3

At eight o'clock on Tuesday morning, Doctor Bull, sitting in the old swivel chair at his office desk, grunted as he bent in the long process of lacing up a pair of hobnailed knee-boots. His shabby old bag stood open on a heap of not read copies of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Next to it he had laid out a couple of patent rubber ligatures, a cased scalpel, a hypodermic syringe, a pint bottle of whisky and a bottle containing a chloride of lime solution. Finished with his boots, he checked these articles over and added them to the contents of the bag. Rumbling contentedly: "Once in the dear dead days beyond recall —" he pawed through the closet in the corner until he was able to produce a roughly finished oak bludgeon and a forked stick. Taking a fold of his jacket, he wiped the dust off them, laid them beside a pair of worn leather gauntlets. The telephone rang then and he could hear Susie shuffling to answer it. "Hell!" he remarked, stopping his singing, for Harry Weems and Lester were due any minute and he wanted to get up to North Truro fairly early.

Susie shrieked: "Doctor Bull, Mrs. Kimball says Ralph is sick; could you come right away."

"Tell her to wait a moment," he said, shutting up the bag. He went into the hall and took the receiver from her. "Hello," he said. "What's wrong with Ralph? Oh! Take his temperature? Well, how do you know he's feverish? Oh, he says so, does he? Give him a dose of castor-oil and make him stay home. If I get back from North Truro early, I'll look in."

He started to hang up, but Doris Clark's voice interrupted: "Oh, Doctor Bull, I have another call for you."

"Who is it?" —

"Mr. Ordway."

"Well, all right —" His eyes swung around to find Susie listening anxiously. "Beat it!" he roared. "Oh, hello! What's the trouble?"

"Well, I'll step in a minute and look at her," he agreed. "I'm trying to get off to North Truro. No, I thought I'd take Lester and Harry and try to clean out some of the snakes up on the ridge. Been so warm a lot of them may be out —" He heard the front-door bell and added, "Guess they're here now; but they can wait a minute. I'll be over. Come in, come in!" he shouted, hanging up.

Lester and Harry stood on the steps and he said, "You'll have to wait a while. Molly Ordway's had to get sick. Be right along." Harry had his car at the end of the path. "Might as well get my things in now," Doctor Bull observed, turning back to his office. Out in the hall again with them, he called, "All right, Aunt Myra. I'm leaving."

Mrs. Cole appeared at the door of the kitchen. "Good morning," she said sharply to Lester and Harry. "George, you'd better let those snakes alone. They aren't hurting anybody way up there. You'll probably get yourself bitten."

"They aren't hardly awake yet, Mrs. Cole," Lester said. "This warm spell sort of fools them and they start coming out; but they'll be so stiff they can't hardly move."

"Got to do my duty, Aunt Myra," said George Bull. "Can't be Health Officer if I don't protect the community."

"You'd protect it better if you stayed home and tended to your business. You're too old a man to go climbing around cliffs killing harmless creatures."

"These are rattlesnakes, Aunt Myra; we aren't hunting rabbits to-day."

"Well, I expect they wouldn't harm anyone who let them be; and if you're going to be late for dinner, you call me up."

"We'll be all right, Mrs. Cole," Harry Weems, promised. "Wait for you in the car, Doc."

They had been waiting ten minutes when he came out of the Ordways' door and across the lawn. He got into the car and Lester said: "What's wrong with Molly?"

"Oh, they used to call it spring fever —" He began to fill a pipe while Harry backed the car around. "Everybody's kind of run down in March. I'll bet half her trouble was she didn't feel like going to school to-day. I gave her a dose of castor-oil so she'd have something to do at home."

"She's getting to be a good-looking kid," said Lester. "How old's she?"

"Sixteen, I guess," answered Harry Weems. "Same age, about, as Gerry Bates and Virginia Banning. Looks like they were turning out all girls that year. Matter of fact, Charlotte Slade, too."

"I hear she can be had."

"Maybe so. She looks sort of warm."

"Somebody saw her with Larry Ward parked outside that dance at the Odd Fellows Hall in Sansbury. Had her skirt around her neck and Larry climbing all over her."

"Yeah, that somebody would be Grant Williams. He gets more peeking done than any six; and what he doesn't see he can always say he did."

"I hear Virginia Banning's going to New Mexico with the Hoyts."

