Jim's lips moved and he tried to speak.
The Doctor placed his hand on his mouth and shook his head. The drooping eyelids closed in grateful obedience.
The beat of horses' hoofs echoed down the mountain road. His nurse and messenger were coming. He decided at once to move Mary to his own house. She must regain consciousness in new surroundings or her chance of survival would be slender. To awake in this miserable cabin, the scene of the tragedy she had witnessed, might be instantly fatal. Besides she must not yet know that the brute who had choked her was alive and might still hold the power of life and death over her frail body. She believed him dead. It was best so. He might be dead and buried before she recovered consciousness. The fever that burned her brain would completely cloud reason for days.
He hastily improvised a stretcher with a blanket and two strong quilting-poles which stood in the corner of the room. Nance helped him without question. She obeyed his slightest suggestion with childlike submission.
He placed Mary on the stretcher, wrapped her body in another warm blanket and turned to his nurse and messenger:
“Carry her to my house. Walk slowly and rest whenever you wish. Don't wake her. Tell Aunt Abbie to put her to bed in the south room overlooking the valley. Don't leave her a minute, Betty. She's in the first collapse of brain fever. You know what to do. I'll be there in an hour. You come back here, John. I want you.”
The mountaineer nodded and seized one end of the stretcher. The nurse took up the other and the Doctor held wide the cabin door as they passed out.
For three weeks he fought the grim battle with Death for the two young lives the Christmas tragedy had thrust into his hands. He gave his entire time day and night to the desperate struggle.
When pneumonia had developed and Jim's life hung by a hair, he slept on the couch in the living-room of the cabin and had Nance make for herself a bed on the floor of the kitchen.
The old woman remained an obedient child. She cooked the Doctor's meals and did the work about the house and yard as if nothing had disturbed her habits of lonely plodding. She believed implicitly all that was told her. Her son had pneumonia from cold he had taken in the long drive from Asheville. The house must be kept quiet. John Sanders was helping her nurse him. She was sure the Doctor would save him.