Page 26 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
“We’re waiting for our uncle,” said Theodore.
“Uncle?” said Steady Shaffler, sounding a little surprised, and taking a keener survey of the small newcomers. “Well, if he’s got a claim around here I reckon I’d know him. What’s his name?”
“Mr. John Bertram, from Flat Rock,” said Margot. “I don’t know if he lives rightinFlat Rock. He owns mines, and his house is near them.”
A curious little line crossed Steady’s forehead at her last words. He scratched his jaw and considered for a minute. “Can’t say I know anyone by that name,” he said. “He wouldn’t, by any chance, have another one?”
Margot looked politely puzzled. “No, that was the name on his letters to Mother. He owns mines, and a store—and he’s an Englishman.”
Steady and Butch, who had come up in time to hear this, exchanged an odd glance. “English,” said Steady. “Your Uncle John?”
The children nodded.
Steady looked at Butch again, and Butch, never at his best in situations requiring rapid thought, looked back blankly.
“Well,” said Steady, “Imightknow the feller you mean...but I don’t rightly expect he’ll be in Flat Rock today. I think, Butch, maybe I oughter take the kids over to Mrs. Mulligan’s cabin to wait a spell, and you go and find Doc Hatch. Might be he’ll know what’s best to do.
Butch, looking relieved at such a simple assignment, nodded agreement. He slung the loose ropes in his hand back across the still-loaded wagon and tromped off down the gulch.
“Come along, kids,” said Steady Shaffler, a little heavily but still cheerfully. “Want I should carry that bag for you, or carry the little feller?”
“No, thank you, I can manage,” said Margot; and ‘the little feller’ gave Mr. Shaffler such a lofty stare that Steady was unaccountably reminded of a bighorn ram he had met on a mountainside once, and did not repeat the offer.
They proceeded up the crooked road that was Flat Rock, Margot on one side of the prospector clutching the carpetbag in one hand and Dominic’s little fist in the other, and Theodore on his other side trotting and hopping to keep up with Steady’s longer stride. Presently they came to a cabin on the outskirts of camp, which was difficult to see clearly through the smoke and steam of several fires with large kettles of washing boiling over them. A row of clotheslines out back flew the faded flags of clean shirts and long underwear in every size and state of repair, and in the middle of the steam was Mrs. Mulligan, stirring the largest kettle with a long pole. She was a stoutish woman whose calico dress and apron pinched her in at the middle as if they had been washed and shrunk a few times too many, with a plain, mottled face and large hands always red from hot water. Her iron-gray hair was pulled up in a tight knot on top of her head, and wisps too short to reach the knot stood out in all directions, frizzled from steam and labor, giving her a look of being perpetually startled.
Steady attempted to murmur something to her without moving his lips, of which she understood enough to take a searching squint at the children, and nod. She stood her dripping pole against the cabin and wiped her hands on her damp apron, and beckoned them inside with a brusque but hospitable gesture.
“Mind the washtub,” she said as they filed inside, “there’s things soaking in it. Set down over there if you like.”
Mrs. Mulligan’s quarters were spartan: a stove, a table, a bunk with calico curtain half drawn, a few shelves of supplies.Anything else the room might have contained was hidden by piles of clean laundry.
She eyed the children as they sat very close together on the edge of the bunk, taking stock of Margot’s coat and the boys’ jackets and knickers with her experienced washerwoman’s eye. Good fabrics, better than she was used to handling—castoffs, probably, already a little too small, and boots well shined to hide the scuffed and thin places.
“Have you et anything?” she asked a shade less stiffly.
“Yes, thank you,” said Margot.
“This morning,” added Theodore, possibly hoping this would be a hint.
Before it could be taken, however, there were footsteps outside, and Steady Shaffler moved aside from the door to admit the newcomers. Doc Hatch ducked in first, and Butch Donnell remained in the doorway, as his bulk would certainly have over-filled the little cabin. The doctor was a bearded man who could have been taken for a miner himself, had it not been for his rusty black suit and the battered doctor’s bag that was always in his hand. Some said he had come West as Doctor Hatcher and had it shortened to Doc Hatch, for convenience, but no one had ever confirmed the story—as has been seen, full and proper names were not the first priority in Flat Rock.
He stopped just over the threshold and took a survey of the three children sitting in a row on Mrs. Mulligan’s bunk. “Well,” he said, “and what have we got here?”
“We’re not sick,” said Dominic.
“Of course you aren’t,” said Doc Hatch, setting his bag on the table. “You look encouragingly healthy. Good thing, too, because I have more patients than I can handle. But the denizens of this encampment persist in regarding me as a leading citizen, and so I am summoned to arbitrate all sorts of matters for which I don’tcarry a remedy in this bag.” He gave it a rap over the handles. “May I have the pleasure of an introduction?”
“My name is Margot Wood,” said Margot, sliding off the bunk to give him her hand with pretty, serious good manners, “and these are my brothers, Theodore and Dominic. We were supposed to meet our uncle.”
“Uncle. Ah. Yes,” said Doc Hatch, with a glance at his fellow-citizens. “These gentlemen have been telling me. From the sounds of it, I believe Ididknow your uncle, but I’m afraid I have to tell you that...he died, last week.”
There was a short pause. “He died?” said Margot. And then in a smaller, quieter voice, “Oh.”
She looked from Mrs. Mulligan to Steady Shaffler, and for one second they saw not a capable little woman but an uncertain little girl, and in that second two rough-and-tumble hearts went straight out to her.
Doc Hatch was biting his thumbnail with a thoughtful frown. “Have you any other relations living?”
“Our father is dead,” said Margot, “and our mother gives music-lessons in New York, but,” she added, very proper again, “she’s presently between situations.”
