He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was with him.
"That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the richest gainer."
"What did you dream?"
He beckoned me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me."
"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for the breakfast cakes.
'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.
At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest. Here Richard's sickness anchored us, and for three full weeks the journey paused.
We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood. Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting about how we could compass the bringing of a doctor from the settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,—of its own accord, or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,—and at the end of the third week Dick was up and able to ride again, this time without the forked stick to hold him in the saddle.
After this we went on without mishap, and with no hardship greater than that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind, or of the Catawba's.
You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.