The Doctor's Red Lamp. Various
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we got back, Kate was still a-groaning and crying. Mary Alice told her to cease her complainings and put her trust in One who was mighty to save. Then Mary Alice snatched up the bottle of sweet-oil that set there on the table, and started at Kate with it. ‘She won’t have it on her,’ I says, ‘it ain’t no use to try.’ ‘She’s got to have it,’ Mary Alice says, ‘whether she wants it or not. It’s a part of James’s directions.’ Kate begun to holler and throw out her arms when she saw the oil coming. ‘Take it away,’ she says; ‘it makes me sick!’ ‘You hold her hands,’ Mary Alice says, ‘while I pour it on her.’ So I set down and took a good grip on Kate’s hands, and Mary Alice poured the oil on her, and it went all over her face and head and the pillow, she kept threshing around so lively, and hollering till her mouth was full. Then Kate she cried and carried on, and said we were treating her shameful, and would be sorry for it when she was dead and gone: We never paid any attention to her, of course, but got down on both sides of the bed and went to praying as loud and earnest as we could, so as to drown the groaning. Then Kate said she didn’t want to be prayed for nohow, that what she wanted was the doctor. Mary Alice told her she was plumb out of her senses, and didn’t know what she was talking about. And Kate said, no such a thing; that she was a mighty sick woman, but she was in her right mind, and knew what she wanted, and that it was the doctor. She said the doctor was the only friend she had on earth. She said the doctor wouldn’t stand by and see her die and never lift a hand, and she knew it. She said he would know of something to give her that would ease them aches and pains, and let her die in peace. But she said of course if the doctor was there she wouldn’t need to die—that he would save her. She set up in bed. ‘Melissy Allgood,’ she says, ‘run over and tell your pa to mount his horse and ride for the doctor,’ she says, ‘and never stop till he finds him!’ ‘Land of the living, Kate,’ I says, ‘you know the doctor is thirty mile and more away, and nobody knows where he’s at by now.’ ‘Tell Mr. Garry I say not to stop till he finds him!’ Kate says. ‘And to keep life in me till he gets here,’ she says, ‘I want old Dr. Pegram, at Dixie, sent for immediate. He ought to get here in three hours’ time. You tell Tommy T. Nickins to take my mare and go for him, quick!’ she says. ‘And Mary Alice Welden, you go down in the cellar and bring me one of those bottles of blackberry cordial, to keep up my strength till Dr. Pegram comes.’
“Mary Alice and me were smitten dumb right there where we was at, on our knees. ‘Kate Negley,’ I got the voice to say, ‘are you sure them are your right-minded wishes, and not the devil speaking through you?’ ‘I tell you to do what I say, and hurry up!’ Kate says. ‘Do you reckon I want to die?’
“Mary Alice rose and walked out with never a word; but if I ever saw complete disgust wrote on anybody’s face, it was hers. I had to go down and get the blackberry cordial myself, and you ought to have seen Kate make away with it. Then I went out and started off Tommy T. and pa.
“Old Dr. Pegram was there inside of three hours, dosing out big pills for Kate to take every half-hour, and powders every fifteen minutes; and it looked like Kate couldn’t swallow them fast enough to suit her. Dr. Pegram told ma and me that Kate had a mild case of the grippe, and there wasn’t no earthly danger.
“When Dr. Negley and pa come poking in after midnight that night, wore out and muddy, you never saw as happy a woman in your life as Kate. She laughed and she cried, and she hugged the doctor, and she kissed him, and she said there never was anybody like him, that he was her sweet angel from heaven, and the dearest darling on earth, and she knew she wouldn’t have no chance to die, now he had come and would know just what to do for her. And I reckon the doctor was the worst-astonished man that ever was; but he was a heap too polite and kind to let on, and went on dosing out physic for her just as if there wasn’t anything out of the common. And never a word did he ever say to her, either, about having his camp-hunt broke up; and that’s the reason I know he’s sanctified, for, like I told ma, what sainted martyr could do better?
“Of course the Station was shaken to the foundations over Kate acting that way, and there was a big time of rejoicing amongst the scoffers. And Mary Alice Welden hasn’t spoken to Kate since, and says she never will. But I tell Mary Alice she ought to be ashamed of herself; that she’s too ready in her judgments, and needs to make allowance for humans being humans, and for folks changing with circumstances.”
Lucy S. Furman.
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