Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 6

Half an hour later a strange rumbling sound puzzled the nurses in Ward B. It came at regular intervals, rising from a monotonous growl to a staccato, then dying away in a plaintive diminuendo. It was not until one of the nurses needed clean sheets that the mystery was explained. On the floor of the linen closet, stretched on his back with his carpet sack under his head and his empty sleeve across his chest, lay Pop!

From that time on the old mountaineer became a daily problem to Ward B.

It is true, he agreed in time to go home at night with the orderly; but by six in the morning he was sitting on the hospital steps, impatiently awaiting admission. The linen closet was still regarded by him as his private apartment, to which he repaired at such times as he could not stay in Sally's room, and refreshed himself with the luncheon he brought with him each day.

During the first week, when the girl's life hung in the balance, he was granted privileges which he afterward refused to relinquish. The hospital confines, after the freedom of the hills, chafed him sorely. As the days grew warmer he discarded his coat, collar, and at times his shoes.

"I 'low I'm goin' to tek Sal home next week!" became his daily threat.

But the days and weeks slipped by, and still the girl lay with a low, consuming fever, and still Pop watched by her side, showing her no affection by word or gesture but serving her and antic.i.p.ating her every want with a thoroughness that left little for the nurses to do.

In some way Miss Fletcher had gained his confidence. To her he intrusted the bills which he ripped from his coat at the end of each week with the instruction that she "pay off them boys down in the office fa'r an'

squar', but not to 'low 'em to cheat her." It may have been her growing interest in the invalid that won his favor, for she came in often to chat awhile with Sally and sometimes brought up a handful of flowers to brighten the sick room.

"She's getting better," she said one morning as she held the girl's big bony hand and looked down at the thin bright face in its frame of s.h.i.+ning hair. "We'll have her sitting up now before long."

Pop's whole aspect brightened.

"Ef Sal onct begins to git well, can't none of 'em beat her," he said proudly.

"Have you any other children?" Miss Fletcher asked.

"Lord, yes," said Pop, "heaps of 'em. Thar's Ted an' Larkin, an'

Gus,--they wuz all kilt in feud fights. An' Burt an' Jim,--they're in jail in Jackson fer moons.h.i.+nin'. Four more died when they wuz babies.

An' they ain't nary a one at home now but jes' Sal."

"How old is she?"

"Seventeen or eighteen, mebbe."

"And she tells me she has never been to school."

"Thar warn't no needcessity," said Pop complacently, taking a long twist of tobacco from his pocket. "Sal don't need no larnin'. She's pearter then most gals thet's got book sense. You show me ary one of these gals round here thet kin spin an' weave the cloth to mek ther own dresses, thet kin mold candles, an' mek soap, an' hoe terbaccy, an' handle a rifle good ez a man."

"But, Mr. Hawkins," insisted Miss Fletcher, "there are better things than those for us to learn. Haven't you ever felt the need of an education yourself?"

Pop looked at her suspiciously: "Look a-here, young woman. I'm nigh on to seventy. I never hed a doctor but onct in my life, an' then he chopped my arm off when it might hev got well whar it wuz. I kin plow, an' fell trees, an' haul wood. Thar ain't a log-rollin' ner a house-raisin' in our neck of the woods thet Jeb Hawkins ain't sent fer.

I kin h'ist a barrel with the best of 'em, and shake up Ole Dan Tucker ez peart ez the next one. Now how about yer scholards? This here horspittle is full of 'em. Pale-faced, spindly-legged, nerve-jerking young fellows thet has spent ther fust twenty years gittin' larnin', an' ther next twenty gittin' over hit. Me an' Sal will keep to the open!"

But Sally was not so confident. As her strength began to return she took a growing interest in all that went on around her, asking eager, intelligent questions and noting with wistful curiosity the speech and manners of the nurses who served her. She was a raw recruit from Nature, unsophisticated, illiterate. Under a bondage of poverty and drudgery she had led her starved life in the mountain fastnesses; but now she had opened her eyes on a new and unexpected world.

"How do you go about gittin' a larnin'?" she ventured at last to ask one of the friendly nurses. "Can't you fetch me up some of them thar picter books?"

For hours after this she pored over her new treasures, until one day Miss Fletcher brought her a primer, and the seventeen-year-old girl grappled for the first time with the alphabet. After that she was loath to have the book out of her hand, going painfully and slowly over the lessons, mastering each in turn with patient perseverance.

Pop viewed this proceeding with disfavor. He seemed to sense the entering wedge that was to separate her from him. His pride in her accomplishment was overshadowed by his jealousy, and when she was able to read a whole page and attempted to explain the intricate process to him, he was distinctly cast down. He left the hospital that afternoon for the first time, and was gone until dusk. When he returned he carried a bunch of faded wild flowers that he had tramped two miles in the country to get for his girl.

May dragged into June, and still they were kept at the hospital. The old man became as restless as a caged animal; he paced the corridors for hours at a time and his eyes grew furtive and defiant. He, who had lived out of sight of the smoke from his nearest neighbor's chimneys, who had spent his life in the vast, still solitudes of the hills, was incredibly lonely here among his fellow men.

