CHAPTER XXIV—COALS OF FIRE
Once Bashful Ike had taken the bit in his teeth, his nickname never fitted him again. He believed in striking while the iron was hot, Ike did. And before the touring car ran them down into Bullhide, he had talked so hard and talked so fast that he had really swept Miss Sally Dickson away on the tide of his eloquence, and she had agreed to Ike’s getting the marriage license and their being wedded on the spot!
But the foreman of Silver Ranch found Dr. Burgess first and made the physician promise to accompany him to Tintacker. The doctor said he would be ready in an hour.
“Gives us just about time enough, Sally,” declared the suddenly awakened Ike. “I’ll have that license and we’ll catch Parson Brownlow on the fly. Come on!”
“For pity’s sake, Ike!” gasped the young lady. “You take my breath away.”
“We ain’t got no time to fool,” declared Ike. And within the hour he was a Benedict and Sally Dickson had become Mrs. Ike Stedman.
“And I’m going over to Tintacker with you, Ike,” she declared as they awaited before the doctor’s office in the big automobile. “That poor fellow over there will need somebody more’n Ruth Fielding to nurse him. It takes skill to bring folks out of a fever spell. I nursed Dad through a bad case of it two year ago, and I know what to do.”
“That’s all right, Sally,” agreed Ike. “I’ll make Old Bill give me muh time, if need be, and we’ll spend our honeymoon at Tintacker. I kin fix up one of the old shacks to suit us to camp in. I don’t wish that poor feller over there any harm,” he added, smiling broadly at the pretty girl beside him, “but if it hadn’t been that he got this fever, you an’ I wouldn’t be married now, honey.”
“You can thank Ruth Fielding—if you want to be thankful to anybody,” returned Sally, in her brisk way. “But maybe you won’t be so thankful a year or two from now, Ike.”
Dr. Burgess came with his black bag and they were off. The automobile—as Sally said herself—behaved “like an angel,” and they reached Silver Ranch (after halting for a brief time at the Crossing for Sally to pack her bag and acquaint Old Lem Dickson of the sudden and unexpected change in her condition) late at night. Old Bill Hicks was off for Tintacker and the party remained only long enough to eat and for Bob Steele to go over the mechanism of the badly-shaken motor-car.