Six weeks had passed in daily routine when one day the young giant
seemed unusually quiet as he went about. His handsome face was very
sober and he sang not at all that morning.
He and Thor slept on a hay-bunk in one corner of the main room, and
that night the Boy awakened more than once to hear his companion
groaning and tossing in his sleep. Corney arose as usual in the morning
and fed the horses, but lay down again while the sisters got breakfast.
He roused himself by an effort and went back to work, but came home
early. He was trembling from head to foot. It was hot summer weather,
but he could not be kept warm. After several hours a reaction set in
and Corney was in a high fever. The family knew well now that he had
the dreaded chills and fever of the backwoods. Margat went out and
gathered a lapful of pipsissewa to make tea, of which Corney was
encouraged to drink copiously.
But in spite of all their herbs and nursing the young man got worse. At
the end of ten days he was greatly reduced in flesh and incapable of
work, so on one of the "well days" that are usual in the course of the
disease he said:
"Say, gurruls, I can't stand it no longer. Guess I better go home. I'm
well enough to drive to-day, for a while anyway; if I'm took down I'll
lay in the wagon, and the horses will fetch me home. Mother'll have me
all right in a week or so. If you run out of grub before I come back
take the canoe to Ellerton's."
So the girls harnessed the horses; the wagon was partly filled with
hay, and Corney, weak and white-faced, drove away on the long rough
road, and left them feeling much as though they were on a desert island
and their only boat had been taken from them.
Half a week had scarcely gone before all three of them, Margat, Loo,
and Thor, were taken down with a yet more virulent form of chills and
fever.
Corney had had every other a "well day," but with these three there
were no "well days" and the house became an abode of misery.
Seven days passed, and now Margat could not leave her bed and Loo was
barely able to walk around the house. She was a brave girl with a fund
of drollery which did much toward keeping up all their spirits, but her
merriest jokes fell ghastly from her wan, pinched face. Thor, though
weak and ill, was the strongest and did for the others, cooking and
serving each day a simple meal, for they could eat very little,
fortunately, perhaps, as there was very little, and Corney could not
return for another week.
Soon Thor was the only one able to rise, and one morning when he
dragged himself to cut the little usual slice of their treasured bacon
he found, to his horror, that the whole piece was gone. It had been
stolen, doubtless by some wild animal, from the little box on the shady
side of the house, where it was kept safe from flies. Now they were
down to flour and tea. He was in despair, when his eye lighted on the
Chickens about the stable; but what's the use? In his feeble state he
might as well try to catch a Deer or a Hawk. Suddenly he remembered his
gun and very soon was preparing a fat Hen for the pot. He boiled it
whole as the easiest way to cook it, and the broth was the first really
tempting food they had had for some time.
They kept alive for three wretched days on that Chicken, and when it
was finished Thor again took down his gun--it seemed a much heavier gun
now. He crawled to the barn, but he was so weak and shaky that he
missed several times before he brought down a fowl. Corney had taken
the rifle away with him and three charges of gun ammunition were all
that now remained.
Thor was surprised to see how few Hens there were now, only three or
four. There used to be over a dozen. Three days later he made another
raid. He saw but one Hen and he used up his last ammunition to get that.
His daily routine now was a monotony of horror. In the morning, which
was his "well time," he prepared a little food for the household and
got ready for the night of raging fever by putting a bucket of water on
a block at the head of each bunk. About one o'clock, with fearful
regularity, the chills would come on, with trembling from head to foot
and chattering teeth, and cold, cold, within and without. Nothing
seemed to give any warmth--fire seemed to have lost its power. There
was nothing to do but to lie and shake and suffer all the slow torture
of freezing to death and shaking to pieces. For six hours it would keep
up, and to the torture, nausea lent its horrid aid throughout; then
about seven or eight o'clock in the evening a change would come; a
burning fever set in; no ice could have seemed cool to him then;
water--water--was all he craved, and drank and drank until three or
four in the morning, when the fever would abate, and a sleep of total
exhaustion followed.
"If you run out of food take the canoe to Ellerton's," was the
brother's last word. Who was to take the canoe?
There was but half a Chicken now between them and starvation, and no
sign of Corney.
For three interminable weeks the deadly program dragged along. It went
on the same yet worse, as the sufferers grew weaker--a few days more
and the Boy also would be unable to leave his couch. Then what?
Despair was on the house and the silent cry of each was, "Oh, God! will
Corney never come?"
V