As Benjy neared his ranch home he saw that a dim light was burning in his mother’s room. This confirmed his fears that the one he so loved was really ill. Urging his steed to a gallop, he was soon dismounting at the corral, where he left his pony. The front door quietly opened and his brother appeared. He advanced with outstretched hands.
“Hal,” the young lad said, with a sob, “is our mother ill?”
“I don’t know, Benny Boy,” was the reply. “Mother insists that she is merely tired and that she is going to remain in bed until she is rested, and you must pretend that you believe her. It will be hard for you, fearfully hard, but it must be done. Come. Our mother has been listening all day. Just now she called to me and said: ‘Son, go quickly and open the door. My little boy has come home.’ She knows that you are here and so we must not delay longer or she will think it strange.”
Never before had the young lad been through so hard an ordeal. He longed to put his arms about his big, strong brother and sob out his dread and grief, but instead, he had to choke back his tears and enter the dimly lighted room with a smile.
“Little Ben,” the woman on the bed called, with infinite love and tenderness in her voice.
“Mother mine,” the lad replied as he sank on his knees and pressed his cheek against hers. Tears would come but in the dim light they were not seen and his voice sounded cheerful.
“Brother tells me that you are taking a week’s rest. I am so glad. You have needed one for a long time and now Hal and I will show you what fine daughters we would have been, if we hadn’t been sons.”
Harry, standing at the foot of the bed was proud of his brother. Benjy had always been so loved and petted, (even he had given in to the younger lad sometimes when he thought it might be unwise), that he had feared Benjy might not be strong enough to rise to the emergency, but he was doing so bravely. In a voice that sounded natural to his mother, Benjy said: “I’m most starved, Mummie, I hope your new cook can make pies and things as well as you can.”
The older boy had noted a sudden anxious expression on the dear face, for the mother was reproaching herself for having remained in bed when her little Ben was coming home, hungry.
“Indeed, I can,” Hal hastened to say: “You’ll find the larder filled with the choicest viands.”
Kissing the pale cheek, Benjy left the room, turning at the door to toss a kiss and send back a bright smile, but it was to his own room that he went. Throwing himself down on the bed, he sobbed and sobbed. There Hal found him ten minutes later. “I can’t live without my mother,” the younger boy said, “I can’t! I can’t!”
Harry put a comforting arm about his brother. “May heaven grant that we need not for many years to come.”
Then placing a hand on each shoulder, he looked straight into his brother’s eyes. “Benny boy,” he said, “I’m counting on you. It’s hard; well do I know how hard, but cheerful courage is all that our father and mother must see. I have been waiting for your return. Now I am going to ride to Red Riverton for a doctor. I will be back tomorrow morning early, if all goes well.”
“Hal!” Benjy exclaimed, “you aren’t going to take that long hard ride tonight. You know that it isn’t safe to go through Red River mountain pass alone after dark.”
“Even so, there must not be another moment’s delay. I must go tonight. I want you to keep your door open. If our mother stirs, go to her.”
“I won’t try to sleep,” the younger boy replied. “I do not waken easily. I’ll sit up all night.” Hal grasped his brother’s hand to show his approval and then he was gone. It was the hardest night that Benjy Wilson ever lived through, but in it he left his heedless, selfish boyhood in which he had accepted all that his mother had done for him, as due, and realized that he, too, must share the burdens and responsibilities that came every day. When Hal returned at the grey of the next dawn, one glance at his tired brother assured him that his confidence in the younger boy had not been misplaced. Then followed a long half hour filled with anxiety of waiting while the kindly physician made a thorough examination of the little woman so loved by these two boys.
“Where’s our father?” Benjy suddenly asked as he looked up from the fire on the hearth at which he had been thoughtfully gazing since the kindly physician had entered their mother’s room fifteen minutes before.
“Father went to visit the North camp last week and he has not yet returned,” Harry said. “I am glad, for he does not know that our mother has given up trying to keep about. That of course would worry him greatly. I hope that she will be much better before he returns. Dad depends on mother so completely for his comfort and happiness that I fear he would collapse if he knew the truth, as, of course he must know it soon.”
Again they were silent and it was still another quarter of an hour before the door opened. Both boys were on their feet at once eagerly scanning the face of the physician. His cheerful smile was encouraging.
“Lads,” he said as he placed a hand on the shoulder of each, “your mother is not going to die. Mrs. Wilson has unwisely permitted a condition to exist for a long time which should have been corrected months ago. There are very few casualties resulting from the operation which your mother must undergo.”
There was a sudden glad light in the face of the older lad.
“Doctor Warren,” he said, “the hope you are giving us is the greatest joy that has ever come into my life.”
The elderly physician, gazing at the earnest faces, thought that he had never met finer boys. Worthy sons of a brave, courageous little mother.
“Now tell us what we are to do.” The load of dread that had been crushing Harry’s heart having been lifted, the lad was eager to be of active service.
“Your mother must remain in bed until we can build up her strength,” the physician replied. “Perhaps for two weeks, and then we will take her to the Red Riverton hospital and have the slight operation performed, but, first of all I must procure a nurse.”
