"Sumpen out dar!" muttered Jubilee Jim, straining his ears, for now he caught the sound that had pricked the acuter hearing of the animal—a curious, struggling sound like something wallowing in heavy snowdrifts.
"Sumpen big!" Jubilee Jim's wrinkled face looked puzzled in the moonlight and his eyes rolled to the wall where, on two wooden pegs, sat an old-fashioned shot-gun. "Don' reck'n et's er bar!" he whispered to the hound. "Ain't ben no bar eroun' hyuh en mawn thuhty yeahs!" He got up and set his ear to the crack of the door. As he bent his stooped frame, something lunged against the wall outside, and at the sound the hound's bristles rose and he sent forth a fierce, rumbling bay that rattled the window.
"Et's er man!" said Jubilee Jim. He turned hastily to the rough-hewn table and lighted a lantern; then snapping a chain into the dog's collar and tethering him to the wall, he went to the door and lifted its heavy bar. It opened inward and there half stumbled, half fell across the threshold a snowy figure that collapsed at his feet.
"Mah Lawd!" ejaculated the old man. "What he doin' hyuh?"
With a sharp word to the leaping, raging hound, he dragged the recumbent body inside, shut the door, and lighted a bundle of pine knots in the fire-place. In the bright yellow light that flooded the cabin he knelt down and examined the man who lay there. He drew off the frosty fur cap from the close-clipped head. The coat was stiff with frost so that he had trouble to unbutton and remove it, and the shoes were broken. He took a knife and carefully cut them off from the feet, noticing with quick pity that one ankle was swollen to twice its natural size.
"Reck'n yo' mos' froze ter def!" said Jubilee Jim. "En starved too!" He rummaged on a shelf, found an iron skillet containing some broth and set it close to the blazing wood. Then, he drew the limp figure upon his couch and began to remove the clothing, now wet and clinging.
As he opened the shirt, however, he started back with an exclamation.
Well he knew what that jacket with its black and yellow-grey stripes meant! Had he not often seen the sullen chain-gang breaking stone on the mountain roads? The man who lay before him was a criminal in desperate flight in stolen garments! He could tie him fast, unconscious and helpless as he was, and leave the dog to guard him, while he went down to the town for officers. But as he thought, something else came to his mind. "Sick en in prison, en ye visited me!" he muttered. "De Good Man he say dat. Dis hyuh man done been in prison, en he moughty sick too. What dee Good Man do, Ah wondah? Reck'n he ain' gwine lock him up, not 'treckly, nohow!"
He saw a crimson stain that spread over the stripes. He touched it—it was blood.
Five minutes later, in the warming cabin, he was examining an opened wound in the shoulder of the insensible man. He washed it carefully and bound it up with some of the medicinal herbs that hung from the rafters. This done, he took the skillet from the fire-place and with a spoon forced a little of the hot liquid, drop by drop, between the clenched teeth. Under these ministrations a semblance of life began to return to the exhausted frame, and with it the chilled body rushed into a fever. The head began to roll from side to side and the lips to mutter indistinguishably.