BUCKY FOLLOWS A HOT TRAIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 April 1939, Page 10

BUCKY FOLLOWS A HOT TRAIL

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

BY

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE.

CHAPER IX. (Continued). A nurse in training took possession of Bucky. Presently he was wheeled into the operating room and Dr Raymond removed the bullet and dressed the wound. “I want you to have a special,” the physician said. “It’s a matter of nursing mostly from .now on.” “Now look here, doctor,” Bucky remonstrated. “Tim . here will look after me fine.”

Dr Raymond paid no attention to the protest. “Do you know whether Miss Graham is working, Sister?” he inquired of the nun in attendance. “Get her if you can.” Miss Nancy Graham arrived an hour later. She was a long-limbed young sylph, light and swift, and the fluent grace of the slender body in motion was like music. At sight of her Tim Murphy went into a small panic. She was only a kid. What did the doctor mean by sending a girl so devastatingly pretty on a job like this? How could he be expected to lounge on the bed in comfortable ease with this soft-eyed youngster in the room? Nancy Graham found nothing disturbing in the situation. She went about her business without any selfconsciousnesss. Neil Cameron was her patient and she was his nurse. He needed skillful impersonal care, and that was what she gave him. Since she did not know what the big cattleman was doing here she took an early occasion to find out from Sister Mary. To learn that Tim Murphy was here on guard to prevent his friend from being murdered lent excitement to what had become an old story. Nancy had been a graduate nurse for two years, but never before had she taken care of a handsome young man, just shot down by his enemies, who was for the moment the most talked of and romantic figure in the city. Tim did not know that back of her cool poised aloofness the girl was chuckling at his embarrassment. It was late in the afternoon when she asked him abruptly whether he too had been wounder or was suffering from shell shock. She slanted her inquiry saucily with a piquant laughing scrutiny under her long lashes.

That the little baggage was making fun of him, Tim understood. He explained laboriously that he was not sticking around because of ill health, but from a sense of duty. Bucky dozed. Tim fidgeted. This was sure a hell of a way to spend an afternoon. Maybe he had better phone the CC and give orders to shift that bunch of yearlings to the south pasture.

“Why don't you sit by the window and smoke? the nurse suggested, speaking in a low voice in order not to disturb the sick man. “Can I smoke?” he asked eagerly. “Why not? If you do maybe it will make you forget how sore you are because I’m here.” “How do you know ?” He stopped abruptly, to amend his sentence. “What I hate 'is being here myself. This is no place for a healthy man. Course I'm not kicking. Long as Bucky needs me why ” “But you think he doesn’t need me,” she flashed. “Looky here, Miss. I never said any such thing. Does seem they’re kinda robbing the cradle for nurses, but ” “I’m twenty-four,” she interrupted with dignity. “I wouldn’t have took you for more than nineteen, but seeing I’ve been dug into the subject I’d say it was more proper to have a —a mature person on cases like this.” “Meaning that I don’t know my business?” she asked. “Meaning that a young lady like you ought to be protected ” “It’s nice to have met you,” she cut in. “I didn’t know there was anybody left like that.” Nancy sat erect, her eyes bright. It was in her mind to pour out on him a few remarks about what nurses had to know concerning the seamy side of life. But she thought better of it. Why disillusion this six-foot infant? “Protected my eye! Lovely for us nurses, but a screwy way to treat poor patients.” Tim did not know how to explain without offence what he meant. If he had been younger, this was the sort of girl to dream about. Her fine-textur-ed skin, soft as satin, Was colourless as milk, except for a touch of rose bloom in the cheeks. Perhaps the colour had. been bought in a cirug store, and a lip stick might have added vividness to the mouth. None the less he read into her tempered beauty a pristine innocence. She did not waste a motion. Instinctively she seemed to know exactly what to do for Bucky to make nim comfortable. The touch of her firm fingers looked soothing. No doubt she was a good nurse. The point was that so fragrant a young thing, quivering with life (he could guess that in spite of her poised coolness), had no business here at all, according to the old-fashioned viewpoint of Tim Murphy. “The trouble is you’re thinking of me as a girl,” explained Miss Graham. “I’m not, while on duty. I'm a nurse. And my patient is just a case, regardless of sex, age, or pulchritude. Off duty, I'm a girl again. I have fun with the other nurses, and with various young men who drive me up into the hills or take me to the movies. I have been known to neck, but I can take very good care of myself, thank you.”