"That's right. They're leaving a week from yesterday."

"That Hoyt girl is some kid. I could use her."

"Well, I doubt if you ever will," said Harry Weems, "so don't go brooding about it. Bad for his health, isn't it, Doc?"

"It is. You keep clear of women, Lester. I'm telling you. You fool around much now and you'll work yourself up a good hot reinfection."

"I'm listening, Doc."

"You better listen unless you want to be back for a catheter party with me every afternoon. By the way, how's my old friend Henry Harris these days. He seems to be lying pretty low."

"Oh, he's around," said Lester.

"Who's going to get done now?"

"It must be a secret," said Lester mildly, "he isn't telling."

At North Truro they turned at the fork where a big sign showed a cowboy on a horse pointing to Robert Newell's Lakeland Lodge and Camps, and went the other way, up the muddy hill road in the warm second-growth woods.  Through dense spots of hemlock and pine, the grey rock jutted out—short, sharp cliffs, towering split sections, a jumble of great glacial bouders.

"There we are," observed Harry Weems. "We can get up this end of the ledges easiest. We'll just pull the car into the brush here and go up that side". He jerked on the brake and turned off the motor. George Bull opened his bag, took out the scalpel and syringe cases, the ligatures, and, testing the cork with his thumb, the bottle of chloride of lime, distributing them in his pockets.

"That good whisky, Doc?" asked Lester.

"We'll see when we get back," he promised. "Got a sack?"

"May be one on the floor there," said Harry.

"We'll try to get a couple alive. Bates would like them in a box in the store."

"Supposing we find any."

"If they aren't out after a nice week like last week, they're dead already."

Up on the ledges, above the tree-tops, the rock was warm in the sun. George Bull, blowing a little, wiped his forehead, glancing down over the wooded slopes to fields in the valley bottom. There was a tone of pale, fresh green over willows along the creek. Cows stood bunched by the fences. Behind the Clark house somebody was hanging out laundry.

Harry Weems had been studying the broken stone shelves, damp shades of moss, blotches of lichen, and the low huckleberry bushes growing from drifts of old leaves and open chestnut burrs. "Listen," he said, "I think the best thing would be for me to get up there and Lester up above and we'll all work along together. Then, if we go slow and look sharp we can cover quite a lot of space. Here's your club, Lester. If we see more than one, we'll stand still and let the others get there. The rock's so warm they may be feeling pretty spry."

At the end of half an hour they had covered the whole southern face without success. "I saw a swell place for them," said Lester. "I'll bet they've got so much sense they know it isn't spring."

"We'll try the upper ones," George Bull said, swinging the oak stick. "They're around here somewhere."

"Wait a second," said Harry, seizing his arm. "What's that?"

"A rattle. Right over there. Hang on, Lester. Let's see him first."

They stood together, looking. "Funny," Harry said. "I bet I could walk right on him but I'm damned if I can see him."

"I see him," George Bull said. "Middle ledge. See the dark lichen? Now, look right down; this side of the little hemlock. See? It's moving. Holy Christmas, there's another."

"I don't see it."

"You better get glasses."

"Sure!" agreed Lester. "There's one, sliding down off the rock. See his head? Come on, let's go."

"Cut down there and come round from the other side, Lester," Doctor Bull said. "You come up this side, Harry. I'll go up above and jump on them."

"You'll what?"

"Get going and I'll show you." They could see him clambering along the top ledge.. When he paused, he took a handkerchief from one pocket and what proved to be a match from another. Striking the match, he set fire to the corner of the twisted cloth. "All right," he roared suddenly, "come on in!" He dropped the burning handkerchief down the side of the ledge. "Get that old black bastard, Lester!"

The drift of dry leaves under the overjutting stone began to frill with little flames from the handkerchief. "Come on, Harry! We've got them by the short hairs. They'll never get home to mother now!"

Up a crevice, on to the stone at his feet came a pitted, fluke-shaped head, the adroit neck swinging. He stamped his hobnailed heel on it. "One down!" he shouted. Lester was slashing the leaves with his cudgel. From the sunny face of the lower ledge a half-dozen snakes were scattering, sliding away frantic, but too stiff and slow. A single courageous, or stupidly amazed, female had coiled, fire behind and enemies on all sides, tail tip twitching up, stub head couched. "Coming at you!" roared Doctor Bull. He leaped from the ledge, both nailed boots and his better than two hundred pounds landing on her before she could move. The thick end of his oak bludgeon rang dull on the stone; he struck again, catching a little one attempting a panic-struck ascent of the crevice. Wheeling, he brought it down with all his force on a thick sliding coil under a huckleberry bush, producing a head, writhing back in anguish. He smashed it against the stone. "Whee!" he shouted.

