the tops of the Galiuros and slipped down into the Hot
Springs Canon. The cragged peaks were bathed in sunlight as Powell
looked at them, his face drawn and haggard, his eyes weary, but in his
heart a prayer of thanksgiving and a plea for strength to carry on his
battle without faltering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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