“Bacon grease and turpentine,” Bud answered him despondently. “I'll have to commence on something else, though—turpentine's played out I used it most all up on you.”
“Coal oil's good. And fry up a mess of onions and make a poultice.” He put up a shaking hand before his mouth and coughed behind it, stifling the sound all he could.
Lovin Child threw up his hands and whimpered, and Bud went over to him anxiously. “His little hands are awful hot,” he muttered. “He's been that way all night.”
Cash did not answer. There did not seem anything to say that would do any good. He drank his coffee and eyed the two, lifting his eyebrows now and then at some new thought.
“Looks like you, Bud,” he croaked suddenly. “Eyes, expression, mouth—you could pass him off as your own kid, if you wanted to.”
“I might, at that,” Bud whispered absently. “I've been seeing you in him, though, all along. He lifts his eyebrows same way you do.”
“Ain't like me,” Cash denied weakly, studying Lovin Child. “Give him here again, and you go fry them onions. I would—if I had the strength to get around.”
“Well, you ain't got the strength. You go back to bed, and I'll lay him in with yuh. I guess he'll lay quiet. He likes to be cuddled up close.”
In this way was the feud forgotten. Save for the strange habits imposed by sickness and the care of a baby, they dropped back into their old routine, their old relationship. They walked over the dead line heedlessly, forgetting why it came to be there. Cabin fever no longer tormented them with its magnifying of little things. They had no time or thought for trifles; a bigger matter than their own petty prejudices concerned them. They were fighting side by side, with the Old Man of the Scythe—the Old Man who spares not.
Lovin Child was pulling farther and farther away from them. They knew it, they felt it in his hot little hands, they read it in his fever-bright eyes. But never once did they admit it, even to themselves. They dared not weaken their efforts with any admissions of a possible defeat. They just watched, and fought the fever as best they could, and waited, and kept hope alive with fresh efforts.