"We'll be coming round the mountain —"

"Doc!" yelled Harry. Some instinct had already warned him; he started to jump. Although the snake in the crevice was not coiled and had to pounce rather than strike, the head easily reached his hand holding the cudgel. Fantastically wide open, the small jaws swung, closing faster than sight on the side of his thumb.

"Hell and damnation!" George Bull roared in what was both pain and anger. He dropped, his stick. His violent left hand grasped the neck, dragging clear a thick, three-foot body. The head was torn from its hold; one fang pulled out of the worn leather of the glove; from the groove of the other a drop or two fell. "Here's one son of Satan who'll never see town!" Regardless of his bitten thumb, he caught the writhing body, twitched it belly up and snapped the spine backwards. "Rattle for you, Harry!" He tossed it ten feet over towards him. "Go on, see if you can get a couple alive."

"Aw, never mind," said Lester. "I'll bet we killed ten. We'll bring the rattles in. Did he get you bad?"

"No. Went through the glove." He shook the glove off regarding the dark puncture in the thick side of the thumb. "Damn neat job, though," he said, shaking it. "He was full of juice.' He moved down the ledge. "No need to sit on another." He pulled the scalpel case from his pocket. "Take that out for me, Harry."

Laying the thumb on the stone, his left hand a little awkward, he drove the keen blade point in one line across the puncture; grunting, he crossed it remorselessly with another line. Laying down the scalpel, he fished out the chloride bottle and the syringe case. "Too bad I didn't know it was going to be for me," he said cheerfully. "Might have got myself some of that serum. Can you figure it out, Harry?"

"This come off?"

"That's it. Fill it up. Needles right there. See how they go?"

"Uh, huh."

Doctor Bull thrust, the bloody thumb into his mouth, sucking it while he felt for the ligatures. "Here you are, Lester. Take the little one twice round the thumb." He looked critically at his hand. "Dare say we don't need another, but we might as well have it. Unbutton that cuff for me, will you? God damn it, it would have to be my right hand. Let's have it, Harry. We'll give it a couple of shots after I've sucked out a little more."

"Taste good?" asked Lester.

"I've drunk better. All right, I can take care of the rest, thanks. See how many of those sons of bitches we got. Better stamp out that fire too. Think it's still burning under the side. Bring along the rattles."

Down at the car, where Doctor Bull, unassisted, had managed to get a covering bandage around his thumb, Lester produced eight severed rattles. "There's your friend," he said, holding up a seven-ringed one. "I'll bet he wishes he hadn't been so smart."

"I'll bet I wish he hadn't, too. Got a corkscrew, Harry? Two ounces of spiritus frumenti orally as a stimulant seems to be indicated. I'll leave the rest of it to you. Funny thing, though. Back in Michigan fifty years ago everybody believed whisky was the cure for snakebite. First thing to do was get pie-eyed. We're so smart now we know you couldn't do anything worse; but the fact is, everybody who did it recovered. Figure that one out."

"Here you are, Doc. How're you going to measure two ounces?"

"Weigh it on my tongue. Here's to science."

 

Mrs. Cole said: "What did you do to your hand, George?"

"Snake bit me."

"My goodness! Didn't I know it? You can't say I didn't warn you."

"That's right. I can't. How about some lunch?"

"Are you in pain, George?"

"Well, naturally it hurts, if that's what you mean. But I can eat all right if I ever get a chance."

"Lunch will be ready directly. Some people called up. Susie, who called the doctor?"

"Vogels did," shrilled Susie. "And Mr. Fell. And Mrs. Kimball called again."

"Yes, there's plenty of sickness, weather like this. You better stay around and tend to people, George, and let those snakes alone."

"Sure, they all get the pip. What can I do about it?"

"I don't feel very good, either," announced Susie, appearing. "I-—"

"Sure; you're getting a bad case of incipient dishwashing. I'd prescribe a couple of whacks on the rump with a shingle."

