Stranded in Arcady

XVI

MARCHONS!

Prime leaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of the new situation.

"I more than half believe you are right," he admitted at length. Then, with a crabbed laugh: "If there is any bigger dunce on earth than I am I should like to meet him – just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never brag on my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellow was fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy to have invented a plausible lie to satisfy him."

"Don't be sorry for that," the young woman put in quickly. "If they arrest us we shall have to tell the truth."

Prime was frowning thoughtfully. "That is where the shoe pinches. Do you realize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate or jury could ever believe, Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon, must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. They disappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of their belongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantastic fairy-tale. It's simply hopeless!"

"You are killing the only suggestion I had in mind," was the dispirited rejoinder. "I was going to say that we might wait here until they came for us, but that won't do at all. We must hurry and disappear before they come back and find us!"

"I think it will be best," Prime decided promptly. "If we had a reasonable story to tell it would be different. But we haven't, and the chances are that we should get into all sorts of trouble trying to explain for other people a thing that we can't explain for ourselves. It is up to us to hit the trail. Are you fit for it?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked, but there was no longer the old-time buoyancy in her tone.

"I have had a notion the last day or two that you were not feeling quite up to the mark," Prime explained soberly. "It is something about your eyes; they look heavy, as if you hadn't had sleep enough."

"I can do my part of anything that we have to do," she returned, rising; and together they made a judicious division of the dunnage, deciding what they could take and what they must leave behind.

The uncertainties made the decision hard to arrive at. If the tramp should last no more than three or four days they could carry the necessary food without much difficulty. But they could scarcely afford to give up the blankets and the shelter-tent, and Prime insisted that they must take at least one of the guns and the axe. These extras, with the provisions and the cooking-utensils, made one light load and one rather heavy one, and under this considerable handicap the day's march was begun.

The slow progress was difficult from the very outset. Since the river was their only guide, they did not dare to leave it to seek an easier path. By noon Prime saw that his companion was keeping up by sheer force of will, and he tried to get her to consent to a halt for the afternoon. But she would not give up.

"No," she insisted. "We must go on. I am tired; I'll admit it; but I should be something worse than tired if we should have to stop and be overtaken."

From the beginning of the day's march they seemed to have left behind all of the former hopeful signs, and were once more making their way through a primeval forest, untouched, so far as they could see, by the woodsman's axe. Their night camp was made among the solemn spruces by the side of a little brook winding its way to the nearby river. Prime made a couch of the spruce-tips, the folded tent cloth, and the blankets, and persuaded Lucetta to lie down while he prepared the supper.

When the meal was ready the substitute cook was the only one who could eat. Lucetta said she didn't care for anything but a cup of tea, and when Prime took it to her he saw that the slate-gray eyes were unnaturally bright and her face was flushed. Whereat a great fear seized upon him.

"You are sick!" he exclaimed, grappling helplessly with the unnerving fear. "Why didn't you tell me before? I thought – I hoped you were just tired out with the long tramp."

"I shall be better in the morning," she answered bravely. "It has been coming on for a day or two, I think. Why did we camp here in this close place, where it is so hot?"

Prime gripped his fleeting courage and held it hard. It was not hot under the spruces; on the contrary, the evening was almost chilly. Bestirring himself quickly to do what little he was able to do, he moved the sick one gently and set up the tent to shelter her, dipped the remaining bit of the soft deerskin into the brook and made a cold compress for the aching head, and then sat down with a birch-bark fan to keep the mosquitoes away.

As the night wore on he realized more and more his utter helplessness. He had had no experience with sickness or with the care of the sick, and if the remedies had been at hand he would not have known how to use them. Time and again, after Lucetta had fallen into a troubled sleep, he made his way to the riverbank to stare anxiously in the darkness up and down the stream in the faint hope that help might appear. But for all his longings the silent river gave back neither sight nor sound.

