It was already dark at the Sunflower Ranch when the two, after hours of battling with wind and snow and bitter cold, reached the cabin door. Bo Peep, instead of giving up early or hanging a dead weight on Dr. Carey’s hands, as he had feared the boy might do, had been the more hopeful of the two in all the journey. The hardship was Bo Peep’s penance, and right merrily, after the nature of a merry-hearted race, he took his punishment.
Jim Shirley, putting wood on the kitchen fire, bent low as he heard the piteous moanings from the sick room.
“Oh, Lord, if you can work miracles work one now,” he pleaded below his breath. “Bring help out of this storm or give us sense to do the best for her. We need her so, dear Lord. We need her so.”
He lifted his eyes to see Horace Carey between himself and the bedroom door, slipping out of his snowy coat. And beside him stood Bo Peep, helping him to get ready for the sick room.
“I know Miss Virginia back in the Souf, suh. I done come to take keer of this kitchen depahtment. I know jus’ what she lak mos’ suh,” Bo Peep said to Jim, who had not moved nor spoken. “I’se Misteh Bone-ah-gees Peepehville, an’ I done live with Doctah Carey’s family all mah life, suh, ’cept a short time I spent in the Jacobs House 129 at Carey’s Crossing. I’se his custodian now, suh, and I know a few things about the cookin’ depahtment, suh.”
He looked the part, and Jim accepted him gladly.
It is given to some men to know the power of the healing spirit. Dr. Carey was such a man. His presence controlled the atmosphere of the place. There was balm in his voice and in the touch of his hand as much as in his medicines. To him his own calling was divine. Who shall say that the hope and belief with which his few drugs were ministered carried not equal power with them toward health and wholeness?
When Virginia Aydelot had fallen asleep at last the doctor came into the kitchen and sat down with the two haggard men to whom his coming had brought unspeakable solace.
“You can take comfort, Mr. Aydelot,” he said assuringly. “Your wife has been well cared for. Hardly one man in a thousand could do as well as you have done. I wonder you never studied medicine.”
“You seem confident of results, Doctor,” Asher said gratefully.