"No, I ain't. I felt awful sick this morning. I got a pain in my stomach." —, "Well, we've got plenty of castor-oil." He brought his bag into the office, but he had scarcely set it down when the telephone rang. Susie cried out: "Doctor Bull's house. Why, yes, he's here. Oh, yes, I'll tell him —" She" came to the door, announcing with interest, "Mrs. Vogel says Jack is still awful sick. She says he's got an awful fever. She's put him to bed."

"Tell her I'm having lunch. I'll see about it afterwards."

 

The car at the first gasolene pump in front of Weems' garage crouched low on its hundred-and-forty-two-inch wheel-base. It was sober enough black; but rich and lustrous, with a general silver-like glitter of non-tarnishable metal. On each wide hub-cap was embossed a V12. Besides whatever intricate refinements of mechanism, it suggested unconcern about running expenses. Similarly, the model—it was a convertible coupé—suggested driving for pleasure and when the owner chose, not struggling through all weathers, year in and year out. On the silver grill fronting the broad radiator was affixed a round enamel plaque bearing the crossed Aesculapian staffs of the county medical association.

Incommoded by the difficulty of using his sore right hand, Doctor Bull halted his own cheap car at the other gasolene pump. "Some outfit," he said to Mat Small, nodding at it. "I wouldn't mind getting me one of those. Only, what with? Give me six." He stepped out into the afternoon sunlight and walked over. "Hello, Verney," he said. "You certainly look prosperous. Lots of sickness in Sansbury?"

Doctor Verney had just finished paying George Weems.

He turned in the deep ample seat, extending a hand. "Good afternoon, Doctor. No, as a matter of fact, everybody's too damn healthy." Laughing, to show that his deploring of such a situation was a pleasantry, his ever-so-slight ill-ease was apparent and George Bull grinned. "Snake bit me this morning," he said, raising his right hand. "The snake died." He continued to examine Verney, his blue eyes twinkling. "Who's sick at the Bannings'?"

"Virginia's laid up. Nothing much. I wouldn't be surprised if it were just excitement. She's going on a trip with the Hoyts. Or the weather. A chill. It's not as warm as it looks, really. It's always that way. I'll have more than one case of pneumonia as soon as it turns cold again."

"Yes," agreed George Bull. "I lost a case a week or so ago."

Doctor Verney's features—even; rather handsome in a severe, alertly intelligent way—underwent a small, disconcerted change, showing that Mrs. Banning had told him all about it, or her version of it. "Well," he said "that's the way it is. The winters are really pretty hard up here —"

He would be glad to get on, George Bull recognized, but his awareness of the fact that he had cut Doctor Bull out on what ought to be Doctor Bull's best paying patients made him anxious not to add incivility to that injury. George Bull grinned again, enjoying Doctor Verney's delicacy. "Yes," he said, "the spring crop's beginning to come in. I've been running round dealing out castor-oil for two days now. Regular epidemic. Every two minutes the telephone rings and somebody doesn't feel so good. Wish I could soak them twenty dollars a visit. That's one of the greatest modern contributions to medical science. Just thinking about it cures half the people who wake up imagining they're sick. Well, I'll have to be getting on. Quite a car, this —" He banged his left fist approvingly on the door top. "You ought to send a snapshot of it to the editor of the Journal. Stop all this belly-aching about starving country physicians." He grinne'd again and waved his hand. Doctor Verney stepped on the starter, but for a minute nothing happened as he had forgotten to turn on the ignition. Absorbed in grinning at this slightly uneasy departure, George Bull realized that someone had come up casually and joined him. "Hello, Henry," he nodded, half turning his head. "There's the kind of car you want. Planning to get one next month?"

Henry Harris' face warmed to his silent smile. "Is that when they begin giving them away?" he asked.

They stood watching it down past the end of the green in silence. "Why, no," George Bull said. "But the taxes ought to be along pretty soon. You aren't going to waste them on civic improvements, are you?"

Steadily smiling, Henry Harris said: "We have to pay the Board of Health, I guess. I always believe in sharing the Lord's bounty with the deserving. It's kind of hard when Herring squeezes the buffalo off every nickel; but if it were left to me, George, I'd see you were rewarded in a way commensurate with your sterling abilities. At present my assess are mostly goodwill."

