Radio Digest (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

ue smitten with mortal pangs. Children and women began to scream and twist. Alice caught the lines from Tom's twitching hands and turned the wagon off into a swale. It was damp but sheltered with dripping branches. The other wagons of their train withdrew from the staring multitude and came to a mournful halt. Those who drove the cattle beat them away from the road and checked them in a huddle. From the wagons men and women and children tumbled or were helped. Some were in throes of hateful anguish and their bodies were broken vessels of wretchedness seeking relief in blundering shameless haste. They bobbed and doubled up and made a Punch and Judy show of puppets jerked about on unseen strings by a ruthless hand. Tom Gammell was the most afraid. He was a giant in a schoolgirl frenzy of terror. He started at Alice with glazing eyes imploring help that she could not imagine how to render. Blind Mr. Cheevers kept clutching and whimpering. "What's the matter? What ails everybody? Where are we at? Why're we stoppin' here?" The epileptic Molly tried to answer him and began to bark like a dog and flop like a chicken with its neck wrung off. As if a fulfillment of prophecy, Tom Gammell began putting out his hands to the dusty wagon trains, huskily calling for help — a doctor — water — help — in Gawd's name. And the drivers slashed their horses or prodded their oxen. One young matron on a wagon's front seat started to get down, but her husband yanked her back with an oath. Few of the throng paused for a word, and they only called to the survivors, "Hurry on!" "Leave the dying to the dead or you'll go next." "Save yourselves." "Don't stop to bury the dead; for nobody will bury you!" Alice stood in a coma of ignorance wishing she could think of something to do. One old one-legged man hobbling by on a mended crutch and urging on a sick cow, paused to shout: "They was a man in our camp last night that folks said was a doctor. I seen him ride on ahead. He's a big feller on a tall mule — name o' Birney or suthin' like that." Alice stared down at Tom where he wound and unwound himself in the torment of a snake with a smashed head. Suddenly she unhitched one of the horses from the wagon, and climbing aboard him with difficulty, set off to find that doctor. She was no horsewoman. She had no riding skirts. The horse was no saddle-horse and had no saddle. And the ground outside the highway was no bridle path. But she stuck to the rough-gaited nag somehow in pain and in shame for her unwomanly appearance a-straddle a big horse harnessed for a wagon. FOR an hour the horse alternated from trot to gallop to rack with an occasional effort to buck and bolt. But its spirit was cowed with long servitude, and it could not shake off even so unschooled a parasite. After two hours of search, Alice came upon a group of men drawn aside for a noon snack. One of them was mounting a mule when she hailed hirh and asked if he were a doctor. He swept off his hat and said: "A poor one, madam, but such as I am I'm at your service." She explained the massacre of her little community, and he turned back. He offered her his mule or his saddle but she declined. She sat sidewise on the way back, and told Dr. Birney many things about her husband and herself. But he told her nothing about himself except his reason for being here. "It wasn't the gold fever that got me so much as a mania to get away from where I was. I studied medicine and built up consid'able of practice back East in Ohio, but a doctor has a mis'able life. All day and all night you're called to see ailing women with imaginary troubles or troubles you can't cure; sick babies that hadn't ought to 'a' been born, but it hurts to lose; broken and misfit folks. You don't know what's the matter with 'em, or you do. And it don't make much difference. Most of 'em would get well anyway if you let 'em alone and lots of 'em are bound to die no matter what you do. And nearly ever'body hates to die — ■ leastways up to the last moment. And then they're too weak to care. "Well, I felt so humiliated all the time and so useless, I vowed I'd light out and never let on I was a doctor. I brought along my surgical instruments and a medicine case just from force of habit, I guess. And Gawdamighty but it was grand not to be wakened out of sleep with a call to go and watch a baby die. You can't imagine how nice it was to be called 'Mister' instead of 'Doctor' or better yet, plain Dave or Birney. "I was just sayin' to myself that I didn't care if* I never saw a streak of gold. My freedom was worth the trip. And then me and my mule rode into the cholera, and I haven't had much rest since. I had a touch of it myself but I took it in time and nobody suspicioned it. "Now, though — well, it's a good thing I bought a mule instead of a hoss, for I'd 'a' rode a dozen hosses to death. I started out to keep a diary, but at night I'm usually too beat out to write in it more'n a line or two." She had an idea that he was chattering away to keep her mind from her own woes, and she was grateful to him. She felt that under his self-depreciating homeliness of manner there was great wisdom, great strength. But neither strength nor wisdom availed him much when he reached the little pest-house by the roadside and joined battle with the unseen squad that had selec.ted this group for its malices. Tom's brother Jake was already dead and Tom was insane with fright. He outbabbled the sick women and children and besought the doctor to give his whole skill to him. Alice despised him for a while, then pitied him, and when he died, wept for him with a double sorrow for his fate and the poverty of courage for which he was not to blame. He made a poor contrast to Mrs. Cheevers' old mother, Mrs. Broshears, who let go her feeble clutch on life with a simple plea to the doctor: "Never mind me. I'm gone a'ready. But look after my daughter with the blind husband and my stepson and the pore little uns. Don't waste no time on me, I tell ye. But don't desert the young uns. And good-bye, all!" FROM morn to sunset and on through moonrise to midnight and on till the sun came up with the slow stupidity of an ox, Doctor Birney toiled without rest or sleep. He made the others take what rest, they could and while they drowsed or died, he drove a spade into the earth, stretched out in their last beds those who had finished their wanderings, and spread over them their final coverlets of earth. Seven graves he finished and rolled heavy stones over them for a hillside against the wolves. At half past four Alice heard some one gallop up and call for the doctor. She looked out from her wagon and saw him mopping the sweat from his brow with the back of ■ his hand as he laid down the shovel. She slipped to the ground and caught him before he flung his long leg across the back of his mule. "They're all restin' easy now," he whispered. "Some of 'em easier than others. You'd best get some sleep and don't try to start too early tomorrow. Easy is what does it." She hated to ask him his fee for his priceless labor, but she hated more to take it as a charity. She stammered a timid "How much do I owe you. that I can pay you?" "Oh, that's all right. I'm not doctorin' now as a business." "But please!" He understood that, unlike some of his patients, she would feel the obligation less than the payment and he said: "Well, I guess about eight dollars and six bits would be about right — if you don't think it's too much. It ain't every doctor that would bury as many patients for the price." She counted him out the money and he rode away, with his new customer. Later, he began to wonder how Alice would manage. He had learned the family history pretty thoroughly in the course of his prolonged visit, and it came over him that she would have no one to care for her or even to drive her wagon. He was too busy riding back and forth along the line to give her more than intermittent thought, but she kept recapturing his heart. And at last he went far back to where her shattered camp still lingered. TX/7LL the doctor come back? \\ Will they find gold, or will they find another kind of happiness? What was the doctor's story? The concluding episode of this typical Rupert Hughes life drama zvill be found in the APRIL number of Radio Digest. Susan Goes Shopping (Continued from page 55) about its simplicity that fits in wijh any sort of costume at any time or "in any place. I went into a shop yesterday intending to see some of the 'operas,' but I had no idea there could be so many variations of this graceful shoe.