The Lady Doc - Caroline Lockhart (ebook reader computer .txt) 📗
- Author: Caroline Lockhart
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"Moses!" She chortled at the notion. "Wouldn't their eyes bung out if I showed 'em their own bones! I could soak 'em twice the fee and they'd never peep."
Lamb discouraged the idea for the present on the grounds of economy and advised a sterilizing apparatus instead, which Dr. Harpe opposed for the same reason.
If Dr. Harpe had been given the opportunity of selecting an associate from a multitude of practitioners, it is doubtful if she could have found another better suited to her purpose than the man Lamb. Although, by some means, he had succeeded in being graduated from an institution of good repute, he was a charlatan in every instinct—greedy, unscrupulous, covering the ignorance of an untrained mind with a cloak of solemn and pious pretence which served its purpose in the uncritical, unsuspicious western community where a profession is always regarded with more or less awe.
Lamb's colorless personality had made no great impression upon Crowheart and as yet he was known chiefly through his professional card which appeared among the advertisements in the Crowheart Courier. Dr. Harpe had not reckoned him a formidable rival, but she recognized in him an invaluable associate; and often as she contemplated his pasty face, his close, deep-set eyes and listened to his nasal voice she congratulated herself upon her choice, for he was what she needed most of all, a pliable partner.
"Be you goin' to put up a sign?" inquired Lamb.
"Sure; we want all the advertisin' we can get out of this, don't we?" And soon the day came when the two partners stood across the street and read proudly:
Harpe and Lamb Hospital
In her new buggy with its flashing wheels Dr. Harpe was soon driving through the different camps along the project, and the laborers rather enjoyed the novelty of visits from the "lady doc," as they called her, and consented good-naturedly enough to the deduction of monthly dues for hospital benefits from their wages.
While they regarded her professionally and personally in a humorous light and made her more or less the target of coarse jokes, as is any woman who leaves the beaten track, yet the general feeling toward her was one of friendliness.
They laughed at her swaggering stride, her masculine dress, the vernacular which was their own speech, but there was quickly established between them and her a good-humored familiarity which was greatly to her liking. They become "Bill" and "Pat" and "Tony" to her and she was "Doc" to them.
While her horses trotted briskly the length of the ditch and she was returning smiling nods and flinging retorts that were not too delicate over her shoulder, she began to feel herself a personage; she was filled with a growing sense of importance and power.
There was everything to indicate that the contract would prove all that she and Lamb had hoped for. The general health was exceptionally good and she urged sanitary precautions upon the men to prevent long and expensive fevers; as yet there was no dangerous rock-work entailing the use of explosives to imperil the lives and limbs of the men. The remedies required were of the simplest and the running expenses of the hospital were nil.
When they received their first checks from the Company and the contractors, Lamb's joy was almost tearful.
"It's easier than layin' bricks, Doc," he said as they wrung each other's hands in mutual congratulation.
Dr. Harpes' ambitions grew with her bank account, and among them there was one which began to take the shape of a fixed purpose. With her successful manipulations of conditions to further her own ends she came to believe herself in her small world invincible. The effect of this belief upon a nature like hers was to increase its natural arrogance and her tendency to domineer, while the strange, extravagant personal conceit which seemed so at variance with her practical nature became a paramount trait.
There was really no doubt in her mind that she could marry Ogden Van Lennop if she really set about doing so. It was only of late that she had given the thought words. In the beginning when she had discovered his identity, the most she had hoped for was to be friends, for a friend of Van Lennop's importance might be useful. She felt that there would be some way of turning his friendship to account. The fact that they were still only acquaintances did not discourage her, nor the fact that he seemed entirely satisfied with the companionship of the erstwhile belle of Crowheart.
Rich men and rich men's sons had a way of amusing themselves with the society of their inferiors where they were unknown, was her disdainful explanation to herself, but it piqued and irritated her even while it furnished the material for her sly innuendoes, for the insidious attacks which were fast completing what Andy P. Symes's social dictatorship had begun. With her mounting arrogance Dr. Harpe believed that if her ultimate success in her new ambition demanded the entire removal of Essie Tisdale from the field, this too she could accomplish. Her overweening confidence now was such that she was persuaded that she could shape events and mould the lives of others and her own as she willed.
She was resting one day in her new office in the hospital after a long drive along the ditch, and from her window she watched Van Lennop at the Kunkel blacksmith shop across the street. He gave his horse a friendly pat between the eyes before he swung into the saddle and she stood up to watch him gallop the length of the street with the lithe and confident grace which made him a noticeable figure in the saddle.
