“How long since you were vaccinated?” The question came quick and sharp.
Hardy heard the words, though they seemed to come from a great distance. He struggled to answer, but unconsciousness sealed his tongue.
Swiftly Keith Morely stripped the man, gazed with grave eyes at the all-revealing eruption on the broad chest and armpits.
“Smallpox!” he ejaculated. “There’s a lot of it in the north this winter.”
Turning to the officer’s pack, he opened it up and took out the medicine kit. It was a well stocked case, revealing the thoroughness of the equipment the northern patrol men carry.
“One thing is certain. The officer cannot make me prisoner now, and I can’t leave him here to die from neglect. When the owner of this cabin returns, I’ll go on. But not before,” Morely said grimly.
With peculiar expertness, he bathed the fevered body of Hardy at regular intervals. He administered medicine taken from the case, he applied an ointment to the rapidly increasing eruptions.
“What a freak of fate,” he muttered. “The hunter is laid low, and the hunted cares for him.” The man’s lips lifted in a mirthless smile, but his eyes were somber, haunted.
Slowly the days dragged their length. The snow beat back the sun, the country sank under an impenetrable shroud of white.
The owner of the cabin did not return. “Snowed under, some place,” Morely thought as grimly he battled for the life of the officer. No great physician could have shown more interest in the work of a difficult case than did Keith Morely. For hours he sat by the sick man’s side, listening to the disjointed delirium.