“Yes,” returned Bob. “An’ she’s got to be told ’fore some sneakin’ varmint beats us to it an’ tells her for true what me an’ you are only suspicionin’. How’ll you ever do it?”
“How’ll I ever do it?” shrilled Thad. “Holy Cats! I can’t—How’ll you ever do it yourself?”
Bob answered helplessly:
“I can’t neither—an’ by smoke, I won’t.”
“She’s got to be told,” insisted Thad.
CHAPTER IV
SAINT JIMMY
Wise Mother Burton came to wonder, sometimes, if Saint Jimmy’s teaching was not more a matter of love than even he perhaps realized.
DOCTOR JIMMY BURTON and his mother spent their first year in Arizona at Tucson and Oracle. But when they were satisfied that Jimmy could live if he gave up his too strenuous professional work and remained in the Southwest, and that if he did not follow that course he would as surely die, they built the little white house on the mountain side at Juniper Springs, above the Cañada del Oro. As Jimmy explained, “it was quite necessary, under the circumstances, that they live where they could see out.”
It was during that first summer in Oracle that the neighbors began to speak of his tender care of his mother, for, even in those days when he was too ill to do more than think, his thoughts were all for her. And so lovingly did he try to shield her from the pain of his suffering, so cheerfully did he accustom her to the thought of the utter hopelessness of his professional future, and so courageously, for her sake, did he accept the pitifully small portion that life offered him, that the people marveled at the spirit of the man. It was a question, they sometimes said, with a touch of sincere reverence in their voices, if Doctor Burton needed his mother as much as the doctor’s mother needed him. But Jimmy and his mother knew that the truth of the matter was they needed each other.