"Moses!" she observed aloud, "but he has improved in looks since he landed here—his looks, however, are a mere incident compared to the value of his name on the business end of a check. Harpe,"—she sniggered at a mental picture—"how will you look anyhow hanging to a man's arm? As a clingin' vine you'll never be a conspicuous success, but you could give a fair imitation if the game was worth the candle, and this happens to be an instance where it is. Let's have a look at you, my child."
She took a small hand-mirror from beneath the papers of a drawer and regarded her reflection with a critically humorous smile.
"You're not the dimpled darling you once were, Harpe," she said aloud. "You're tired now and not at your best, but all the same there's a kind of a hard-boiled look coming that's a warning, a hint from Father Time, that you've got to do something in the matrimonial line before it gets chronic."
Still viewing herself in the mirror she continued her soliloquy—
"By rights, Harpe, you ought to cut out these piqué vests and manly shirt bosoms and take to ruches and frills and ruffles. It would be the quickest way to make a dent in his heart. He's that sort, I can see, but, Lord! how I hate such prissy clothes! Your chance will come, Harpe, you'll wear the orange blossoms now you've set your mind on it, and, if the chance doesn't come soon you'll have to make it."
The slender, mild-mannered young man to whom Symes was introduced in the office of Mudge, the promoter, was not a person Symes himself would have singled out as one entrusted with the handling and investment of the funds of a great estate. He had a slight impediment of speech, he was modest to diffidence, and modesty and money was a combination not easy for Symes to conceive, but Mudge had said anxiously upon Symes's arrival:
"I hope you make a good impression, Symes, and can put the proposition up to him right, because if we can land him at all we may be able to land him for the whole cheese, and it will take a load off me if we can. It's gettin' harder all the time to place these bonds; money is tighter and people seem leary of irrigation projects.
"I had no idea so many people had been pecked in the head until I began to handle this proposition. They're damned suspicious I can tell you. It's nearly as easy to sell mining stock and, compared to that, peddling needles and pins from door to door is a snap. Talk it up big but don't overdo it, for J. Collins Prescott is no yap."
"Leave him to me," Symes had replied confidently; "don't worry. If he has got real money and is looking for a place to put it, I'll see that he finds it." And Mudge, noting the warmth of his grasp, the heartiness of his big voice, the steady frankness of the look which the westerner sent into Prescott's eyes, felt that Symes was the man to do the trick and congratulated himself upon his wisdom in sending for him.
"I—I've been looking through your prospectus, Mr. Symes," said J. Collins Prescott after he had been duly presented with a cabana by that gentleman, "and it is v-very attractive, I might say a-alluring."
Symes beamed benignly.
"You think so? I tell Mudge there's one fault I have to find with it—it's too conservative."
"A good fault," commended Mr. Prescott.
"Yes, yes, of course, better that than overdrawn, and then it's always an agreeable surprise to investors when they come out and look the proposition over. If you are thinking seriously of this thing, Mr. Prescott, I wish you could arrange to return with me. I invariably advise it. Mr. Mudge tells me you have some idle money and I feel sure that you could not place it where you'd get bigger returns."
"W-western irrigated lands have a-always interested me c-considerably," admitted Mr. Prescott, "but heretofore the estate which I represent has confined itself chiefly to the acquirement of water-power sites and their development. They—they're good investments in your opinion?"
"Undoubtedly," was Mr. Symes's emphatic reply. "Very; but they're gettin' scarce, while the irrigating of arid lands is as yet in its infancy."
"E-exactly. I feel that we should begin reaching out along those lines, and although I am not greatly c-conversant with investments of this nature, I can readily see their possibilities."
"No limit!" declared Symes. "Nothin' but! Takes capital of course, but the returns are big and sure. That's what we are all looking for."
"I know little if anything of the actual construction of a ditch, but I should presume that the personnel of the m-management would count for much," ventured Mr. Prescott.
"Rather!" Symes replied abruptly, "and if I may say so—if you will pardon me—the name of Symes is a valuable asset to any enterprise—prestige, you know, and all that."
Prescott looked slightly mystified.
"The Symes of Maine—grandfather personal friend of Alexander Hamilton's—father one-time Speaker of the House; naturally the name of Symes stands for something."
Not a muscle of J. Collins Prescott's face moved, but Mudge, watching him keenly, felt uncomfortable and a sudden annoyance at Symes's childish boastings, for so they sounded in Prescott's presence. Symes seemed unable to realize the importance of the unassuming young man who listened so attentively but non-committally to all that he was saying, and in the light of their relative positions Mudge felt that Symes was making himself a trifle ridiculous.
"Ah, yes," Prescott replied courteously, "Symes is a notable name, but I was considering the management from a business rather than a social point of view. You have a w-wide experience
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