"It"s brought on a sort of acute indigestion," he said to the others. "I didn"t realize he was so bad. It"s lucky I"m here, for you can"t let such attacks go on, or they get you."
All that night he and Joe sat up with the sick man, and all the next day, and the day after that, he kept the Ranger in bed, and doctored him.
The third day Mills was feeling better, and grew restless.
"You stay where you are," the doctor laughed, "and thank young Tom who got me, and Joe who dosed you till I came, that you"re alive at all!
I"ve got to go to-morrow, but Jerry will stay with you and feed you according to schedule till you"re O.K. again."
"I suppose that means the boys are going to-morrow, too," Mills answered. "They--they got to be home for Christmas. Say, doc, can"t you make "em just sick enough so they"ll have to stay?"
The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Maybe I can get you transferred to headquarters till you"re all right again," he said. "Then you won"t miss the boys so much."
But if it was hard for the Ranger to part with Tom and Joe, it was scarcely less hard for them to leave him, even if it did mean getting home to their families for Christmas, yet they could not put it off a day longer, because already they had just time to make connections at Chicago and reach home on Christmas morning. The Ranger"s sickness had delayed them.
So Tom and Joe began to pack. They had long realized they would have to leave some day, and in mid-winter, so they had sent home by express all their summer clothes and their balloon silk tent and their folding cots, in their trunks, by the last bus out in October. But they still had a big load. All the books, except a few school books, they left for Mills.
Most of their clothes they put on. The two sleeping-bags and the snow-shoes, which belonged to the Ranger, they were to leave with the station agent. Their bearskin caps and coats, which Mills had procured for them, he made them keep as a present, and Tom, for a present to him, left his skis behind. Joe left as his present the warm, soft bed puff he had used ever since he came to the Park, and his aluminum coffee-pot, to take the place of the battered old tin one Mills used.
They packed the toboggan that night, to be ready for an early start, and then sat around the stove for the last time, in the little cabin. The doctor and the other Ranger did all the talking. Mills, who lay on the couch, and the boys did not feel like saying a word.
The next morning Joe cooked the last breakfast. Poor Mills was not allowed to drink any coffee.
"I"m goin" to drink tea after this, anyhow, Joe," he said. "You"ve spoiled my taste for my own coffee, confound you."
He came to the door to help in the last packing of the toboggan. "If you"ve left anything, I"ll keep it till you come back next summer," he said, trying to laugh.
"We"ll be back!" the scouts cried. "We"ll be rangers, too, some day, with you as our boss!"
"I"m goin" to miss you something fierce, boys," Mills added, taking each of them by the hand. "Tom, I can"t never thank you proper for what you did--so we"ll let it go at that. You"re a regular scout, and you and Joe"ll make good whatever you do, and Joe"ll keep as well as he is now, always."
He turned his head suddenly away, and the boys felt a lump in their own throats.
Then they started.
When they looked back to wave, however, he was facing them, and they could see his pale, blue eyes--the eyes of a woodsman--looking at them as they went down the trail.
Opposite the entrance to their old camp, Joe dropped the rope, and ran down the path, to the surprise of Tom and the doctor. He came back with their rough sign, "Camp Kent," and stuck it into the load.
"Gee, if we"d forgotten that for a souvenir!" he cried.
Tom gave the doctor some wild rides on the toboggan in the next two days, while Joe took the hills on skis. They camped that night in the same woods as before, only this time they had no tent, only such protection as they could hastily rig up by making a rough lean-to of evergreen boughs and crawling under it in their sleeping-bags. Each one took a watch to keep the fire going during the night, and they managed to come through fairly comfortably, though it was bitterly cold.
However, they were up long before the sun, and on their way.
The second day the boys knew they were seeing the mountains for the last time, and as they pa.s.sed by old Rising Wolf, his red rocks buried under glistening snow, they loitered a little on the trail and walked with their eyes turned upward and toward the west.
And that evening they were suddenly landed out of the lonely snow-fields and the wilderness of rocks and cliffs and frozen lakes, of deer and lions and avalanches, into the hot, musty smell of a Pullman sleeping car, on the trans-continental limited, bound east!
They each took one sniff, and looked at one another.
Then Tom laughed. "We"ll get used to it again," he said.
"I suppose so," Joe answered, "but gosh! it"s going to be hard work."
CHAPTER x.x.xI--Home Again--Joe"s Christmas Present to His Mother is Sound Health Again, and Tom Rejoices
They got to Chicago the day before Christmas, and had time to go shopping for presents. Tom sneaked off by himself, and returned with a mysterious parcel, which Joe imagined was for him. Twenty-five hours later, they were getting out of the train at Southmead, into the arms of their parents and brothers and sisters, and amid the cheers of the a.s.sembled scouts.
"Well, you are certainly a hard looking pair!" Mr. Rogers laughed. "And hard feeling, too," he added, poking Joe"s legs and arms. "What do you weigh, Joe?"
"I weighed a hundred and fifty-nine in Chicago," Joe answered.
The next two days both boys spent telling everybody the tales of their adventures, and Mr. Rogers took Joe up to Dr. Meyer again, who thumped him and listened at him as before, weighed him and tested him, and then, with a smile, declared he was as fit as a fiddle.
"And mind you live outdoors till you"re twenty-one, and keep so!" he added. "And then go on living outdoors if you can, till you"re a hundred and one. It"s the only way to live, anyhow. I haven"t been out for a week, and I know!"
"Take that news home to your mother as a Christmas present, Joe," said Mr. Rogers.
Then he turned to Tom. "And you, Tom, gave the present of health to Joe.
How do you like giving instead of receiving?"
"Giving? Giving nothing!" Tom exclaimed. "Don"t you make any mistake. I received more pleasure seeing old Joey get fat and strong than I"ll ever give anybody!"
"That"s what I like to hear a scout say," Mr. Rogers smiled, putting an arm over each boy"s shoulder, and hanging his weight on them, to feel how st.u.r.dy they were. Neither flinched an inch, but stood up like hickory posts.
Joe"s Christmas present from Tom--the mysterious bundle he bought in Chicago--was a developing tank and all the chemicals. Joe also received from Lucy Elkins, on Christmas day, a beautiful enlargement of a view of Gunsight Lake and Mount Jackson, to hang in his room. For the next few days he and Tom toiled over the tank, developing their endless rolls of film, and then, when these were printed, they gave an exhibition at the scout house.
But it was several days before they went into the woods.
"Gee, it"s too much like a prairie "round here," Tom said, casting a contemplative glance at their eighteen-hundred-foot mountain.
Finally, however, just before school commenced, they put on snow-shoes, and tramped over a mean little eight inches of snow to the top of their highest hill, out on a ledge above the trees. Southmead lay below them, with all its roofs and steeples gathered in the snowy fields like a herd of cattle. The woods were still.
"It"s not the Rockies," said Tom, "but it"s pretty nice at that, and we"ll get out the old rope on this baby cliff in the spring."
"It"s home," said Joe, "and I"m well again, and can go to school, and help mother, and study for the forestry service with you, and--and--oh, Spider, you"re the best friend a fellow ever had!"
"No," Tom answered, "you"ve got the wrong dope. I"ve got the best friend to be a friend to a fellow ever had. Anyhow, Joey, we"ve given old man tuberculosis the knock out, and had a grand old time doing it. Let"s see if we can start a snowslide here."
But the snow stuck in a huckleberry bush six feet down.
"I guess it"s old Caesar and geometry for us," Tom sighed, "till we beat it for the Rockies for good and all."
"Geometry"s not so exciting," Joe laughed, "but I suppose we"ve got to have it."