The Desert and the Sown Part 11

"What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?"

"You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in.

The alt.i.tude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call."

"Been here all the time?"

"Have I been here?--yes."

"'Lone?"

"With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?"

The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. "Something busted inside, I guess," he panted. "'Tain't no killing matter, though."

Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refused with a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another rest. It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of thought apparently.

"Family all in New York?"

"My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them."

"You don't _live_ West!"

"No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state."

The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up the blanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for more nourishment, brought the sad decoction,--rinds of dried beef cooked with rice in snow water.

"Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin glove."

"When I was a little fellow," said the nurse, beguiling the patient while he tucked the spoonfuls down, "I was like you: I wouldn't take what the doctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for the others of the family,--a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother,' they would say; and of course it couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much.

'And now one for Chrissy'"--

"Who?"

"My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for each of the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of the household, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this for me, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead one; and we haven't the conveniences for a first-cla.s.s funeral."

"You never took a spoonful for 'father,'--eh?"

Paul answered the question with gravity. "No. We never used that name in common."

"Dead was he?"

"I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now."

Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contents with water, and retired out of his patient's sight.

Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk.

"Did you ask for anything?"

The sick man heaved a worried sigh. "See what a mis'rable presumptuous piece of work!" he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. "But that Clauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven!

Couldn't 'a' done much worse than this, though!"

"He has done worse!" Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on this matter. "They started back from here, four strong men with all the animals and all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in in one. If they got through at all, where is the help they were to send us?"

"Help!" The packer roused. "They helped themselves, and pretty frequent.

I said to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We can't drink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too light. What a man would take with his dinner down there would fit him out with a first-cla.s.s jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'"

"It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and we haven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you in after us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us."

The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs, dislodging ancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was carefully wiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face.

"John," said Paul with animation, "your general appearance just now reminds me of those worked-out placer claims we pa.s.sed in Ruby Gulch, the first day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to the bone."

John smiled faintly. "Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git all that baird on your face?"

"We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have been living in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. And other times I didn't."

"You mean I was off my head?"

"At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in your dreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever."

"Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?" The hazard was a question.

"A kind of sense,--out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't you coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?"

Packer John apologized sheepishly, "I cal'lated I was going to be left.

You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I just took a little to deaden the pain."

"The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we were talking about," said Paul. "I wanted to get them off and out of hearing.

Then we had a few words."

At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended his strength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they were open, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on his guard.

"What day of the month do you make it out to be?"

"The second of December."

"December!" The packer lay still considering. "Game all gone down?"

"I am not much of a pot-hunter," said Paul. "There may be game, but I can't seem to get it. The snow is pretty deep."

"Wouldn't bear a man on snowshoes?"

"He would go out of sight."

"Snowing a little every day?"

"Right along, quietly, for I don't know how many days! I think the sky is packed with it a mile deep."