Limber Tim would come in, but he would not sit down. He would go over against the wall and stand there on one leg, with his hands stuck in behind him and his head lolled to one side while his mouth fell open, with his back glued up against the wall, as if he was a sort of statuary that had made up its mind never to fall down on its face.
He would stand in that attitude till the Widow would speak to him or even smile on him, and then he would flop right over with his face to the wall, whip out a great pencil from his canvas pocket, and then slowly begin to scrawl the date, or as near as he could guess it, and sketch grotesque pictures all over the new hewn logs of the cabin.
The Widow used to call that place the Almanac, for Limber Tim knew the date and day of the year, if any man in the Forks knew it. Though it sometimes happened that when the pack-train with the provisions would come in from the outer world they would find they were two, three and even four days behind or ahead in their calculations.
At last Sandy began to get tired of Limber Tim on the wall at the Widow's. Perhaps he was in the way. At all events he "shook" him, as they called it at the Howling Wilderness, and "played it alone."
One evening Sandy had a sorry tale to tell the little woman. She listened as never she had listened before. Poor Little Billie, young Piper the boy poet, the boy who was always so alone, was down with a fever, and was wild and talking in strange ways, and they had no help, no doctor, nothing. "Yes, yes," cried Sandy, "the Forks is a doin' its level best. Watchin' and a watchin', but he won't git up ag'in. It's all up with poor Billie."
And all the Forks was doing its best too. But the boy was very ill. The Forks was good: and it was also very sorry, for it had laughed at this young man with hands white and small and a waist like a woman's, and now that he was dying it wanted to be forgiven.
It was something to the Forks that it had allowed this boy to bear his own Christian name; the only example of the kind on its records.
The Widow was not very talkative after that, and Sandy went away earlier than usual. He thought to drop in and see the boy; but turned aside and called at the Howling Wilderness. In a few minutes he went back to the cabin of the sufferer. Gently he lifted the latch, and on tip-toe he softly entered the room where he lay.
The man was utterly amazed. The Widow sat there, holding his hands now, now pushing back the soft long hair from his face, folding back the blankets, cooling his hot brow with her soft fresh hand, and looking into his eyes all the time with a tenderness that was new to Sandy.
The boy was wild with the fever, and weak and helpless. Men stood back around the wall and in the dark; they had not dared to speak to her as she entered. They were so amazed that a woman would dare do this thing—to come in among them alone, take this boy in her arms, wave them back—wild beasts as they were, they stood there mute with amazement and devotion.