XVI
_MARCHONS!_
PRIME leaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of thenew 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 Ishould like to meet him--just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never bragon my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellowwas fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy tohave invented a plausible lie to satisfy him."
"Don't be sorry for that," the young woman put in quickly. "If theyarrest us we shall have to tell the truth."
Prime was frowning thoughtfully. "That is where the shoe pinches. Do yourealize that the story we have to tell is one that no sane magistrate orjury could ever believe, Lucetta? These two men, Beaujeau and Cambon,must have started from some known somewhere, alive and well. Theydisappear, and after a while we turn up in possession of theirbelongings and try to account for ourselves by telling a fantasticfairy-tale. It's simply hopeless!"
"You are killing the only suggestion I had in mind," was the dispiritedrejoinder. "I was going to say that we might wait here until they camefor us, but that won't do at all. We must hurry and disappear beforethey come back and find us!"
"I think it will be best," Prime decided promptly. "If we had areasonable story to tell it would be different. But we haven't, and thechances are that we should get into all sorts of trouble trying toexplain for other people a thing that we can't explain for ourselves. Itis 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-timebuoyancy in her tone.
"I have had a notion the last day or two that you were not feeling quiteup to the mark," Prime explained soberly. "It is something about youreyes; 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, decidingwhat they could take and what they must leave behind.
The uncertainties made the decision hard to arrive at. If the trampshould last no more than three or four days they could carry thenecessary food without much difficulty. But they could scarcely affordto give up the blankets and the shelter-tent, and Prime insisted thatthey must take at least one of the guns and the axe. These extras, withthe provisions and the cooking-utensils, made one light load and onerather heavy one, and under this considerable handicap the day's marchwas begun.
The slow progress was difficult from the very outset. Since the riverwas their only guide, they did not dare to leave it to seek an easierpath. By noon Prime saw that his companion was keeping up by sheer forceof will, and he tried to get her to consent to a halt for theafternoon. But she would not give up.
"No," she insisted. "We must go on. I am tired; I'll admit it; but Ishould be something worse than tired if we should have to stop and beovertaken."
From the beginning of the day's march they seemed to have left behindall of the former hopeful signs, and were once more making their waythrough a primeval forest, untouched, so far as they could see, by thewoodsman's axe. Their night camp was made among the solemn spruces bythe side of a little brook winding its way to the nearby river. Primemade a couch of the spruce-tips, the folded tent cloth, and theblankets, and persuaded Lucetta to lie down while he prepared thesupper.
When the meal was ready the substitute cook was the only one who couldeat. Lucetta said she didn't care for anything but a cup of tea, andwhen Prime took it to her he saw that the slate-gray eyes wereunnaturally bright and her face was flushed. Whereat a great fear seizedupon him.
"You are sick!" he exclaimed, grappling helplessly with the unnervingfear. "Why didn't you tell me before? I thought--I hoped you were justtired out with the long tramp."
"I shall be better in the morning," she answered bravely. "It has beencoming on for a day or two, I think. Why did we camp here in this closeplace, where it is so hot?"
Prime gripped his fleeting courage and held it hard. It was not hotunder the spruces; on the contrary, the evening was almost chilly.Bestirring himself quickly to do what little he was able to do, he movedthe sick one gently and set up the tent to shelter her, dipped theremaining bit of the soft deerskin into the brook and made a coldcompress for the aching head, and then sat down with a birch-bark fan tokeep 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, andif the remedies had been at hand he would not have known how to usethem. Time and again, after Lucetta had fallen into a troubled sleep, hemade his way to the riverbank to stare anxiously in the darkness up anddown the stream in the faint hope that help might appear. But for allhis longings the silent river gave back neither sight nor sound.
In the morning Lucetta's fever had abated, but it had left her weak andexhausted; much too weak to continue the march, though she was willingand anxious to make the trial. Prime vetoed that at once and tried hisbest to concoct something out of their diminished store of provisionsthat would prove appetizing to the invalid. She ate a little of thebroth prepared from the smoked deer meat merely to please him, and drankthirstily of the tea; but still Prime was not encouraged.
During the afternoon Lucetta's temperature rose again, and, harassed andanxious as he was, Prime was thankful that the fever did not make herdelirious. That, he told himself, would be the final straw. So far fromwandering, she was able to talk to him; to talk and to thank himgratefully for his earnest but skilless attempts to make her morecomfortable.
"It is simply maddening to think that there isn't anything reallyhelpful that I can do," he protested, at one of these pathetic littleoutbreaks of gratitude. "What do they do for people who have fevers?"
"Quinine," she said, with a twitching of the lips which was meant to bea 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 bumpon a log and do nothing!"
"You mustn't worry," she interposed gently. "You are not responsible forme and my aches and pains. You must try to remember that only a littlemore than three weeks ago we were total strangers to each other."
"Three weeks ago and now are two vastly different things, Lucetta. Youhave proved yourself to be the bravest, pluckiest little comrade that aman ever had! And I--I, whose life you have saved, can do nothing foryou in your time of need. It's heartbreaking!"
The night, which came on all too slowly for the man who could donothing, was even less hopeful than the previous one had been. Though hehad 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 asignal-fire on the remote chance of summoning help in that way.
Between two and three o'clock in the morning the fever began to subsideagain, and the poor patient awoke. She was perfectly reasonable butgreatly depressed, not so much over her own condition as on Prime'saccount. 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 reallyserious or not," she said. "But if I shouldn't--if anything shouldhappen 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 notgoing to die! You _mustn't_ die!"
"I am sure I don't want to," she returned. "Especially just now, when Iwas 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 thoughtthat he could not even offer her a drink out of a vessel that wouldn'ttaste 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 itm
ust be fine to have a family and to be surrounded by all kinds of loveand affection; but those things carry terrible penalties. Did you everthink 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 tohave to leave the loved ones, and it breaks theirs to have you go. Isuppose the girls in the school will be sorry; they all seem to like mepretty well, even if I am a 'cross old maid,' as one of them once calledme to my face."
"I can't imagine you cross; and as to your being old, why you're nothingbut 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 ofgrubby thoughts. You mustn't; you are going to get well again, and we'llmarch along together the same as ever. Or perhaps the sheriff will findus, after all. I've kindled a big fire down on the river-bank so that hewon't have any excuse for overlooking us. Day before yesterday I wouldhave tramped twenty miles to dodge him, but to-night I'd welcome himwith 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 tolet yourself be tied to a petticoat, Cousin Donald. They are always inthe way."
"If I hadn't been tied to a petticoat that could swim, I shouldn't behere to-night fanning the mosquitoes away from you," he retorted, with alaugh that was meant to be cheering. And then he reverted to his oneoverwhelming and blankly insoluble problem: "If I only knew what to dofor you!"
"When I was a little girl we lived in the country, and my motherdoctored the entire neighborhood with roots and herbs. It is a pity Ihaven't inherited a little of her skill, isn't it?"
"There are lashings of pitiful things in this world, Lucetta, and we aregetting acquainted with a few of them right now. But I mustn't let youtalk too much. Try to go to sleep, if you can, and get a little restbefore the fever comes on again."
She closed her eyes obediently, and after a time he knew by her regularbreathing that she was asleep. For a patient hour he kept the birch-barkfan in motion and with the first streakings of dawn got up stiffly tomake his way to the river-bank, dragging with him a half-rotted log toturn the pillar-of-fire signal into a pillar of smoke.
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