"Uh, huh," agreed George Bull. "So are mine, Henry; so are mine. If you ever burn your hand on red-hot money, you can have my professional services gratis." He started to move towards his car. "Oh," he said, stopping, "was there something you wanted to see me about?"

"No, nothing important. The Democrats are having a little meeting to-morrow night. Just discussing our policies, and so on. Wouldn't care to look in, would you?"

"I'd be sort of out of place, wouldn't I?"

"A lot of thinking people are going to vote Democratic this fall, George. I had an idea you were getting on pretty bad terms with the Republicans. Or maybe I should say the Mrs. Bannings. She's doing her best to get you into trouble. And now I hear Emma Bates is going round saying things. That doesn't seem the right way to treat a regular party man."

"Well, Mrs. Banning's been doing her best for a long time, and it doesn't seem any too good, Henry. As for Emma, she's mostly wind. Quimby and Ordway would want something more substantial. The School Committee would have run me out long ago if anything could be worked there. I must have some friends." "You've got me and Paul Lane. We've always stood up for you. So's Ordway, on occasion. The Bannings don't own the town yet. I'm not saying they haven't influence with their gang of boot-lickers; that's just what I mean. You never know when they may pull a fast one on you. I think you're in the wrong camp, George."

"It's mighty nice of you to be so worried about it, Henry. Now, what were you thinking you'd like to have me do for you?"

"Absolutely nothing. I just hate to see a man knifed in the back. Of course, we'd be glad to have your vote; but we aren't buying them. We're going to get too many free this fall."

"Henry, ingratitude's a terrible sin. I hope you'll never find me guilty of it."

 

Wednesday morning, George Bull's right hand was too sore for him to shave with any comfort. He came downstairs grumpy, and Aunt Myra said at once: "My goodness, George, you look like a tramp! You go to that barber shop and let somebody shave you."

"Let's have some breakfast."

"I'm not ready yet. You can sit down if you want."

"Where's Susie?"

"Oh. Susie. Well, Pete came up with a note from Mrs. Andrews. Susie's sick in bed."

"She would be! Jumping Jupiter, it's a puny bunch we have around here! Man, woman, and child, they haven't the guts of a two-day kitten. All lie in bed and holler for the doctor. Want me to dose them up with a lot of rubbish, and tell them how brave they are in their afflictions. Even a spell of nice warm weather's more than they can stand. I know of ten cases lying around feeling weak and wanting somebody to wait on them—eleven, with the Banning girl. They don't feel good; they got a belly-ache; they just seem all worn out —"

"Well, it's a good thing those snakes don't bite you often, George. Looks to me as though you got out the wrong side of bed this morning. There are some prunes for you, and don't use all that cream on them. It's got to do your oatmeal and coffee, too —"

"God Almighty! There's the door bell. Can't a man even eat in peace?"

"You better sit still. I'll see who it is." When she came back, she said: "It's that Ward boy, from the Bannings'."

"What's he want?"

"Wants to see you. He looks kind of peaked. I suppose he isn't feeling well."

"Huh! Why don't they get Verney up? I guess they figure he isn't worth it. Horse doctor will do for him —"

Passing by the back door through his office ten minutes later, George Bull looked into the waiting-room. Larry Ward was sitting slumped in a chair by the front window. "All right, come in," George Bull said. "Might as well see you, since you're here. My morning hours are from nine to ten. Don't come banging around at half-past eight next time." He closed the door. "Sit down. Well, you look kind of green. What's the trouble?" Larry clasped both hands together, swallowing. He shifted in the chair. Finally he said, hushed, "I think I got something, Doc."

"Oh, you do, do you? Well, what have you got?" Larry gulped again, wordless, and George Bull snorted. "Uh, huh," he agreed. "Well, don't get in a sweat. This isn't the Y.M.C.A. When do you think you got infected?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Been fooling with Betty Peters?"

"No, I never —"

"You going to tell me you must have got it off a toilet? Have to be a minister to manage that. Where did you get it?"

Finally he said, "I guess it must have been Charlotte Slade, Doc. She's the only one—"

"That kid? When did you have intercourse with her?"

"I guess it was a week ago Friday. I felt pretty rotten for a couple of days, now. I —"

"Well, she's certainly starting young. All right. We'll have a short arm inspection. Don't get the wind up; we'll take care of you. Just come over here —"

When he had finished he said, "There's nothing wrong with you. What are you, crazy? Charlotte tell you she had something?"

