When the doctor from the agency arrived at dawn, hours after Mrs. Mathews, he found everything done for the wounded man that skill and experience could suggest. Mrs. Mathews had carried instruments, antiseptics, bandages, with her, and she had no need to wait for anybody’s directions in their use. So the doctor, who had been reinforced by the same capable hands many a time before, took a cup of hot coffee and rode home.
Mrs. Mathews moved about as quietly as a nun, and with that humility and sense of self-effacement that comes of penances and pains, borne mainly for others who have fallen with bleeding feet beside the way.
She was not an old woman, only as work and self-sacrifice had aged her. Her abundant black hair—done up in two great braids which hung in front of her shoulders, Indian-wise, and wrapped at their ends with colored strings—was salted over with gray, but her beautiful small hands were as light and swift as any girl’s. Good deeds had blessed them with eternal youth, it seemed.
She wore a gray dress, sprinkled over with twinkling little Indian gauds and bits of finery such as the squaws love. This barbaric adornment seemed 281 unaccountable in the general sobriety of her dress, for not a jewel, save her wedding-ring alone, adorned her. Frances did not marvel that she felt so safe in this gentle being’s presence, safe for herself, safe for the man who was more to her than her own soul.
When the doctor had come and gone, Mrs. Mathews pressed Frances to retire and sleep. She spoke with soft clearness, none of that hesitation in her manner that Frances had marked on the day that they rode up and surrounded her where the Indians were waiting their rations of beef.
“You know how it happened—who did it?” Frances asked. She was willing to leave him with her, indeed, but reluctant to go until she had given expression to a fear that hung over her like a threat.
“Banjo told me,” Mrs. Mathews said, nodding her graceful little head.
“I’m afraid that when Chadron comes home and finds him here, he’ll throw him out to die,” Frances whispered. “I’ve been keeping Mr. Macdonald’s pistols ready to—to—make a fight of it, if necessary. Maybe you could manage it some other way.”
Frances was on her knees beside her new friend, her anxiety speaking from her tired eyes, full of their shadows of pain. Mrs. Mathews drew her close, and smoothed back Frances’ wilful, redundant hair with soothing touch. For a little while she said nothing, but there was much in her delicate silence that told she understood.
“No, Chadron will not do that,” she said at last. 282 “He is a violent, blustering man, but I believe he owes me something that will make him do in this case as I request. Go to sleep, child. When he wakes he’ll be conscious, but too weak for anything more than a smile.”