“He has the long fever,” declared Tatanka, “and he will be sick a long time. May be till the Mississippi freezes over.”
Tim did have a long sickness. He had no pain, he had no appetite, and his small body often burnt with a high fever.
If a doctor could have been consulted, he would have said that Tim had a fairly mild case of typhoid fever, but there was no doctor within fifty miles of Reed’s Landing. Barker and Tatanka had both seen cases like Tim’s and felt that in time the little fellow would get well again.
“We shall stay here till the Great River freezes over,” said Tatanka, after a week had passed. “A sick boy cannot travel.”
Tatanka built another tepee, which he and Bill occupied, while the trapper slept in the first tepee with the sick boy. The two men bought a boat of the trader and finished a canoe the trader had begun. They also built of logs and rough boards a shack for winter use, doing the work whenever they had plenty of time.
The two men bought a boat of the trader.
“A tepee,” Tatanka said, “is a good house in summer and fall, but in winter it is too cold for white people, who are not used to it.”
Both the trapper and Black Buffalo did all they could to make the sick boy comfortable. They gathered wild cherries and gave him the juice to drink; they made soup of prairie chicken, grouse, and wild duck.
“You must drink the good soup,” said Barker, “for when the lake freezes up you and Bill must go skating and you must be big and strong when we get home to Vicksburg.”