"You mean, I'm all right, Doc?"

"Sure, you're all right. When you're not, you don't have to wonder about it. I didn't think it was very likely with a kid like that —" He considered Larry, standing stupid in his incredulous relief. "Got any reason to think you weren't the first?"

"Oh, she said I was; but —"

"Well, the odds are you were. Somebody always has to be. Old man Slade's been afraid of God for forty years and so he gets back at life by making the women and children afraid of him. Charlotte isn't old enough to have stopped being scared of him long. Do you mean business?"

"Hell, I don't know, Doc."

"If you don't, stick to girls old enough to know what they're doing. You'll find plenty of them. Once is an accident; might happen to anyone. But if it goes on, and by any chance I see her start swelling, this town'll be too hot for you not married to her. That'll be five dollars, just to help you remember. And tell her if she isn't regular this month to come up here and I'll see what we can do."

"All right," Larry said. "But listen, Doc. Just the same I feel pretty bum. I mean, kind of sickish —"

"That's called the fear of God. Take a dose of castor-oil to-night and go to bed early. Generally fixes it up."

Larry grinned uncertainly. "All right," he repeated. "I got to admit I feel some better. I was certainly scared, Doc."

"You were. But you get over it pretty quick. Until the next time. You better think about marrying Charlotte. She can give you all there is, and it might save you plenty of trouble and expense. Nice little kid, in spite of her old man. Beat it."

With Larry gone, he set himself to putting a new dressing on his thumb, reflective; for now that he thought of it, he could remember Charlotte Slade's birth. Or maybe it was the Slade boy, who was killed in a motor accident. When he got there the baby was just about born, with Mrs. Slade yelling as loud as she could, and Slade, who didn't think it was decent to be present, yelling prayers in the front room even louder. On second thought, he decided that it was Charlotte, not the boy. The boy had been born in winter. George Bull guessed that he himself was at least twenty years older, but Slade seemed something left from a long time ago. Old man Slade preserved a sort of mean and comic rusticity which might have been general once in the outlying farms. Even sixteen or seventeen years back there had been little of it left—it was hard to believe that those illiterate, goat-bearded farmers, stubborn and credulous, had ever existed.

Well, they had, all right. Their vanishing was part of the process in which Charlotte Slade, a year or so ago caught up by the heels while he slapped the breath into her, was being seduced by what had once appeared a perpetually fixed brat in rompers. George Bull gazed at his thumb and he thought that he could almost see the proof of age. The first steps in healing looked reluctant. Other people, perhaps, hadn't got around to noticing, but to his own body he was old man Bull, hardly worth the effort. Cresting the swell of inflamed flesh, the angry crust of the still frail blood clot filled the criss-cross slash like a red mark of his certain mortality.

In the hall the telephone rang. Aunt Myra must have been close enough to reach it, for he heard her almost at once screaming into the mouthpiece: "Hello —"

"Tell them I'll be over when I can," he called. "I've got to go down and get shaved. Who is it?"

He could hear her gabbling a form of this information and then she hung up. "Who is it?" he repeated.

"That's Mrs. Bates, George. She wants you to see Geraldine."

"Huh! Changed her tune, has she? Well, we'll let her stew a while. I've got half a dozen visits to make. Doubt if I get back for lunch."

"I expect I'll go to Sansbury, George. I'll leave an apple pie in the pantry and there's plenty of milk, if you want anything."

"You better hang around and answer the telephone."

"No, I'm going to Sansbury, George. There's a picture I want to see. I'll ask that little girl at the telephone to write down any calls and you can ring her up from wherever you are and ask her. There'll be plenty of sickness, I dare say. Mr. Cole's mother always said a green Christmas makes a full churchyard, and —"

"This isn't Christmas, Aunt Myra."

"Well, I expect it still holds good, whatever it is."

He picked up the five-dollar bill which Larry had laid on the desk and went to the door. "Take this along," he said. "You might see something you want."

"I can manage, thank you, George. I've got my fares and twenty-five cents for the theatre. I don't want to be a burden to anyone, and those people keep sending me the cheques. I must say it's very kind of them."

"Don't you worry about them, Aunt Myra. Alfred spent most of his life trying to pay for that insurance." Taking her hand, he pressed the five-dollar bill in it, closing the fingers. "Now don't put it in the stove," he said, "it's money."

