"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.
"Thank you, I can't stop. My brother has been hurt terribly. A sheep herder attacked him and beat him almost to death. He must have a doctor at once. Can you send to town for me?"
Harry spoke rapidly. She was spent with weariness and heartache, and the mention of Rob brought a strangling sob to her throat.
"How about! Mr. Holliday hurt!" Mrs. Robinson set the baby on the floor, and putting her hands on her hips, stared in mingled curiosity and sympathy at her visitor, and poured out questions and exclamations.
Wiping her forehead nervously with her handkerchief, Harry had turned abruptly away. She shrank from the eager interest of a stranger, and had to force herself to answer the woman's questions. "It's an imposition, I know, to ask you to send to town for the doctor," she said, "but I can't leave my brother alone long enough to go, and I don't know how to ride very well, anyway."
"Sakes alive, girlie! Nobody don't have to ride to git him. You kin just phone over. There's the phone right there. P'r'aps I better ring him up for you. Like's not he's at the hotel gassin', 'stead of in his office."
Harry was only too glad not to have to repeat her troubles to the doctor; she sat limply in the rocking-chair and fanned herself with her hat, while Mrs. Robinson hunted vocally among the front stoops in town for "Doc" Bundy.
"If a body was to wait for him to come to his office," declared Mrs. Robinson, "we could all die of old age before ever seein' him. I got him, though. He's to the drug store gittin' him some sody. Hello, that you, Doc? Yep, Mrs. Robinson. 'Tain't for us. Listen while I tell you, so's you can come on."
When she had finished a lengthy description of Rob, his ranch, the quarrel, and Rob's injuries, and had adjured the doctor to hurry and to bring the sheriff with him, Mrs. Robinson dropped into her chair and prepared to enjoy her visitor's call; but when she looked at Harry's face, she exclaimed: