The harvesting dragged out to the third day, and Silas, who had a felon, could not give help when John came to the point of cutting his own grain.

It was almost impossible to get help, for the reason that the dry weather had hastened the reaping of all early crops. It was decided that Elizabeth should drive back and forth with the water, and John take a hand at the shocking. This left Hugh on the machine, a thing John disliked to do, but Hugh made no complaints and accepted the post readily. Hugh had seen that he could not refer to his health without endangering his chance of getting away. John looked him over critically as he mounted the binder, realizing fully that he was unfit to ride in the hot sun all day.

"I'll take his place this afternoon if the shocking never gets done," was his mental resolve as he turned to his own share of the work.

The men had taken one jug of water with them, so that it was not necessary for Elizabeth to go with a fresh one till ten o'clock. She tied Patsie to the fence and, taking Jack with her, crawled under and started across the field to a point where she could meet the oncoming binder, so that Hugh could take the heavy jug on the machine around to the other side of the field where the shockers were. Jack's short legs had hard work in the stubble, and she kept a tight hold on him with one hand while she carried the jug with the other.

Hugh saw them coming and called to her to wait till he could come for the jug. Doctor Morgan had especially cautioned against heavy lifting.

The new team which John had bought was. .h.i.tched to the pole of the harvester, and as he drew them up, a botfly buzzed suddenly about the forelegs of the off-wheel horse. The animal struck at it angrily with its foot, giving a shrill snort. Its mate threw itself to the other side, rattling the double-trees of the leaders against their heels. There was a frightened spring on the part of one of the horses in front, and at that the wild and half-broken wheel horses began to plunge ahead.

Thoroughly frightened, the four horses became unmanageable at once, and the one nearest the revolving reel got its tail over the line, where it held firmly to it as it reared and kicked. Almost before it was clear what had happened, the horses were on a full run down the field, with a barbed-wire fence ahead. Hugh could do but one thing. He circled them about toward the outside of the field by the one line he could control, while he frantically jammed the lever down, which threw the machine out of gear, but at the speed at which the machine was going the lever would not act. The one line swung the horses around in a short circle, and as the thoroughly alarmed man raised his head he was horrified to find that Elizabeth, enc.u.mbered with the jug, and so thoroughly frightened that she held on to it and to Jack's hand with equal tenacity, was within the radius of the circle.

The baby, the mother, and the heavy water-jug were in the centre of that narrowing ring, and the natural and spontaneous thing to do was to run in the direction away from the careening harvester. They ran, but only for a few yards, for by the time they thought that they were nearing a point of safety at the circ.u.mference of the circle, the horses were nearing that point also, and to attempt to cross it was suicidal.

"Go back!" shouted Hugh, his whole body breaking into a cold sweat as the woman and child turned to run in the opposite direction.

Had presence of mind been possible at that moment, Elizabeth could have slipped quickly behind the binder and pa.s.sed outside the ring the charging animals were making, but as it was, she simply ran blindly back once more to another and more dangerous point inside their lessening orbit. One more such run and both mother and child would be exhausted.

With the cold sweat of terror breaking over him, Hugh Noland slackened his hold on the line and flung himself off the high seat to run to her a.s.sistance. As he jumped, the horses of their own accord turned sharper yet, and the bull-wheel, striking a badger hole, threw the machine over sidewise and completely upside down. The wheel horses, released by the coupling-pin falling from the main clevis, kicked themselves loose from the other team and tore madly across the uncut grain.

Elizabeth Hunter escaped death by the overturning of the heavy binder, but when she arrived at the twisted and broken harvester, Hugh Noland lay pinned under the wreckage, white and insensible.

It took but a few moments for the men, who had come running at the first sounds of the commotion, to lift the heavy machinery from the limp body and lay the wounded man down under the shade of a large shock of rye.

While Luther bent to examine the senseless form, John rushed one of the men frantically off for Doctor Morgan.

"No! Wait--I'll go myself!" he called as the man was driving away, and flinging himself into the buggy, which Elizabeth had left at the fence, laid the whip on the back of the frightened Patsie.

It was not till John was halfway to Colebyville that Hugh Noland opened his eyes. Luther was stooping over him, bathing his face with water from the jug which Elizabeth had so unconsciously provided. The girl also knelt at his side rendering such a.s.sistance as was in her power, and when Hugh actually showed signs of being alive she buried her face in her hands and sobbed with an abandon which Luther Hansen could not mistake. The hired men had gone to get the leaders, which, being reliable horses, had got over their fright and were nibbling the fresh gra.s.s by the fence. The other team was completely out of sight. They covered Hugh from the scorching sun till the men could bring the wagon from the barn, and then the sad little cavalcade returned to the house with the injured man.

Doctor Morgan arrived with John in his own buggy two hours later, and then a strange thing was discovered. No bones were broken, and no internal injuries were in evidence which would necessarily give cause for alarm.

The examination pointed to an excited heart chiefly, the weakest link in Hugh Noland's system and the place where new troubles centred and aggravated old ones. That the man's life had not been instantaneously crushed out was due to the fact that the long steel levers had stuck in the hard earth and held the machine up. But the trouble with the heart had been accentuated acutely before the binder had even capsized, for that horrible nightmare of galloping down upon the girl had evidently begun what the later catastrophe had carried to a farther and really dangerous stage.

Hugh was placed in the downstairs bedroom by the men, whose hearts were wrung at every step they carried him, and, as Luther remarked, because Elizabeth would have the care of him and stairs were deadly things in case of sickness.

Doctor Morgan came again before night, intending to stay with the patient till morning. John met him at the gate. With the feeling that he had been responsible for this terrible accident to Hugh, whom he loved as he had never loved any other human being, John had spent an afternoon of agony.

The rest of the men could look for a neighbour to finish the grain with another machine, but for him, he spent the time at Hugh's side.

"How is he?" Doctor Morgan asked almost before he was within speaking distance.

"Resting. We don't trouble him, but he seems quiet."

"That's good!" the old man exclaimed. He had come with his heart in his mouth, as they say in that country. "I wish I had as good a report for you," he added.

"Why--what's happened to me?" John asked in surprise.

"The young mare you drove in died in the stable. It's hot weather, and I guess you were pretty badly excited. I told the men in the livery to shut the colt up; it kept nosing around the carca.s.s and it isn't good for it.

You'd better get in as early as you can and look after it yourself. Those stable men don't care for anything that ain't their own."

John Hunter stood speechless till the end of the story, and then helped tie the doctor's team.

"That all comes from that miserable team! I'm glad one of them did have to be shot. I've half a notion to shoot the other one; it's all cut up by the wire and 'll take no end of trouble to cure. Hugh said horses and dogs talked with their tails, and I guess they do. Say, will you tell Elizabeth about the horse? It's one I got from her father and she's terribly fond of it."

Elizabeth met Doctor Morgan as he came from Hugh's room a few minutes later with the unspoken question so plainly evident in her face that he answered it without waiting to be asked.

"No signs of further trouble, little woman, thank G.o.d! They tell me you were near being run over by that binder too."

Elizabeth evaded the last remark.

"That's nothing. But are you sure about Hugh?" she asked in a voice that quavered a little.

"Now look here," the doctor said, concerned at once for her welfare. "We can't have you go and get upset. It looks as if Noland got out of that pretty lucky. The only thing that's worrying me is that infernal heart of his."

John came in at that point and the old doctor addressed himself to him.

"This woman'll have to take care of Noland, Hunter, and I want you to see to it that she don't have another thing to do. She can't have that child dragging on her, and we'll have to look out that she don't overdo, or we'll have her down on our hands too. The trouble with peritonitis is that it don't get well as fast as it looks to. A slight thing will often start it up anew, and peritonitis is the devil if it gets to recurring."

"We'll all help take care of Hugh," John promised readily.

Doctor Morgan looked at John Hunter and back to Elizabeth dubiously. He reflected that the same lack of caution which had killed the mare yesterday might kill a man in case of excitement.

"It isn't necessarily help that she's going to need. It won't be so hard to take care of him, if she isn't worried by a lot of other things. I don't want another soul to touch that medicine. We've got to be mighty careful about that. Heart remedies are poison and as quick as lightning in their action, and we can't afford to take any chances on that kind of stuff. I'm right glad to put your wife at the helm in this thing; she's definite and dependable, two things we doctors don't often find when we need them most."

Turning to Elizabeth he said:

"It may be rather hard on you, but our main care is to pull this man through the next ten days. If he don't have some one to look after him right, he may slip through our fingers."

"Why--I thought you said he was all right," Elizabeth faltered.

In his efforts to impress the need of care with the medicine, Doctor Morgan had gone over the mark and added to the fears he had started out to allay. Elizabeth was as white as if all the blood in her body had been taken away.

"Now don't begin to worry till I tell you there's need, child," he said half irritably. "All that's necessary is for you to look after that medicine. Noland 'll come out all right with you to nurse him. I wouldn't mind being sick myself, Hunter, with her to hold the spoon," he said, trying to put a merry face on the matter. "Did it ever occur to you that you were a lucky dog to come into this country and run off with the nicest girl in it the first year you were here?"

As the doctor drove home the next morning, he said to himself:

"I guess I fixed it about that medicine;" then, his mind reverting to the conversation at the gate, he added, "I wasn't goin' to tell her about that horse; let him tell her himself. Blamed fool! I think I headed off his issuing orders about that sick-bed too. Poor little girl! Now if she'd only married Noland!"

The old doctor gave a long, low whistle as a sudden thought struck him, but he put it away, and being a busy man thought no more about it for weeks.

CHAPTER XXII

"THERE ARE SOME THINGS WE HAVE TO SETTLE FOR OURSELVES"

John's being away from home those first days of Hugh's illness--he had gone to Colebyville to dispose of Patsie's body and secure a new team to finish harvesting--kept him from getting the run of the affairs of the sickroom, and enabled Elizabeth to a.s.sume the care of the invalid in her own way. An idea once fixed in John Hunter's head was fixed, and having accepted the plan of Doctor Morgan that Elizabeth was to be in sole charge of care and medicine, he went his way without thrusting his suggestions upon her, and Elizabeth, having learned not to discuss things with him, did not speak of her work nor of anything connected with the invalid. In fact, as soon as John entered the sickroom she went out, as one of the best ways she knew of to avoid accidents of conversation. John came to Hugh's bedside but little, supposing that he needed rest, and willing to sacrifice his all to the comfort of the pale invalid. With the tears of a woman in his heart if not in his eyes, John watched from afar the face of the man he had been the unconscious means of injuring, and tiptoed about the outer rooms with a fear of death which only John could feel. Another thing kept him out of the sickroom: impressed with the idea that his carelessness in the purchase of the first team had led up to this trouble, he had gone to the other extreme in replacing them, and had paid three hundred and twenty-five dollars for one of the best and most thoroughly proven teams in the country. There were no available funds and he had been obliged to give a note for them; this must in time come to Hugh's notice, and John had a distinct remembrance of a former note, and did not wish to repeat the experience. Luther, who came often to see Hugh, had spoken to John of Patsie's death in Elizabeth's presence, and after the first pained expression of surprise and grief, Elizabeth had never mentioned it again.

John had noticed also that Elizabeth had never asked the price of the last team, nor seemed to take any interest in them, and he hoped by the same means to avoid confessing to Hugh.