The Trail Of The Axe Part 51

"Well, I've got to listen, I s'pose," she said, with a bright smile.

"As you say, you're sick. You might have added that I am your nurse."

"Yes, I s'pose you are. It seems funny me needing a nurse. I s'pose I do need one?"

Betty nodded; her eyes were bright with an emotion that the man's words had all unconsciously stirred. This man, so strong for himself, so strong to help others--this man, on whom all who came into contact with him leaned as upon some staunch, unfailing support--this man, so invincible, so masterful, so eager in the battle where the odds were against him, needed a nurse! A great pity, a great sympathy, went out to him. Then a feeling of joy and grat.i.tude at the thought that she was his nurse succeeded it. She--she alone had the right to wait upon him.

But her face expressed none of these feelings when she replied. She nodded gravely.

"Yes, you need a nurse, you poor old Dave. Just for once you're going to give others a chance of being to you what you have always been to them. It breaks my heart to see you on a sickbed; but, Dave, you can never know the joy, the happiness it gives me to be--your nurse. All my life it has been the other way. All my life you have been my wise counselor, my ever-ready loyal friend; now, in ever so small a degree, you have to lean on me. Don't be perverse, Dave. Let me help you all I can. Don't begrudge me so small a happiness. But you said you were going to talk me tired, and I'm doing it all." She laughed lightly, but it was a laugh to hide her real feelings.

The man's uninjured arm reached out, and his great hand rested heavily on one of hers. The pressure of his fingers, intended to be gentle, was crus.h.i.+ng. His action meant so much. No words could have thanked her more truly than that hand pressure. Betty's face grew warm with delight; and she turned her eyes toward the stove as though to see that all was well with her cooking.

"They're cutting to-day?" Dave's eyes were turned upon the window. The sunlight was dying out now, and the gray dusk was stealing upon the room. Betty understood the longing in the man's heart.

"Yes, they're cutting."

He stirred uneasily.

"My shoulder is mending fast," he said a moment later. And the girl saw his drift.

She shook her head.

"It's mending, but it won't be well--for weeks," she said.

"It's got to be," he said, with tense emphasis, after a long pause. His voice was low, but thrilling with the purpose of a mind that would not bend to the weakness of his body.

"You must be patient, Dave dear," the girl said, with the persuasiveness of a mother for her child.

For a moment the man's brows drew together in a frown and his lips compressed.

"Betty, Betty, I can't be patient," he suddenly burst out. "I know I'm all wrong; but I can't be patient. You know what all this means. I'm not going to attempt to tell you. You understand it all. I cannot lie here a day longer. Even now I seem to hear the saws and axes at work. I seem to see the men moving through the forests. I seem to hear Mason's orders in the dead calm of the woods. With the first logs that are travoyed to the river I must leave here and get back to Malkern. There is work to be done, and from now on it will be man's work. It will be more than a fight against time. It will be a battle against almost incalculable odds, a battle in which all is against us. Betty, you are my nurse, and as you hope to see me through with this broken shoulder, so you must not attempt to alter my decision. I know you. You want to see me fit and well. Before all things you desire that. You will understand me when I say that, before all things, I must see the work through. My bodily comfort must not be considered; and as my friend, as my nurse, you must not hinder me. I must leave here to-night."

The man had lifted himself to a half-sitting posture in his excitement, and the girl watched him with anxious eyes. Now she reached out, and one hand gently pressed him back to his pillow. As he had said, she understood; and when she spoke, her words were the words he wished to hear. They soothed him at once.

"Yes, Dave. If you must return, it shall be as you say."

He caught her hand and held it, crus.h.i.+ng its small round flesh in the hollow of his great palm. It was his grat.i.tude, his grat.i.tude for her understanding and sympathy. His eyes met hers. And in that moment something else stirred in him. The pressure tightened upon her unresisting hand. The blood mounted to her head. It seemed to intoxicate her. It was a moment of such ecstasy as she had dreamed of in a vague sort of way--a moment when the pure woman spirit in her was exalted to such a throne of spiritual light as is beyond the dream of human imagination.

