After we had crossed this, I was taken sick with that terrible disease, emigrants have named the mountain-fever. For the last two days, I had been feeling somewhat under the weather, with occasional racking pain and headache. Never having previously known what actual sickness was, save from the result of accident, I had fancied it was nothing, and would speedily pass away. But, I was wrong. Unable either to walk or ride, my companions were obliged to place me in a wagon, and I became an invalid under the charge of the doctor who had accompanied us.
Captain Crim was more than kind to me at this time. In fact, he would not give me up, although the doctor, ignorant of the toughness of my constitution, actually told him that I was past recovery.
"We'll never say die, doctor, until we leave him behind us, with a wooden board at his head."
It was impossible for me to avoid hearing this, as the observation was made by Crim at a few yards' distance from the head of the wagon in which I was stretched. In spite of the pain and thirst from which I was suffering, as well as my exhausted condition, I could not refrain from a hollow chuckle, knowing how much life there was yet in my body. At the same time, I could not but feel grateful to the Captain for his words. It was clear he did not intend my bones to be cleaned by a stray wolf or some carrion-devouring bird, whose scent might lead them to my carcass.
But I did not know how the villany of one man was watching for the chance of putting me out of the way.
My protection of poor Pigeon had made me an enemy in Rascall. He had heard what the doctor said, and went among the men, some of whom detested me on the score of the favor the Captain had accorded me, grumbling over the necessity of carrying "dead-weight!" In this kindly manner, he had disposed of me before I was fit for burial.
Through this fellow's instrumentality, I was, when the Captain happened to be at the head of the train, taken out of the wagon, and placed upon the earth, wrapped in a couple of blankets, with a small quantity of water beside me.
At this time, I was too weak even to utter a feeble remonstrance.
By a fortuitous circumstance, or I should possibly say a providential one, Brighton Bill came by shortly afterwards. In his astonishment he approached and spoke to me. I was utterly unable to make any reply. My friend—for in spite of his opinion in regard to my manner of settling accounts with the Indians, he proved himself a true one—hurried on to the Captain, whom he reached some quarter of an hour afterwards.
His rage, as well as that of most of my companions, was, as Bill subsequently told me, frightful. He grew absolutely livid with wrath, ordering an immediate halt, and coming back himself, to superintend my removal from my present couch to the wagon Rascall had taken me from.