She knelt by his side, trying to soothe him.
“Father—it’s all right—it’s Prudence—”
But at her name he uttered a cry with such terror in it that she shuddered and was still. Then he began to mutter incoherently, and she heard her own name repeated many times.
“If that awful beating would only stop,” she said to Follett, who had now brought water in the curled brim of his hat. She tried to have the little man drink. He swallowed some of the water from the hat-brim, shivering as he did so.
“We ought to have a fire,” she said. Follett began to gather twigs and sage-brush, and presently had a blaze in front of them.
In the light of the fire the little man could see their faces, and he became suddenly coherent, smiling at them in the old way.
“Why have you come so far in the night?” he asked Prudence, taking one of her cool hands between his own that burned.
“But, you poor little father! Why have you come, when you should be home in bed? You are burning with fever.”
“Yes, yes, dear, but it’s over now. This is the end. I came here—to be here—I came to say my last prayer in the body. And they will come to find me here. You must go before they come.”
“Who will find you?”