XXXVIII
Then the Wanderer for days became a hospital ship, for with the end of Brack, his crew, including Garvin and Riordan, fled promptly out of the Hidden Country into the vast Alaskan wilderness that lay beyond the gap in the mountains, and with the sudden release from danger came the inevitable collapse of the wounded members of our company.
Wilson now had a bullet-wound through each leg and another through his great chest, and for the time being was helpless. Pierce told me afterward how Wilson, suddenly shot down on the after-deck, had borrowed a chew from Black Sam and, lying flat on his back, had reloaded the rifles in the fight that followed.
Pierce, now that the excitement of danger was gone, discovered that Riordan’s boot had broken one of his ribs in the battle at Chanler’s state-room; Black Sam had lost so much blood that he collapsed and was content to sit basking in the sun like a sick bear; and Dr. Olson was a nervous and physical wreck. Only Chanler had escaped disablement. He was scarred and bruised, but he was up and around while the rest of us lay helpless.
Dr. Olson ordered me back to bed and filled me up with opiates. My affair with Brack had not been good for my wounds, and absolute quiet was necessary to repair the damage which had been done to them. Slade and Harris remained on board, making themselves useful with the skill and adaptability of pioneers. And George, in his right mind, and Betty were together.
My days and nights for a space then were a series of semi-lucid moments alternated with nightmares. In the former I was at times conscious that Betty was sitting at my side. Occasionally I caught her studying me anxiously. When I returned her scrutiny she looked away. Next it would be Slade or Harris who was with me, then George. Always there seemed to be some one.
The nightmares were rather trying. Two things ran through them consistently: the sound of Betty’s voice as she had cried out passionately for Captain Brack, and the spectacle of Brack dragging her to the rail. Then I would wake up raving and presently some one would be holding me down, urging me to be quiet.
On one of these occasions, after midnight, it was George who held me in bed and soothed me.
“It’s all right, Gardy old man; it’s all right, I tell you,” he was saying. “She’s all right; safe and sound asleep in her room.”
“Brack—Brack’s got her!” I moaned.
“No, no, no! Can’t you hear me? She’s all right. Gardy! Old man. You know me, don’t you?”
I returned to sanity. Chanler was grimly trying to smile.
“What have I been saying?” I gasped.
“Oh, nothing.” He tried to pass it off carelessly. “Nothing—nothing at all.”
“Tell me.”
“Oh, just about Brack and Betty; you thought he’d got her.”
He looked away.
“What else?”
“Oh, shut up, Gardy! You were out of your head. D’you s’pose I paid any attention to what you were saying? Now drop that. How are you feeling?”
“Embarrassed,” I replied.
“Don’t!” he protested. “Don’t you do it. It—it wasn’t anything like that. It—it was all right. I knew it anyway.”
“Knew what?”
He looked at me for a long time. Then he appeared to change the subject.
“Everything’s all right, old man. We’ve come to an understanding, Betty and I. It’s all settled as it should be. I’ve had a lot of time for long talks with Betty.” He laughed. “She’s opened her heart to me, at last, and told me everything. We—we’ve been exploring hidden country, Betty and I. Good phrase of Brack’s, that.”
I raised myself and held out my hand.
“Congratulations, George. I knew it would come out all right.”
His brows came down in puzzled, skeptical fashion as he took my hand. There was in his expression a tinge of suspicion, and he smiled as one smiles when humoring a sick man.
“There’s hidden country in you, all right, old boy,” he said. “You ought to play poker.”
More sleep and more nightmares, the latter now complicated by the presence of George. Brack no longer was dragging Betty to the rail; she was standing by George’s side; and Brack and I were playing poker. Then at last came the sane untroubled sleep of normal condition, and I awoke one morning ravenously hungry and glad that the sun was bright outside.
“You can join the convalescent squad now,” said Dr. Olson, and under the awning on the fore-deck I joined Pierce and Simmons, stretched at ease in luxurious deck-chairs.
“Though it isn’t my fault, sir,” protested Simmons, “the master is not doing right by himself in putting me here.”
I sank down into my chair and looked over water and hills with the wondering eyes of a man who has come back to the world after a long absence. And I found it good.
The Wanderer lay in the same spot where Pierce and I had found her on that dark night, Wilson still being too weak to navigate her and there being nobody else capable of the task. The water about us was blue and still, and the birch and pine of the shores were mirrored in it to the smallest shade and detail. Back from the bay rose the age-old hills, step after step of them, growing higher and higher, until they became the great mountain-range which shut the valley in from the rest of the world. And the sun was so bright that I closed my eyes, and the primal peace soaked me to the bone.
Betty came and went, and George; and they made a splendid pair as they rounded the decks on their promenade. They went canoeing together, and Old Slade swore, and we agreed with him, that “there couldn’t be no purtier sight than that on God’s green earth.”
Then George would join us under the awning, and Slade and Harris and he would talk over the development of their property. For George was going in partnership with them. The free pay dirt of their mine was about played out and machinery and labor to tear the hills to pieces were necessary for the further working of the find.
“And what about the bones up at Petroff Sound?” I asked.
“No use—not necessary now,” George replied. “Besides, this is easier, and nearer to Fifth Avenue, and these last days have been so strenuous that I’m about filled up.”
I thought over what he said.
Not necessary to go to Petroff Sound now. No, of course not. Betty had decided that gold-mining was more fun. And why go on to Petroff Sound when they had already come to an understanding.
George did not display quite the elation he should have done under the circumstances, I thought; but he was so blasé that even the winning of Betty wouldn’t keep him animated for long.
Betty finally came and sat with us. She talked to Pierce, to Simmons, and to me; and at me she looked with puzzlement in her quiet gray eyes and bit her under lip and looked away.
“Do you feel so completely a stranger to me?” she whispered, drawing her chair near to mine.
“Like a stranger?” I said. “Why do you ask that?”
“Because you look at me as if—as if we were just speaking acquaintances.”
“I didn’t know,” I apologized. “I’ll do better. You,” I continued, looking at her, “don’t look as happy as I expected you would.”
“One doesn’t,” she whispered, rising to go, “when one’s in a hidden country and nobody will help one out.”
“Help you out?” I whispered, but she was gone.
I wearied my brains in vain puzzling over her meaning; but that evening Dr. Olson whistled and wondered whence had come the new strength which animated my pulse, my eyes, my whole being.
“And that makes two of you,” said he, “because Wilson’s sitting up shaving himself and says he’ll take the yacht out to sea tomorrow.”