In the morning Lucetta's fever had abated, but it had left her weak and exhausted; much too weak to continue the march, though she was willing and anxious to make the trial. Prime vetoed that at once and tried his best to concoct something out of their diminished store of provisions that would prove appetizing to the invalid. She ate a little of the broth prepared from the smoked deer meat merely to please him, and drank thirstily of the tea; but still Prime was not encouraged.

During the afternoon Lucetta's temperature rose again, and, harassed and anxious as he was, Prime was thankful that the fever did not make her delirious. That, he told himself, would be the final straw. So far from wandering, she was able to talk to him; to talk and to thank him gratefully for his earnest but skilless attempts to make her more comfortable.

"It is simply maddening to think that there isn't anything really helpful that I can do," he protested, at one of these pathetic little outbreaks of gratitude. "What do they do for people who have fevers?"

"Quinine," she said, with a twitching of the lips which was meant to be a smile. "Why don't you give me a good big dose of quinine, Donald?"

"Yes, why don't I?" he lamented. "Why do I have to sit here like a bump on a log and do nothing!"

"You mustn't worry," she interposed gently. "You are not responsible for me and my aches and pains. You must try to remember that only a little more than three weeks ago we were total strangers to each other."

"Three weeks ago and now are two vastly different things, Lucetta. You have proved yourself to be the bravest, pluckiest little comrade that a man ever had! And I – I, whose life you have saved, can do nothing for you in your time of need. It's heartbreaking!"

The night, which came on all too slowly for the man who could do nothing, was even less hopeful than the previous one had been. Though he had no means of measuring it, Prime was sure that the fever rose higher. For himself he caught only cat-naps now and then during the long hours, and between two of these he went to the river-bank and built a signal-fire on the remote chance of summoning help in that way.

Between two and three o'clock in the morning the fever began to subside again, and the poor patient awoke. She was perfectly reasonable but greatly depressed, not so much over her own condition as on Prime's account. Again she sought to make him take the purely extraneous view, and when that failed she talked quite calmly about the possibilities.

"I have had so little sickness that I hardly know whether this is really serious or not," she said. "But if I shouldn't – if anything should happen to me, I hope you won't – you won't have to bury me in the river."

"For Heaven's sake, don't talk that way!" he burst out. "You're not going to die! You mustn't die!"

"I am sure I don't want to," she returned. "Especially just now, when I was beginning to learn how to live. May I have a drink of water?"

He went to the brook and got it for her, raging inwardly at the thought that he could not even offer her a drink out of a vessel that wouldn't taste tinny. When her thirst was quenched she went on half musingly.

"I am glad there isn't any one to be so very sorry, Donald. I know it must be fine to have a family and to be surrounded by all kinds of love and affection; but those things carry terrible penalties. Did you ever think of that?"

"I hadn't," he confessed. "I've been a sort of lonesome one, myself."

"The penalties work both ways," she went on. "It breaks your heart to have to leave the loved ones, and it breaks theirs to have you go. I suppose the girls in the school will be sorry; they all seem to like me pretty well, even if I am a 'cross old maid,' as one of them once called me to my face."

"I can't imagine you cross; and as to your being old, why you're nothing but a kid, Lucetta – just a poor little sick kiddy. And, goodness knows, you've had enough to knock you out and to make you think all sorts of grubby thoughts. You mustn't; you are going to get well again, and we'll march along together the same as ever. Or perhaps the sheriff will find us, after all. I've kindled a big fire down on the river-bank so that he won't have any excuse for overlooking us. Day before yesterday I would have tramped twenty miles to dodge him, but to-night I'd welcome him with open arms."

"We were foolish to try to run away," she said. "And that was my fault, too. The – the next time you are kidnapped, you must be careful not to let yourself be tied to a petticoat, Cousin Donald. They are always in the way."

"If I hadn't been tied to a petticoat that could swim, I shouldn't be here to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with a laugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his one overwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to do for you!"

"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my mother doctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity I haven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"

"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we are getting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let you talk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little rest before the fever comes on again."

She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regular breathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-bark fan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly to make his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log to turn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.

