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Page 15
But for a moment he bestowed upon her merely a slow look of question.
"You don't mean that you are Dr. Page?" he asked. Then, believing that
he understood: "You're the nurse?"
"Is a physician's life in San Juan likely to be so filled with his
duties that he must bring a nurse with him?" she countered. "Yes, I am
Dr. Page."
He noted that she was as defiant about the matter as the Kid had been
about the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas; plainly she had foreseen
that the type of man-animal inhabiting this out-of-the-way corner of
the world would be likely to wonder at her hardihood and, perhaps, to
jeer.
"I came to-day," she explained in the same matter-of-fact way.
"Consequently you will pardon the looks of things. But I am one of the
kind that believes in hanging out a shingle first, getting details
arranged next. Now may I see the hand?"
"It's hardly anything." He lifted it now for her inspection. "Just a
slight cut, you know. But it's showing signs of infection. A little
antiseptic . . ."
She took his fingers into hers and bent over the wound. He noted two
things, now: what strong hands she had, shapely, with sensitive fingers
ignorant of rings; how richly alive and warmly colored her hair was,
full of little waves and curls.
She had nothing to say while she treated him. Over an alcohol lamp she
heated some water; in a bowl, brought from the adjoining room, she
cleansed the hand thoroughly. Then the application of the final
antiseptic, a bit of absorbent cotton, a winding of surgeon's tape
about a bit of gauze, and the thing was done. Only at the end did she
say:
"It's a peculiar cut . . . not a knife cut, is it?"
"No," he answered humorously. "Did it on a piece of lead. . . . How
much is it, Doctor?"
"Two dollars," she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands.
"Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you."
He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then
went out.
"She's got the nerve," was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his
corner table in the dining-room. "But I don't believe she is going to
last long in San Juan. . . . Funny she should come to a place like
this, anyhow. . . . Wonder what the V stands for?"
At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded
at it approvingly. Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his
thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the
Casa Blanca. The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time
that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as
the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his
sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.
The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal
when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room. She
had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked
fresh and cool and pretty. Norton approved of her with his keen eyes
while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room. As
she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him,
he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and
the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.
A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in
from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the
sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single
other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page's throat
and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita. As the
serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to
the far table.
"May I bring my things over and eat with you?" he asked when he stood
looking down on her and she had lifted her eyes curiously to his. "If
you've come to stay you can't go on forever not knowing anybody here,
you know. Since you've got to know us sooner or later why not begin to
get acquainted? Here and now and with me? I'm Roderick Norton."
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