When all was told, he turned his horse towards the wide waste of the prairie, and galloped away. Finden watched him till he was lost to view beyond the bluff.
“Now, a man like that, you can’t guess what he’ll do,” he said reflectively. “He’s a high-stepper, and there’s no telling what foolishness will get hold of him. It’d be safer if he got lost on the prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon’s only got twenty-four hours, if the trick isn’t done! Well—”
He took a penny from his pocket. “I’ll toss for it. Heads he does it, and tails he doesn’t.”
He tossed. It came down heads. “Well, there’s one more fool in the world than I thought,” he said philosophically, as though he had settled the question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do.
Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field and harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain.
The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.
For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the sun was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a little brandy-and-water.
The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him say, “All right!” The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed it would have seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances—the cup of trembling must be drunk to the dregs.
Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep into which he had fallen when Varley left.
But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for some time.