Her fear of him seemed to have evaporated upon reflection. Her curiosity concerning him had not, evidently. She set down the tray and stared at him with a frank fixity that reminded Rawley of the solemn regard of the sloe-eyed baby riding astride Aunt Gladys’ slatternly hip.
“You feed Johnny Buffalo, Grandmother,” Nevada directed. “He used to live in this country when he was a boy. You can’t tell—you might be old acquaintances.” She smiled, patted the old woman on a cushiony shoulder and approached Rawley, who was suddenly resigned to his helplessness.
“Grandmother rather holds herself above full-blood Indians,” she whispered. “She’s only half Indian, herself. I don’t want her to snub your partner; he looks so lonely, somehow. What is it?”
“He’s grieving over my grandfather’s death,” Rawley told her, his own voice dropped to an undertone that would not carry. “Until I proposed this trip he didn’t want to live. He’s better, out here.”
“I do hope—”
A shrill ejaculation from the squaw brought Nevada’s head around. “What is it, Grandmother?”
The old woman started a singsong Indian explanation, and Nevada smiled. “She says they do know each other. She remembers him when he was a boy and was lost. So that’s fine. He can hear about all his old playmates and his family.” She turned her back on them as if the duties of hostess sat more lightly on her shoulders, since one of the patients could visit with her grandmother.
“I’m wondering what happened, up the trail.”
Nevada thoughtfully cooled the tea with the spoon and looked at him speculatively. “Uncle Peter can tell you better than I can—since I was not permitted to go along. Besides, the less talking you do now, I believe, the less danger there is of complications. Neither wound is so bad of itself, Uncle Peter says. It’s having your head hurt, along with the broken bone in the arm. Unless you are very quiet for a day or two, there may be fever; and fevered blood makes slow healing. That’s Uncle Peter’s theory, and it must be correct. He has books and studies all the time—when he isn’t working. Then, of course, there’s the danger of infection from the outside; but he has been very careful in the dressings. Johnny Buffalo,” she added after a minute, “is worse off than you are. His shoulder blade is badly smashed. And then he’s so much older.”
She was talking, he knew, to prevent him from doing so. And since his head felt like a nest of crickets, all performing at once, he was content to let her have her way. Across the room he could hear the intermittent murmur of the two Indians, the voice of the grandmother droning musically, with sliding, minor inflections as she recounted, no doubt, the history of the old man’s family and friends.