 

Louie, his loose hand working in the lather spread on Doctor Bull's chin, said: "I hear Mr. Jackson's sick-—" He tipped his head indicatively towards the wall which concealed Gosselin Brothers' scarlet-fronted store next door. "He come and opened up, but he went home pretty soon. Gus Ferris said he was awful shaky. He was going to get Mrs. Jackson to come over and help Gus, but she hasn't come, so I suppose he must be real sick. I hear you got a lot of patients."

"Quite a few. It looks like a mild form of influenza, whatever that is. I'm damned if I know how to help them. That what you want to know?"

Louie laughed. "Sure," he admitted. "Lot of people ask me. Not contagious, is it?"

"Very likely. It's been spreading around somehow."

"I was over shaving Joe Tupping. He don't feel so good. If I get it from him, I'm going to be mad. I fixed it up to go to New York over this week-end."

"Well, I wouldn't worry. It doesn't amount to anything. Come on! Get going! I can't stay here all day." He lay practically prostrate in the chair, staring at the pattern of the once-white-painted, stamped sheet tin which covered the ceiling. Louie, getting through his preliminaries in a burst of activity, smeared down the side of his face and applied his razor.

"What the devil have you got there?" George Bull roared. "A meat axe?"

Louie lifted the razor. "You grow an awful tough beard, Doc. I'll give it a couple more licks." He struck the strop a few times with it. "I hear you're turning Democrat, Doc."

"That's news to me. Didn't hear it from Henry Harris, by any chance, did you?"

"Somebody said something about some row you had with Bates."

"Well, you tell Henry that when I want a row I know how to make one. He doesn't have to think up any for me."

"I thought Mrs. Bates was kind of sore at you."

"That was yesterday. To-day she's been ringing me up and wanting me to rush right over and look at Geraldine. Guess we'll have a truce as long as she thinks she needs me. While you're at it, you can just spread that around. But Henry oughtn't to stick his nose in so far. First thing he knows he'll find it pulled off." George Bull clasped and unclasped his left hand. "Come on! Hurry up! I've got to see all these invalids!"

 

Janet Cardmaker, in breeches, boots, and a man's white shirt with the collar open on her thick neck, sat on the kitchen steps in the noon sun. At the corner of her lips a neglected cigarette smoked itself away. The many folded sections of last Sunday's New York Times lay on her lap. Occasionally she read a paragraph at random; mainly she looked past the barn and the bare apple trees. A confused, unready touch of spring showed in blotches of new green over the dull, sear, sunny fields; the buds on some bushes-were already big and beginning to split. The valley was filled with vague haze in the mild, windless sunlight.

Out in the lot she could see the formidable fawn-coloured shoulders of Moloch III, moving with sullen majesty in the radius of the forty feet of thin steel cable which attached his ringed nose to a stake. He was the biggest Jersey bull she had ever seen; he must weigh more than fifteen hundred pounds, and that in a small breed which didn't run to fat. Really, he was too good for this herd; but she hated to sell him at a time when nobody would want to pay anything like what he was worth. It might be better to buy a couple of heifers fit for him, and see what she got. She threw the cigarette down, turning her head and calling, deep voiced, through the kitchen door; "When do we have lunch?"

Mrs. Foster answered, "About twenty minutes, Miss Cardmaker."

"Well, lay another place, Doctor Bull's coming up." She could hear more distinctly now the sound of a motor which had attracted her attention, changing gears to get up the bad road. She sat still on the steps until it came in sight beyond the barnyard and turned in at the gate. George Bull drove it close to the steps and banged the door open.

"You haven't eaten, have you?" she asked.

"They don't give me time."

"We'll have something in about twenty minutes." She stood up. "I hear a snake bit you. Is it all right?"

"Sore as hell. I had to cut it all up. Well, I went and asked for it. Hurts my patients more than it does me, I guess. Moloch looks pretty good out there."

"I guess I'll keep him. Sit down."

She went into the kitchen, presently returning with a couple of the crystal wine glasses beautifully emblazoned with Levi Cardmaker's self-conferred eighteenth-century coat and crest. Setting them on the step, she took a jack-knife from her pocket, levered a corkscrew from one side of it, sank it with a muscular twist and drew the cork of the whisky bottle. "This is from Sansbury, on your prescription," she observed, sniffing it. "I guess it's better than Anderson's." She sat down and filled the wine glasses. "What are you so busy about?"

