With that Smith threw off his brake so suddenly and violently that it knocked a little cloud of dust out of his wagon, laid the whip to his team, and drove off with almost as grand a flourish as he used to execute when setting out from Comanche on the stage.
Mrs. Boyle left her son’s side, her husband relieving her, to see that Agnes was supplied with everything necessary. She had pressed Agnes to remain with her–which was well enough in accord with the girl’s own inclination–and help her care for her “little boy,” as she called him with fond tenderness.
“Isn’t she sweet?” whispered Agnes, as Mrs. Boyle went to her own tent to fetch something which she insisted Agnes must have. “She is so gentle and good to be the mother of such a wolf!”
“But what did she think about her precious son going to turn the whole United States out after you because you wouldn’t help him pull the plank out from under an unworthy friend?”
“I didn’t tell her that,” said Agnes, shaking her 338 head. “I told the Governor as we came over, and she isn’t to know that part of it.”
Their tents made quite a little village, and the scene presented considerable quiet activity, for the Governor had brought a man over from Comanche to serve the camp with fuel and water and turn a hand at preparing the food. Agnes was cook-in-extraordinary to the patient and the doctor. She and Slavens took their supper together that night, sitting beside the fire.
There they talked of the case, and the prospect of the fee, and of the future which they were going to fix up together between them, as confidently as young things half their age. With the promised fee, life would be one way; without it another. But everything was white enamel and brass knobs at the poorest, for there was confidence to give hope; strength and love to lend it color.
Striking the fire with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle–which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time–and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other’s hands in the bitter and the sweet of life.
“It would mean a better automobile,” said he.
“And a better surgery, and a nicer chair for the consulting-room,” she added, dreaming with wide-open eyes upon the fire. 339