Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tucked her up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made up a roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhood that fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake of pan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found that Lucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw that fine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.
It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.
"Much better; only I"m so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away.
Can"t you take at least one of the blankets off?"
"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you some of your own medicine. This is Domestic Science as applied to the human organization.
Just imagine you are a missionary on one of the South Sea Islands, and that you are going to be served up presently _a la_ Fiji. Shall I try to fix you up something to eat?"
"Not yet. But I feel as if I could drink the brook dry."
"No cold water," he decided authoritatively. "The doctor forbids it. But you may have another drink of hot boneset tea."
"Oh, please, not again!" she pleaded; and at that he made her a cup of the other kind of tea, which she drank gratefully.
"Taste good?" he inquired.
"It tastes like the boneset--everything is going to taste like boneset for the next six weeks."
"Don"t I know?" he chuckled. "Hasn"t it already spoiled my dinner for me? I could taste it in everything." Then he told her about his experiment in pan-bread, adding: "I have saved a piece of it so that if you wish to commit suicide after you get well, the means will be at hand."
"Do you think I am going to get well, Donald?"
"Sure you are! You"ll have to do it in self-defense. Just think of the oceans of bitterness you"ll have to swallow if you don"t. What is puzzling me now is to know what I am going to feed you. Do you suppose you could tell me how to make some pap or gruel, or something of that sort?"
She smiled at this, as he hoped she would, and said there was no need of crossing that bridge until they should come to it. Shortly after this she fell asleep again, and by nightfall Prime was overjoyed to find that her breathing was more natural, and that the fever was not rising. With the coming of the darkness a fine breeze blew up from the river, and he was overjoyed again when it proved strong enough to drive the tormenting mosquitoes back into the forest.
That night he was able to make up some of the lost sleep of the two preceding nights, and when daybreak came another burden was lifted.
Lucetta had slept all night, and she declared she was feeling much better; that the fever seemed to be entirely gone. This brought the question of nourishment to the fore again, and Prime attacked it bravely, opening their last tin of peas and making a broth of the liquor thickened with a little of the reground flour. Lucetta ate it to oblige him, though it was as flat and tasteless as any unsalted mixture must be.
"Are you always as good as this to every strange woman you meet, Cousin Donald?" she said, meaning to make the query some expression of her own grat.i.tude.
"Always," he returned promptly. "I can"t help it, you know; I"m built that way. But you are no strange woman, Lucetta. If I can"t do more for you, I couldn"t very well do less. We are partners, and thus far we have shared things as they have come along--the good and the bad. What is troubling me most now is the same thing that was troubling me last night: I don"t know what I am going to feed you. You need a meat broth of some kind."
"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.
"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the fever doesn"t come back, I"ll take the gun and see if I can"t get a rabbit. I saw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won"t be afraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"
"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid of anything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was once afraid of a mouse!"
"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouse again when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properly an object of terror. I shan"t think any the less of you if that does happen."
She smiled up at him.
"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what do they mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"
"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I know my own ideal."
"She is the imaginary girl whose picture you are going to show me when we get out?"
He laughed happily. "You mustn"t make me talk about that girl now, Lucetta. Some day I"ll tell you all about her. Perhaps it is only fair to say that she is not so terribly imaginary as she might be."
"Of course not--if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and a little while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that he might take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished to do.
She did go to sleep, but Prime did not go hunting until after the midday meal; and thus it happened that when Lucetta awoke, along in the afternoon, she found herself alone. For an hour or two she was content to lie quietly, waiting for Prime to return, but when the afternoon drew to a close and he still failed to put in an appearance she got up, rather totteringly, and replenished the camp-fire.
Another hour pa.s.sed and she began to grow anxious. The spruce grove was plunged in shadows, but the sun had not yet set for the upper regions of the air. By the time it was fully dark she knew that Prime was lost, and in this new terror she was able to forget, in some measure at least, the effects of her late illness. Bestirring herself once more, she put more wood on the fire, hoping that it might blaze high enough to serve as a signal for the wanderer.
It was all she could do, and having done it she sat down to wait, her anxiety growing sharper as the evening wore on and there was neither sight nor sound to foreshadow the lost one"s return.
XVIII
HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS
If she had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly.
What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified imagination conjured up harrowing pictures of the missing one lying wounded and helpless in some distant forest solitude, a victim of his unselfish effort to provide not for his own needs but for hers. The thought was a keen torture, but she could not banish it, and as the hours lengthened it threatened to drive her mad. There was nothing she could do save to keep the fire burning brightly, and this she did, breaking the monotony of the unnerving suspense from time to time by collecting dry wood to heap upon the blaze.
It was nearly midnight before the agony came to a sudden end. She was lying on the blanket pallet, with her face hidden in the crook of an elbow when she looked up and saw Prime standing beside her. It was not in human nature to undergo the revulsion from the depths of despair calmly.
"Donald!" she shrieked faintly, and forgetting her weakness, she sprang up and flung herself into his arms, sobbing in an ecstasy of relief.
He took it in good brotherly fashion, and if the fraternal att.i.tude was not strictly sincere, it was made to appear so.
"There, there, little woman," he comforted, "you mustn"t turn loose that way--you"ll make yourself sick again. It"s all over now, and I got your rabbit. See, here it is"--drawing it from his pocket and dangling it before her as if it were a new toy and she a child to be hastily diverted.
The diversion was not needed; she was freeing herself from the clasp of the remaining rea.s.suring arm, and her cheeks were aflame.
"I didn"t know I could be so silly! Please don"t hold it against me, Donald," she begged. "If you only knew what I have been through since it grew dark! You"ll forgive me and--and not remember it after we--after we----"
His weariness fell from him like a castoff garment. "Not if you don"t want me to, Lucetta. But it was rather--er--pleasant, you know--to find that some one really cared enough about what had become of me to--to sort of forget herself for a moment."
The firelight was strong, and if he saw the adoring look that flashed into the gray eyes he was magnanimous enough, or modest enough, to pa.s.s it over to the sudden transition from despair to relief.
"It must have been something fierce for you," he went on; "but I did the best I could after I had been idiotic enough to get lost. Of course, since I had the gun with me, it was hours before I got sight of a rabbit; and even then I had to shoot at half a dozen of them before I could manage to hit one. By that time it was getting on toward sunset, and I had lost the brook which I had taken for a guide."
"I knew you would," she broke in. "But that wasn"t the worst of it. I kept imagining that you had shot yourself accidentally, and every time I closed my eyes I could see you lying wounded and helpless!"
"You poor little worrier!" he pitied; "I knew you would be scared stiff if I didn"t get back by dark, and in my hurry I bore too far to the left; a great deal too far, as it turned out, for when I reached the river I recognized the place. It was just this side of the grove where we were camping when the canoe was stolen."
"Horrors!" she gasped faintly. "And you have walked all that distance?"