"Anything you want, let us know, sir," said Tim Walsh, as the men tramped out again.
Then Tom and Ferrers sat down to try to think out the best thing to do for Harry Hazelton.
He was still alive, his pulse going feebly. He had been briskly rubbed and warmly wrapped, and a quant.i.ty of hot, strong coffee forced gently down his throat.
After a while Hazelton came to, but his eyes had a gla.s.sy look in them.
"You"re a great one, old fellow, to go out into the snow and get lost," Tom chided him gently.
"Did---I get---lost?" Harry asked drowsily.
"Yes. Here, drink some more of this coffee. Jim, make a fresh pot. You can stir the fire up a bit now."
"I---want to sleep," Harry protested, but Tom forced him to drink more coffee. Then Hazelton sank into a deep slumber, breathing more heavily.
"He"s all right, now, or will be when he has slept," declared Jim Ferrers.
"Is he?" retorted Tom, who held one hand against Harry"s flushed face, then ran the fingers down under his chum"s shirt. "Jim, he"s burning up with fever. That"s all that ails him!"
Then Tom placed one ear over Hazelton"s heart.
"None too strong," Reade announced, shifting his head. "And here"s a wheezy sound in his right lung that I don"t like at all."
"You don"t suppose it"s pneumonia?" asked Jim gravely.
It was congestion of the right lung that ailed Harry Hazelton.
But Tom knew nothing of that. Jim Ferrers, who had never been ill in his life, knew even less about sickness.
As for Harry, he lay dangerously ill, with a doctor"s help out of the question!
CHAPTER XX
TOM TURNS DOCTOR
The door opened almost noiselessly.
"Shut that door," cried Tom, angrily, without looking around.
"Whoever you are, do you know that we have a sick man here"
"Well, the men chased me out of one shack, and wouldn"t let me in the other, and I don"t want to go near the cook," complained a whining young voice.
It was Alf Drew who uttered the words.
"Shut the door," Tom repeated.
"May I stay here?" asked Alf, after obeying.
"I suppose so, though we have about enough trouble here already.
Why did the men chase you out of their shack?"
"They said they couldn"t stand the smell of cigarettes," Drew replied.
"I don"t wonder at that," muttered Tom.
"They were all smoking. I don"t see why I couldn"t smoke, too,"
Alf whined.
"That"s just the point," Tom returned. "The men were smoking.
Now, as I"ve told you before, the use of cigarettes isn"t smoking at all. You annoyed men who were minding their own business."
"They"re a mean lot," complained young Drew. Being cold he went over to the fire to warm himself. Then he drew a cigarette from one of his pockets, and struck a match. Tom Reade, slipping up behind the youngster, deftly took the cigarette away from him, tossing it into the fire.
"You"ll have to quit that," Tom ordered sternly. "If I catch you trying to light a cigarette then out you go. We have a man here sick with lung trouble and with a high fever, and we don"t propose to have any cigarette smoke around here."
"What am I going to do, then?" asked Alf, after a minute or so spent in a kind of trance.
"Do anything you please, as long as you keep quiet and don"t light any cigarettes," Tom suggested, rummaging in the cupboard for a medicine chest that he knew was there.
"But I"ll go to pieces, if I can"t smoke a cigarette or two," whined the boy.
Tom had the medicine chest in his lap by this time. His hand touched a bottle of pellets labeled "qua.s.sia."
"Here, chew on one of these, and you won"t need your cigarette,"
Tom suggested, pa.s.sing over a pellet.
Alf mutely took the pellet, crushing it with his teeth.
"Ugh!" he uttered disgustedly.
"Don"t spit it out," urged Tom. "It"s the best thing possible to take the place of a cigarette. Keep it in your mouth until it is all dissolved."
Alf made a wry face, but knew he must obey Tom. So he stuck to the pellet until the last of it had dissolved on his tongue. The pellet was gone, but the taste wasn"t.
"Ugh!" grunted the youngster.
"You said that before," urged Tom. "Try to be original. Want another pellet?"
"No; I don"t. I wouldn"t touch one again!"
"Don"t happen to want a cigarette, either, do you?"
"I don"t want anything, now, but just to get that taste out of my mouth," Alf uttered.
"All right; go over in the corner and keep quiet. Jim, do you know anything about the use of the medicines in this chest?"