CHAPTER IX
AN UNEXPECTED GUEST
Ralph soon drew the attention of his friends, and in a few minutes Will Cheever and his companion had made their way into the old factory.
Both looked startled as they entered the room, and serious and anxious as Ralph hurriedly told of his discovery and theory.
"It looks as if you were right, Ralph," said Will as he looked closely at the silent form on the floor.
"Poor fellow!" commented Will's companion. "He must have been lying here all alone—all through that storm, too—since yesterday afternoon."
"He isn't dead," announced Will, but still in an awed tone. "What are you going to do, Ralph?"
"We must get him out of here," answered Ralph. "If one of you could bring the cot over from the clubhouse, we will carry him there."
Will sped away on the mission indicated. When he returned, they prepared to use the cot as a stretcher. The strange boy moved and moaned slightly as they lifted him up, but did not open his eyes, and lay perfectly motionless as they carefully carried him down the stairs, across the ballfield, and into the clubhouse.
There was a telephone there. Ralph hurriedly called up a young physician, very friendly with the boys, and whose services they occasionally required.
He arrived in the course of the next fifteen minutes. He expressed surprise at the wet and draggled condition of his patient, felt his pulse, examined his heart, and sat back with his brows knitted in thoughtfulness.
"Who is he?" inquired the doctor.
"I don't know," answered Ralph. "He is a stranger to Stanley Junction. From his clothes, I should judge he is some poor fellow from the country districts, who has seen hard work," and Ralph told about the first sensational appearance of the stranger at the depot the morning before, and the details of his accidental discovery an hour previous in the old factory.
"Your theory is probably correct, Fairbanks," said the voung physician gravely. "That blow on the head is undoubtedly the cause of his present condition, and that baseball undoubtedly struck him down. Lying neglected and insensible for twenty-four hours, and exposed to the storm, has not helped things any."
"But—is his condition dangerous?" inquired Ralph in a fluttering tone.
"It is decidedly serious, answered the doctor. "There appears to be a suspension of nerve activity, and I would say concussion of the brain. The case puzzles me, however, for the general functions are normal."
"Can't you do something to revive him?" inquired Will.
"I shall try, but I fear returning sensibility will show serious damage to the brain," said the doctor.
He opened his pocket medicine case, and selecting a little phial, prepared a few drops of its contents with water, and hypodermically injected this into the patient's arm.
In a few minutes the watchers observed a warm, healthy flush spread over the white face and limp hands of the recumbent boy. His muscles twitched. He moved, sighed, and became inert again, but seemed now rather in a deep, natural sleep than in a comatose condition.
The doctor watched his patient silently, seemingly satisfied with the effects of his ministrations.
After a while he took up another phial, held back one eyelid of the sleeper with forefinger and thumb, and let a few drops enter the eye of the sleeper.
The patient shot up one hand as if a hot cinder had struck his eyeball. He rubbed the afflicted optic, gasped, squirmed, and came half-upright on one arm. Both eyes opened, one blinking as though smarting with pain.
He wavered so weakly that Ralph braced an arm behind to support him.
"Steady now!" said the doctor, touching his patient with a prodding finger to attract his attention. "Who are you, my friend?"
The boy stared blankly at him as he caught the sound of his voice, and then at the three boys. He did not smile, and there was a peculiarly vacant expression on his face.
Then he moved his lips as if his throat was parched and stiff, and said huskily:
"Hungry."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, puzzled and amused. Ralph himself half-smiled. The demand was so distinctively human it cheered him.
The patient kept looking around as if expecting food to be brought to him. The young physician studied him silently. Then he projected half a dozen quick, sharp questions. His patient did not even appear to hear him. He looked reproachfully about him, and again spoke:
"Fried perch would be pretty good!"
"He must be about half-starved, poor fellow!" observed Will. "Doctor, he acts all right, only desperately hungry. Maybe a good square meal will fix him out all right?"
The doctor moved towards the door, and beckoned Ralph there.
"Fairbanks," he said, "this is a serious matter—no, no, I don't mean the fact that the baseball did the damage," he explained hurriedly, as he saw Ralph's face grow pale and troubled. "That was an accident, and something you could not foresee. I mean that this poor fellow is, for the present at least, helpless as a child."
"Doctor," quavered Ralph, "you don't mean his mind is gone."
"I fear it is."