The physician put his hands in his pockets and turning, gazed thoughtfully at the fire. “There is an epidemic in Red Riverton and I do not like to engage a nurse from there to care for your mother.” Then he glanced up at Hal. “Do you know of anyone near here who would come?”
“I do,” was Benjy’s eager response. “Our good friend Winona will come, I am sure she will, Doctor Warren. She just received a diploma as a practical nurse from the Red Cross Hospital on the Hudson.”
“Fine!” the physician replied. “How soon can we have her here? Where does she live?”
The reply brought a puzzled expression to the face of the doctor.
“An Indian maiden?” he said with a rising inflection. “I have heard of the Papagoes and that they are a remnant of a very superior tribe of red men, but I had not supposed that an Indian girl could possess the qualities required for a nurse. Are you quite sure that it would be wise to have her?”
Strange things happen, stranger than fiction. Before Hal could reply, there was the sound of horses’ feet in the yard, and a moment later a light rapping on the front door.
Hal sprang to open it, and there stood the maiden about whom they had been talking, with little Red Feather at her side.
“Friend Harry,” she said. “Fleet Foot told me that your mother is ill. I thought you might need me.”
The lad stepped forward, his hand outstretched.
“We do indeed need you,” he replied, his voice tense with emotion. Then turning to the older man he added, “Doctor Warren, this is Nurse Winona.”
The physician was deeply impressed with the quiet dignity of the really beautiful Indian girl. Like all others, who knew her, the good man at first could not have told why he thought her beautiful.
Before entering the house, the maid turned and said a few words in the Papago tongue, then little Red Feather, without a word of farewell, mounted his small horse and rode away.
Doctor Warren asked to be permitted to speak alone with the young nurse, and the boys withdrew to prepare a lunch for both the newcomer and the physician who had a long and hard ride ahead of him.
After asking about the training which Winona had received at the Red Cross Hospital, Doctor Warren said:
“Your remuneration will be the same that would be given a nurse from Red Riverton.”
Then it was that the older man knew why the Indian girl was beautiful. “It is a service of friendship that I came to offer,” she quietly replied. “Will you tell me what I am to do?”
An hour later the physician left feeling sure that his directions would be carried out to the letter. He had learned that an Indian maiden could not only be a sincere friend but also an intelligent nurse.
Before Doctor Warren departed he asked Harry to accompany him to the corral. As they walked together, the physician said: “From the conversation I have had with your nurse, I believe her to be very capable, and luckily, just before she left the East, she had the care of a little woman whose condition was the same as your mother’s and so we will trust her to use her own judgment whenever she wishes to do so.”
Mrs. Wilson who had supposed that she had not much longer to be with the little family she so loved, was overjoyed when she realized that she would soon be strong again.
She was lying in the darkened room when Harry entered a few moments after the doctor’s departure. At his side she saw someone dressed in blue with white cap and apron. She was too weak to wonder from where the apparition had come, and so she accepted Winona’s presence as a matter of course believing that she had accompanied the doctor from Red Riverton. Harry merely said, “Mother, this is your nurse.”
The little woman held out a frail hand and smiled wanly, then she closed her eyes and rested. She was conscious all that day that she was being tenderly cared for, and, toward evening when Benjy knelt at her side, in answer to her anxious query, he told his mother that the new nurse was also a fine cook. Mrs. Wilson who had wished that she was up that she might prepare the good things her younger son so liked, felt a sense of relief that did much toward restoring her needed strength.
Never once in the two weeks that followed did the little woman suspect that the slender dark-eyed girl who cared for her was the Indian maiden of whom she had heard. Winona, with her black hair coiled under her nurse’s cap in her blue and white gown might easily have been taken for a French girl.
Harry, wishing his mother to learn to love Winona without prejudice had asked Benjy to address her merely as “Nurse.”
At the end of a fortnight, Mrs. Wilson was strong enough to sit up. When Harry believed that his presence was no longer needed at home, he rode to the northern camp to tell his father what had happened. He was greatly relieved because he could now honestly say that all would be well.
This was not hard for the older man to believe, for on their return they found the little mother seated in the living room and beaming a welcome when they opened the front door. From that day, she rapidly regained her strength, and, at the end of the fortnight, she was driven in a big comfortable car to Red Riverton. It was on that ride that Mrs. Wilson made a discovery which pleased her greatly. It was that her son, Harry, really cared for the girl who had nursed her so tenderly. How she knew this she could not have told, perhaps it was just a mother’s intuition.
Another two weeks passed and the happy family was once more gathered in the ranch home. Mrs. Wilson was soon strong enough to walk about the house, and, the long weeks of anxiety having ended, the members of the household again went about their tasks in a natural manner. Benjy returned with his father to the North Camp and Harry asked Winona if she would like to ride with him to inspect a water-hole not far away. Mrs. Wilson had urged her to go, saying that for an hour she could get along nicely alone. It was during that hour that she learned the real identity of her nurse.