XVII

ROOTS AND HERBS

The dawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces found Prime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do. Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was the usual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growing weaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe, and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordless and despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they might by now be within reach of help.

It was when matters were at this most distressing pass that the writing-man's invention, pricked alive by what Lucetta had said concerning her mother's skill with simples, opened a temerarious door of hope. Making his charge as comfortable as he could, and leaving a cup of water where she could reach it, he told her he was going for a walk.

Taking the brook for a pathfinder, he traced its course until it led him into a region of opener spaces where there was a better chance for ground growth. In the first weed patch he came to he began to pluck and taste. Unhappily, his knowledge of botany was perilously near a minus quantity; there were few of the weeds that he knew even by name. At the imminent risk of poisoning himself, he went on, chewing a leaf here and there, not knowing in the least what he was looking for, but having an inchoate idea that a febrifuge ought to be something bitter.

The tasting process gave him a variety of new experiences. The leaves of one weed burned his mouth like fire, and he had to stop and plunge his face into the brook to extinguish the conflagration. Those of another made him deathly sick. Finally he came to a tall plant with bluish-white flowers which looked familiar, in a way, though he could not recall its name. A chewed leaf convinced him at once that he need seek no farther. There was the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in its horrible acridity; it clung to him tenaciously while he was gathering an armful of the plant, and went with him on his return to the camp – this, in spite of the fact that he stopped frequently to wash his mouth with brook water.

"What have you there?" was Lucetta's query when he came in with his burden.

"I don't know, but I am hoping you can tell me," he said, giving her a spray of the weed to look at. "Have you ever seen it before?"

"Hundreds of times," she returned. "It is a common weed in Ohio. But I haven't the slightest idea what it is."

Prime groaned. "More of the town-bred education," he deprecated. "But never mind; they can't call us nature-fakirs, whatever other foolish name we may be earning for ourselves."

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.

"Wait and you'll see."

With the bread-mixing tin for a stew-pan Prime made a rich decoction of the leaves. When the mess began to simmer and steam the poor patient raised herself on one elbow to look at it.

"You are not going to make me drink all that, are you, Donald?" she protested weakly.

"Oh, no; not all of it. Wait until it's properly cooked and I'll show you what I am going to do with it."

The cooking took some time, but the culinary effort offered a mild diversion and was at least a change from the deadly routine of doing nothing. The steam rising from the stewing leaves gave off a peculiarly afflicting odor, and Lucetta sniffed it apprehensively.

"It smells very horrible," she ventured. "Is it going to taste as bad as it smells?"

"That, my dear girl, is on the knees of the gods," he returned oracularly.

"How did you find it?" she wanted to know.

"By the simple process of cut and try. And I can assure you that, however bad it may smell or taste, it hasn't anything on some of the leaves I've been chewing this morning."

When the dose was sufficiently cooked Prime fished the leaves out of the liquor with a forked twig, and carried the stew-pan to the brook to take the scalding edge off of the ill-smelling decoction.

"Are you ready to be poisoned?" he asked when he came back.

"You're – you're sure it isn't poison, aren't you?" she quavered.

"No, but I am going to be," and with that he shut his eyes, held his breath, and took a long drink from the stew-pan of fate, disregarding easily, in the frightful bitterness of the draft, Lucetta's little cry of dismay.

"Merely trying it on the dog," he gasped when he put the pan down and turned away so that she should not see the face contortions – grimaces forthshowing the resentment of an outraged palate. Then he went to sit on his blanket-roll to await results. "If – if it doesn't kill me, then you can try it; but – but we'll wait a few minutes and see what it's going to do to me."

When the results proved to be merely embittering and not immediately deadly, he became a nurse again.

"I have left it as hot as you can drink it," he said, offering the basin. "It seems as if it ought to do more good that way. Take a good long swig, if you can stand it."

Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.

"Ou-e-e-e! —boneset!" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet it in another world – it takes me right back to my childhood and mother's roots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simply can't drink all of that!"

"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged, trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If the horrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in five minutes."

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 à 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 gratitude.

"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!"