In the man, too, was a change. There was something looking out of his eyes which seemed to have banished his last thought of that lifelong desire for the success of his labors, something which left him no room for anything else, something which had for its inception all the human pa.s.sionate desire of his tremendous soul. His gray eyes glowed with a living fire; they deepened; a flush of hot blood surged over his rugged features, lighting them out of their plainness. His temples throbbed visibly, and the vast sinews s.h.i.+vered with the fire that swept through his body.

In a daze Betty understood the change. Her heart leaped out to him, yielding all her love, all that was hers to give. It cried aloud her joy in the pa.s.sion of those moments, but her lips were silent. She had gazed into heaven for one brief instant, then her eyes dropped before a vision she dared no longer to look upon.

"Betty!"

The man had lifted to his elbow again. A torrent of pa.s.sionate words rushed to his lips. But they remained unspoken. His heavy tongue was incapable of giving them expression. He halted. That one feverish exclamation was all that came, for his tongue clave in his mouth. But in that one word was the avowal of such a love as rarely falls to the lot of woman. It was the man's whole being that spoke.

Betty's hand twisted from his grasp. She sprang to her feet and turned to the door.

"It's Bob Mason," she said, in a voice that was almost an awed whisper, as she rushed to the cook-stove.

The camp-boss strode heavily into the room. There was a light in his eyes that usually would have gladdened the master of the mills. Now, however, Dave's thoughts were far from the matters of the camp.

"We've travoyed a hundred to the river bank!" the lumberman exclaimed in a tone of triumph. "The work's begun!"

It was Betty who answered him. Hers was the ready sympathy, the heart to understand for others equally with herself. She turned with a smile of welcome, of pride in his pride.

"Bob, you're a gem!" she cried, holding out a hand of kindliness to him.

And Dave's tardy words followed immediately with characteristic sincerity.

"Thanks, Bob," he said, in his deep tones.

"It's all right, boss, they're working by flare to-night, an' they're going on till ten o'clock."

Dave nodded. His thoughts had once more turned into the smooth channel of his affairs. Betty was serving out supper.

A few moments later, weary and depressed, the parson came in for his supper. His report was much the same as usual. Progress--all his patients were progressing, but it was slow work, for the recent battle had added to the number of his patients.

There was very little talk until supper was over. Then it began as Mason was preparing to depart again to his work. Dave spoke of his decision without any preamble.

"Say, folks, I'm going back to Malkern to-night," he said, with a smiling glance of humor at his friends in antic.i.p.ation of the storm of protest he knew his announcement would bring upon himself.

Mason was on his feet in an instant.

"You can't do it, boss!" he exclaimed. "You----"

"No you don't, Dave, old friend," broke in Chepstow, with a shake of his head. "You'll stay right here till I say 'go.'"

Dave's smile broadened, and his eyes sought Betty's.

"Well, Betty?" he demanded.

But Betty understood.

"I have nothing to say," she replied quietly.

Dave promptly turned again to the parson. His smile had gone again.

"I've got to go, Tom," he said. "My work's done here, but it hasn't begun yet in Malkern. Do you get my meaning? Until the cutting began up here I was not needed down there. Now it is different. There is no one in Malkern to head things. Dawson and Odd are good men, but they are only my--foremen. It is imperative that I go, and--to-night."

"But look here, boss, it can't be done," cried Mason, with a sort of hopeless earnestness. "You aren't fit to move yet. The journey down--you'd never stand it. Besides----"

"Yes, besides, who's to take you down? How are you going?" Chepstow broke in sharply. He meant to clinch the matter once for all.

Dave's manner returned to the peevishness of his invalid state.

"There's the buckboard," he said sharply.

"Can you drive it?" demanded the parson with equal sharpness. "I can't take you down. I can't leave the sick. Mason is needed here. Well?"