"Oh, don't say that! don't say that!" pleaded Ralph, falling against the door post and covering his face with his hands.
He was genuinely distressed. All the brightness of his good luck and prospects seemed dashed out. He could not divest his mind of a certain responsibility for the condition of the poor fellow on the cot, whose usefulness in life had been cut short by an accidental "lost ball."
"Don't be overcome—it isn't like you, Fairbanks," chided the doctor gently. "I know you feel badly—we all do. Let us get at the practical end of this business without delay. We had better get the patient removed to the hospital, first thing."
"No!" interrupted Ralph quickly, "not that, doctor—that is, anyway not yet."
"He needs skillful attention."
"He's needing some hash just now!" put in Will Cheever, approaching, his face, despite himself, on a grin. "Hear him!"
The stranger was certainly sticking to his point. "Hash with lots of onions in it!" they heard him call out.
"Will it hurt him to eat, doctor?" inquired Ralph.
"Not a bit of it. In fact, except to feed him and watch, I don't see that he needs anything. You can't splinter a brain shock as you can a broken finger, or poultice a skull depression as you would a bruise. There's simply something mental gone out of the boy's life that science cannot put in again. There is this hope, though: that when the physical shock has fully passed, something may develop for the better."
"You mean to-day, to-morrow"
"Oh, no—weeks, maybe months."
Ralph looked disheartened, but the next moment his face took upon it a look of resolution always adopted when he fully made up his mind to anything.
"Very well," he said, "he must be taken to our house."
With the doctor Ralph was a rare favorite, and his face showed that he read and appreciated the kindly spirit that prompted the young railroader's action. He placed his hand in a friendly way on his shoulder.
"Fairbanks," he said, "you're a good kind, and do credit to yourself, but I fear you are in no shape to take such a burden on your young shoulders."
"It is my burden," said Ralph firmly, "whose else's? Why, doctor! if I let that poor fellow go to the hospital, among utter strangers, handed down the line you don't know where—poorhouse, asylum, and pauper's grave maybe, it would haunt me! No, I feel I am responsible for his condition, and I intend to take care of him, at least until something better for him turns up. Help me, boys."
"I'll drop in to see him again, at your house," said the doctor. "I don't think he will make you any trouble in the way of violence, or that, but you had better keep a constant eye on him."
Ralph thought a good deal on the way to the cottage. He felt that he was doing the right thing, and knew that his mother would not demur to the arrangements he had formulated.
Mrs. Fairbanks not only did not demur, but when she was made aware of the particulars, sustained Ralph in his resolution.
"Poor fellow!" she said sympathetically. "The first thing he needs is a warm bath, and we might find some dry clothes for him, Ralph."
The widow bustled about to do her share in making the unexpected guest comfortable. Will Cheever and his companion felt in duty bound to lend a helping hand to Ralph.
They had put the cot in the middle of the kitchen, and quiet now, but with wide-open eyes, its occupant watched them as they hurriedly got out a tub and put some water to heat on the cook stove.
"Swim," said the stranger, only once, and was content thereafter to watch operations silently.
"He's got dandy muscles—built like a giant!" commented Will, as half an hour later they carried the boy into the neat, cool sitting room, and lodged him among cushions in an easy-chair.
Meantime, Mrs. Fairbanks had not been idle. She had prepared an appetizing lunch. The stranger looked supremely happy as Ralph appeared with a tray of viands. He ate with the zest of a growing, healthy boy, and when he had ended sank back among the cushions and fell into a calm, profound sleep.
"Ralph Fairbanks, you're a brick!" said Will. "He don't look much like the half-drowned, half-starved rat he was when you picked him up."
"Knocked him down, you mean!" said Ralph, with a sigh. "Well, mother, we'll do what we can for him."
"We will do for him just what I pray some one might do for my boy, should such misfortune ever become his lot," said the widow tremulously. "He looks like a hard-working, honest boy. I only hope he may come out of his daze in time. If not, we will do our duty—what we might think a burden may be a blessing in disguise."
"You're always 'casting bread on the waters,' Mrs. Fairbanks!" declared Will, in his crisp, offhand way.
To return after many days—light-headed, light-hearted Will Cheever! There are incidents in every boy's life which are the connecting links with all the unknown future, and for Ralph Fairbanks, although he little dreamed it, this was one of them.