Whereupon she departed for the nurses’ rest room to refresh herself with a surreptitious smoke. Tim sat by the window and lit another cigarette. He looked out upon a scene of sunny somnolence. The house opposite was untenanted. Cars rolled down the quiet street. Behind the hills the sun was setting in brilliant splashes of colour. After all, the Red Rock outfit was not composed of city gangsters. They would not put the blast on a man in a hospital, but would wait until he got out. The nurse was not away more than a few minutes. “If you’re gonna be here for a while I’ll run out and get me some supper,” Tim said. “I don’t want Bucky left alone. You understand that?” Nancy nodded. “You don’t think any one would attack him here, do you?” “Not if you’re with him.” “I won’t leave the room.” It was surprising what confidence Tim gathered from the promise of this

slim girl with" the boyish figure. He had a feeling that when an emergency rose the flag of courage would be flying in the blue eyes. “I’ll not be long,” he said. “Take your time. There’s no hurry," she added by way of information. “Of course you can have dinner in the room. Hospitals do serve food to the patients.” “I’m not rightly a patient,” he explained. “Anyhow, I want to take a stroll through the town and find out what’s doing.” “Shall I get a mature nurse for you, so as to have her ready when they bring you back?” she asked. “I don’t aim to be brought back,” he said, grinning at her demure impudence, “I’m a tough old-timer, and I don’t throw down on myself.” “You’ll find Mr Cameron’s night nurse here when you get back. She’s more mature than I am. I think you’ll approve of her.” “Now —now!” he protested. “Don’t you run on me because I’m. old and feeble.”

Tim fell in with Munson and another cattleman at the Toltec House and stayed with them as long as he was down town. He thought it was improbable that he would be attacked while he was in their company. It seemed to Tim that the sentiment of the town, as he found it expressed at the Pioneers’ Club, were more friendly to the Camerons than he had known it to be of late. CHAPTER X.

Perhaps the conversation of those Tim Murphy met at the Pioneers’ Club was not a fair cross-section of Toltec’s view. Many of the members were old-timers who had known Cliff Cameron and his brother well. Some of the younger ones were friends of Bucky, and even those who were not satisfied they were innocent in the bank robbery did not believe in assassination.

But even so it was comforting not to feel himself pushing against a cold wall of hostility as he had in the days immediately following the hold-up of the bank. ’ There had been a shift in public opinion. Into the minds of many citizens had crept doubts. They felt that back of this tragedy was some unexplained mystery. After the first cry of rage at the murder and robbery had spent itself, men remembered how Cliff Cameron had always stood in the life of the town like a Gibraltar rock of integrity; it was not possible for him to have done this thing. The return of Bucky had lent weight to the feeling. His enemies had not helped their cause by trying to kill him from ambush. /- “We’ve got to serve notice pn these Red, Rock rustlers to lay off Bucky!" Dad Crittenden, a wrinkled little old cattleman cried, slamming a fist down on the arm of his chair. “I’ve known his folks ever since I came into this country forty-five years ago, and there never was one of them that wouldn’t do to ride the river with.” Garside had walked into the room. He agreed and disagreed. “You all know my opinion of the Camerons,” he said. “I won’t walk a foot of the road with any one of them. But I stand for law. I’m against bush-whacking. Maybe young Cameron brought it on himself by raiding the Red Rock country last night. I’m reserving an opinion on that. But whatever he has done, the law can settle with him. We’re past the days when Judge Colt had to settle arguments.” “Then you’d better call off your friends from the hills, Clem,” Murphy told him bluntly. The hard eyes of Garside rested on the foreman. “Some day you’ll go too far, Tim,” he said. , “Mention it to me when I do,” the foreman of the CC retorted. “Come —come, gentlemen,” Clyde Munson interfered. “You can’t help this business by such talk.” Others were drawn into the discussion. Meanwhile Garside, having found the man he had come to meet, took him upstairs to the library for private talk.

Van Dyke Mitchell drifted into the club. The secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had given him a guest card. To the foreman of the CC ranch he expressed regret at the attack on Cameron.

“A dastardly outrage,” he said, with feeling. “I like that young man. If the truth ever comes out I feel he will be cleared of the charges made against him.”

“You can bet your last dollar on that.” Murphy responded promptly. They moved away from the group, with whom Tim had been sitting, chatting casually. Tim found the stranger, whose acquaintance Bucky had made on the train as he was returning to Toltec, an affable young man. eager to build up friendly contacts in the little city where he was thinking of establishing himself. His manner was frank. He was not at all cock-sure. Tim was moved to give him a word of advice. “Don’t put too much slock in what I say about Garside. Check it up with others. But if you're doing business with him don’t trust the fellow any further than you can fling a bull by the tail. Have everything down in black and white, and drawn up by a good lawyer. If you don’t he’ll skin the eye-teeth out of you.” Guardedly. Mitchell admitted that Mr Garside struck- him as a business man not likely io let sentiment interfere with his interests.

“Keep that in mind while you’re dealing with him. and it may save you money.” Murphy warned. “Well, I’ve got to be getting back to the hospital.” He picked up his Stetson and rose. Mitchell said, “Tell Mr Cameron, if you please, that I’m among the many who will be hoping for a quick recovery.” “Wish you’d drop in and see him after he gets better.” the foreman answoyed. “He’ll be lonesome after he nicks un a bit.” “I’d like to if you think I wouldn’t be intruding.” “I’m sure vou wouldn't. I'll let you know when he can see visitors.” Despite Tim's protests Munson and another cowman walked back as far as the hospital door with him. “You’ve been noticed around town tonight.” Munson explained. “Maybe some lowdown scoundrel is laying in wait for you.” Tim found the night nurse, a stubby round-faced woman of thirty-five, named Tingley, sponging the face of her patient. . (To be Continued).