CHAPTER X
A FRIEND INDEED
Hiram Strong was not likely to forget the experiences of that night. He did not feel that he was braver than anyone else in remaining with the delirious man and doing what he could for him. Merely, he did not see how he could ever respect himself again if he deserted the stranger.
And to desert the sick man was to desert, as well, Sunnyside Farm and his employment. Hiram could not do that. But he realized that, if this was a case of smallpox as it seemed to be, he had made a pesthouse of the shed in which he had camped for these few weeks, and none of the expected workmen would remain on the place while the case was developing.
However, he plucked up sufficient courage to go back at once to the sick man and complete his preparations for bed. He had already exposed himself to infection, and if he, too, was doomed to the disease, he believed he could do nothing now to prevent it.
Nevertheless, there was something extremely dreadful to him in the thought of smallpox—mainly, perhaps, because of the possible scars to be left on the body.
Hiram neglected the unfortunate man not at all, however. Distasteful as the thought of handling him was, the youth that night did all in his power for the stranger's comfort.
He kept water at boiling temperature on the stove, and made a wash with soda with which he bathed the sick man several times to reduce the fever. The purple face, the puffed eyelids, the drooling lips, altogether made the victim a most unpleasant looking object.
Yet Hiram thought that, in his right mind and free of fever, this fellow who called himself Orrin Post might be a very good looking man indeed. And he judged his age to be not far along in the twenties.
Hiram got no sleep at all. The patient began to thrash about toward morning and was more delirious than before. Occasionally he seemed to be taken with a slight chill, and his nurse kept the temperature of the little room much higher than 70°.
"This might be good for that corn test," Hiram once thought.
But he was not giving much attention to anything but his care of Orrin Post. He harked back to Mother Atterson's recipes for caring for persons who were ill. He found a stone bottle and filled that with hot water and put it to the patient's feet to counteract the chills. He wished he had some medicine to give him. Hiram wondered how he could send for a doctor in the morning. Whom could he get to go? And would a doctor come to attend a smallpox patient—any doctor but the physician for the county's poor?
Occasionally he examined that eruption. It was spreading over the man's chest. If it was smallpox—
What a night that was! At daybreak—a chill and darksome dawn—Hiram went to the door, looked out, and finally stepped out and closed the door behind him. His eyelids were swollen for lack of sleep. He was tired to the bone!
The pale light in the sky grew slowly. Something stirred in the road—toward the Pringle cottage. Miss Pringle and Abigail were always early risers. And here came one of them along the road!
"Hiram Strong! is that you? For the land's sake what have you been havin' a light in your window for the whole live-long night?"
There was no mistaking the energetic voice of his neighbor. She hurried in at the gate, her head and arms wrapped in a shawl.
"Are you sick, or what is it?" pursued Miss Pringle. "I said to Abigail, 'I'm going to find out what that light means if it's the last act of my life—and before I have my breakfast, too!' I declare I waked up a dozen times during the night and saw your light winkin' at me just like a star. What is the matter?"
"Don't come any nearer, please, Miss Pringle," Hiram broke in. "You mustn't."
"Mustn't what?"
"Come any nearer to me."
"What's the matter with you, Hiram Strong? You ain't going to explode like dynamite, are you?"
"It's worse than dynamite."
"For the land's sake! what is it?"
"It is smallpox," said Hiram, his voice on the point of breaking.
"What's that?" gasped the woman. "Smallpox? You haven't got such a thing."
"Perhaps not—not yet," Hiram said. Then he told her about his visitor and how he had found Orrin Post in the calf pen.
"And you've been tending him all night, Hiram! You poor fellow!" exclaimed Miss Pringle, bustling forward again.
"Oh! But you must not come here!" cried Hiram. "You find somebody to send to fetch a doctor. I'll stay and look after the fellow now I've begun the job."
"And you don't really know it's smallpox. I'd took nice getting Dr. Marble up here, tellin' him it was smallpox, and then having it turn out to be nothing of the kind. He'd never let me hear the last of it. Let me see this Orrin Post."
"But, Miss Pringle, you must not!"
"Go along! Do you think I'm afraid, Hiram Strong? I guess I'm just as brave as you are."
She pushed right by him and went into the house. The air was warm and close, and she sniffed it energetically.
"If smallpox was much developed you could smell it, Hiram," she declared. "No mistake about that. The poor fellow! How red he is! Looks more like scarlet fever, if you ask me."
She went to the bunk and placed her soft, cool palm on the patient's forehead. Almost instantly his head stopped weaving from side to side on the pillow. He sighed and murmured, asking for water.
Hiram caught up the pitcher and went out to the pump. When he returned Miss Pringle had been examining the sick man's chest. She straightened up and looked back over her shoulder at Hiram. The grin with which she favored him was the most beautiful smile the young fellow had ever beheld.
"Men certainly are helpless creatures," she said, breaking into a chuckle. "Though I will say you're better than most, Hiram Strong. Put out that lamp. Don't let it shine in his eyes. He wants to be in the dark as much as possible. He's developing as fine a case of measles as I ever saw and that's a fact!"
Relieved? Hiram Strong could have readily and heartily given three cheers.
"I—I've had the measles, Miss Pringle," he said warmly. "How glad I am you came over. I'm not afraid of measles."
"I should hope not! Though I guess this fellow's got 'em pretty hard. It is sometimes serious with folks as old as he is. But we'll pull him through, Hiram—you and me together," she added with her old-time smirk.
But she could not disturb Hiram's equanimity now.
"You are a friend in need, Miss Pringle," he said.
"I should hope so! Those are the only friends to have—especially in the country. We all need to help each other out here on the farms."
"We'll get a doctor for him," said Hiram, promptly. "I'll pay the fee."
"You'll spend your money in no such foolish way," declared Miss Pringle, energetically. "I'd be ashamed to have the neighbors know I sent for Dr. Marble for a case of measles.
"You've treated this poor fellow all right, Hiram, as far as you've gone. After breakfast I'll come back with some medicine I've got to reduce his fever. You'll have enough to do around here daytimes tending to your work. I'll do the nursing for the poor fellow during the day if you'll look after him at night."
"My goodness!" said Hiram, with fervor, "I'll do all I can. It is a relief to know it isn't smallpox."
"You musn't neglect your work," Miss Pringle said, as they both came out of the house again. "You've got some men coming, haven't you?"
"In a day or two."
"That Ad Banks was around yesterday, wasn't he? I guess he's after a job with you, after all, even if you are a mite young for a boss," and she chuckled.
"I did not see him."
"That so? I saw him hanging about the barn and smoking that old pipe of his."
"He can't get into the barn very easily. The doors are all locked," said Hiram. Then, suddenly remembering the pipe he had found, he drew it from his pocket. "Could this be Adam Banks' pipe?" he asked.
"Guess it could—and it is," said Miss Pringle promptly, sniffing at the odorous pipe. "I'd know that old thing anywhere. It's Ad Banks'. Where'd you find it?"
"Where it had no business to be. Inside one of the sheds. Funny it should have been down there, too. I thought it belonged to this Orrin Post. I wonder what that Banks fellow was doing down there?"
Miss Pringle bustled away and Hiram set about getting his own breakfast. The sick man murmured for water occasionally, but otherwise needed little attention until Miss Pringle came back.
"Yancey Battick is all wrong about Delia Pringle," thought Hiram. "She may have her peculiarities, but she has a heart of gold."