"Healing the sick." He raised the glass and swallowed half of it. "That is pretty good. Oh, a lot of them collapsed when the sun hit them and curled up. They should have stayed under their stones. We'll get a blizzard next week."

"Who's sick?"

"The whole bunch. Regular epidemic. A good many may be just malingering, but Ralph Kimball looks like acute nephritis. We may not see much more of him. Perhaps it has nothing to do with the others. Or they may all be reacting to something like that Spanish 'flu. Stay out of town a while. It seems to be running around. A cold snap will probably finish it off."

"You don't seem much worried."

"It's their hard luck, not mine. Nothing to be done, except see how it comes out. It takes a lot of forms, this influenza. For all we could do about it, some specially bad sort might start up again any time. Wipe out three-quarters of the human race, given a real start."

"No great loss. Speaking of loss, I hear the Talbot girl's death got the gang down on you."

"Some of the women took it to heart. Emma Bates was all set to give me a piece of her mind. Her idea was I should have been there that afternoon."

"What's your idea?"

"That's mine, too," admitted George Bull. "Not that I could have done anything short of an oxygen tent, or some such nonsense they think up to milk the paying customers—but I could certainly have saved myself a lot of dirty looks. Emma was pretty riled. She never did get rid of that piece of mind, so she spent a week chewing it for anybody who'd listen. I could see her at Mamie's funeral wondering whether she couldn't get Doctor Wyck to have me ejected."

"Who else was unhappy?"

"About everybody, I guess. Except Howard Upjohn. He got some cash business—Banning's cash, I don't need to say. And, of course, Mamie. Where she is now, she won't have to be an Episcopalian; or clean up after the Bannings; or give her money to her mother; or wonder whether she'll have a baby if she does."

"Blow over?"

"Sure. That was damn near two weeks ago. Even Emma was calling me up this morning. The real trouble was, I forgot to put on a big show entitled 'The Wonders of Science.'" He lifted the glass and drank thoughtfully. "Funny thing, Janet, to see the change there. When I was first practising, they kind of thought a doctor was a medicine man. They didn't know what it was all about; he was sort of dabbling in the occult, and anything he did was all right with them. They don't know any more now; but they've been reading the papers, and they want some of that, not God knows what out of a bottle. You ought to see Verney's place. Nurses sitting around in uniform making urinalyses. Half a ton of fluroscopic machines. Verney telling all the women to get undressed for a thorough examination. When he's through, he has a four-page record. Nine cases out of ten, he doesn't know a thing he couldn't have found out by feeling a pulse and asking a couple of questions. Talk about the occult! But everybody thinks when he's written down so much he must know something; and the women are purring like cats, wondering if he didn't think they looked pretty good in the raw. That's giving them proper attention. People like the Bannings, who can pay for it, are going to have proper attention or know why not."

"Was Mrs. Banning at the Talbots'?"

"No, just Herbert; but she's on her hind legs as usual. Henry Harris knows she'd like to oust me from Medical Examiner to the School Board, and anything she wants, he seems to make it his special business to see she doesn't get. I guess it annoys her a good deal."

"What's that rat got against the Bannings, George? I've always wondered."

"I don't know. Wish I did; it might be good for a laugh. Maybe it's just politics. Henry can get a lot of people into line voting Democratic for no reason at all except that Banning is a Republican. He was even having a try at me. Fact is, half the people in town know that if they were in Banning's place, they'd think they owned the earth; so that must be what he thinks. They're just going to show him he doesn't. They're going to show him that there isn't enough money in the world to make them stop being contrary damn fools, if they've a mind to be."

Janet laughed briefly, shook another cigarette from a flattened package and thrust it in her mouth. "They make me sick," she said. "The whole lot of them. Kill all you want, George."

"Oh, they aren't so bad, as people go. They're just trying to be free and equal. Fun watching them. I've been right here for forty years and I've never been what you'd call bored."

"You wouldn't have been bored anywhere on earth, so long as they had lots of food, and a little liquor, and a couple of accommodating women."

George Bull's great laugh boomed out. "Sure," he said, "the simple life!" He lifted the wineglass and emptied it. "Can we eat? I got a lot more patients."