The Heart's Kingdom

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Now forward, every man of you, but lift and dig carefully," commanded the parson, as he stood on the very edge of the ruin. "Todd, you stand at the corner and show them how to roll back the timbers to the right. Carefully, men, but quick, quick, and with the help of God!"

It seemed hours that the men wrestled with the timbers and tore away brick and stone and steel, but it was only a few minutes before they pried up a section of the heavy roof and lifted Nickols from the debris beneath.

"He's breathing," said Mr. Todd, as he laid him in the parson's great, strong, outstretched arms open to receive him and which bore him out through the crowd swiftly and laid him across the seats of Nickols' car. Doctor Harding had just put Mark, a limp, heavy body, into his own car, with Harriet to support the bleeding head, and Nell crouched beside him with the Suckling in her arms, and sent them on up into the devastated Town. Now he came and helped us settle Nickols on his cushions.

"Shall I send my car and Colonel Leftwick for surgeons and nurses from the Capital?" asked the Governor. "How is it with Morgan?"

"He is dead," answered the old doctor with the calm serenity that he had acquired after so many years of giving up his friends. "This case is another matter. There may be a chance and I'll need help. We don't yet know how many more are injured in the whole town. We'll need help."

"Then I'll drive for it myself," answered the Governor, as he swung into his powerful car and started it out into the valley. "I'll make it back in six hours. No other man can drive this car as fast as I can."

And true to his promise, he was back within the time with nurses and surgeons and supplies of all kinds. By that time the whole Harpeth Valley had heard of our tragedy and all who could find a way were hurrying to our rescue or comforting.

The dawn of the beautiful new day found Nickols still alive, stretched on his bed in his own wing of the Poplars, which alone of all the homes in the Town had not been touched by the storm monster. The old house stood unharmed in all its beauty in its garden which had hardly a leaf or a branch broken, and hovered under its roof the last of the name of its builders. He lay quiet and unconscious while his life jetted itself away from a great hole in his lung made by a splinter from the beam he had held up until old Goodloet's children had been given back to its future. The great surgeon who had come down with the Governor, watched, shook his head and went at his task again and again with a dogged courage. For an hour he would leave him to go and help Dr. Harding with some of the other injured, but back he would come to his fight for Nickols' life.

And all over the stricken town there were similar tragedies being enacted. Over at the Morgans Mark lay cold and still in the long parlor, which was almost the only part of the handsome old house left intact by the tornado, and Harriet sat beside him while Nell nursed maimed wee Susan and torn Jimmy, and restrained Charlotte from injuring her sorely twisted ankle.

Down at the Last Chance, Jacob Ensley was stretched upon a bed in the bar with a sheet drawn straight and decorously over his bruised white head. He had been killed by a blow from a roof timber, while from right beside him young George Spain had been rescued unharmed. When he had crawled from the ruins he had held in his hand a bottle of whiskey which he had just uncorked for his own and Jacob's refreshment when the tornado tore at the East Chance, and scarcely a drop had been spilt. And the tornado had displayed the vagaries of its kind.