"If Pop has to stay here much longer, I'm afraid he'll smash the furniture," said the night nurse who, like everybody else in the ward, had grown interested in the old man. "He packs his things every morning before the doctor comes, only to unpack them after he leaves."

"The confinement is telling on him," said Miss Fletcher. "I wish for his sake they could start home to-day. But I do hate to see Sally go! The girl is getting her first taste of civilization, and I've never seen anyone so eager to learn. We have to take the books away from her every day, and when she can't study she begs to be allowed to roll bandages.

The third day she sat up she wanted to help nurse the other patients.

"I am afraid we have spoiled her for hoeing tobacco, and planting corn,"

said the night nurse.

"I hope so," Miss Fletcher answered fervently.

It was nearly the last of June when the doctor dismissed his patient.

"This doesn't mean that she is well," he warned Pop. "You will have to be careful of her for a long time. She has worked too hard for a growing girl, and she's not as strong now as she was."

"She will be!" Pop responded confidently. "That thar gal is made outen iron! Her maw was afore her. Liza wuz my third wife, an' she'd borned six or seven children, when she died at thirty-five, an', by Joshuy, she'd never once hed a doctor in all her life!"

Pop's joy over their dismissal was slightly dimmed by Sally's reception of the news. He saw her draw a long breath and bite her lips; then he saw what he had never seen since she was a baby, two large tears gather slowly in her eyes and roll down on the pillow. He watched them in amazement.

"Sal, whut ails ye?" he asked anxiously, after the doctor was gone.

"I want to git a larnin'!" she broke out. "I don't want to go back to the hills."

Instantly the old man's face, which had been tender, hardened to a mask of fury.

"That pa.s.sel of fool women's been workin' on ye," he cried hoa.r.s.ely, "larnin', larnin', thet's all they know. Ain't the Fork good enough fer ye? Ain't the cabin whar yer paw, an' yer grandpaw, an' yer great-grandpaw was borned good enough for ye?"

"Yes, Pop, yes!" she gasped, terrified at the storm she had raised. "I'm a-goin' back with you. Don't tek on so, Pop, I'm a-goin'!"

But the tempest was raging, and the old man got up and strode angrily up and down the small room, filling the air with his indignation.

"I should say you _wuz_ goin' back! I'd like to see any of 'em try to keep you. They'd like to make one o' them dressed-up doll women outen you! You're goin' back with me to the Fork, an' ef thar's ever any more nussin' er doctorin' to do, I'm a-goin' to do hit. I've nussed three women on their deathbeds, an' when your time comes I 'low I kin handle you too."

Then his mood changed suddenly, and he sat down by the bed.

"Sal," he said almost persuasively, "you'll git over this here foolishness. Ag'in' fall you'll be a-cappin corn, an' a-roastin' sweet pertatoes, an' singin' them ole ballarts along with the Hicks gals, an'

Cy West, an' Bub Holly. An' I'll tote you behind me on the beast over the Ridge to the Baptist Meetin' House the very next feet-was.h.i.+n' they hev. Jes' think how good hit's goin' to be to see the sun a-risin' over Ole Baldy, an' to hev room to stretch an' breathe in. Seems ez if I hain't been able to git my lungs full of wind sense I left Jackson."

"I know it, Pop," Sally said miserably. "You growed old in the hills afore you ever seen the Settlements. But sence I got a sight of whut folks is a-doin' down here, 'pears like I can't be reconciled to goin'

back. 'Tain't the work back home, nor the lonesomeness, tho' the Lord knows the only folks thet ever does pa.s.s is when they're totin' deads down the creek bottom. Hit's the feelin' of bein' shet off from my chanct. Ef I could git a larnin' I wouldn't ask nothin' better then to go back an' pa.s.s it along. When I see these here gals a-larnin' how to holp the sick, an' keer fer babies, an' doctor folks, I lay here an'

steddy 'bout all the good I could do back home ef I only knowed how."

"You do know how," Pop declared vociferously; "ain't you bin a-lookin'

after folks thet's ailin' around the Fork fer a couple of years or more?

Ez fer these new-fangled doctorin's, they won't nary one ov 'em do the good yarbs will. I'd ruther trust bitter-goldenseal root to cure a ailment than all the durn physic in this here horspittle. I ben a-studyin' these here doctors, an' I don't take much stock in 'em; instid of workin' on a organ thet gets twisted, they ups and draws. .h.i.t.

Now the Lord A'mighty put thet air pertickler thing in you fer some good reason, an' ther's bound to be a hitch in the machinery when hit's took out. Hit's a marvel to me some of these here patients ain't a amblin'

round on all fours from what's been did to their insides!"

"But think whut the doctor did fer me," urged Sally.

"I ain't fergittin'," Pop said suddenly, "an' I've paid 'em fer hit. But ef they calkerlate on yer takin' root here, they're treein' the wrong possum. You're a-goin' home along o' me to-morrow."