“And you will find it, too, if you don’t mend your ways,” retorted the man of the medicines. “I thought at first it was the care of ’Tana that kept you awake every hour of every night; but I see it is just the same now when there are plenty to take your place; worse—for now you go tramping, God only knows where, and 212 come back looking tired, as though you had been racing with the devil.”
“You haven’t told me how she is,” was all the answer he made to this tirade. “You said—that by daylight—”
“There would be a change—yes, and there is; only a shadow of a change as yet, but the shadow leans the right way.”
“The right way,” he half whispered, and walked on toward her cabin. He felt dizzy and the tears crept up in his eyes, and he forgot the doctor, who looked after him and muttered statements damaging to Dan’s sanity.
All the long night he had fought with himself to keep away, to let the others care for her—the others, who fancied they were giving him a wished-for rest. And all the while the desire of his heart was to bar them out—to wait, alone with her, for the life or death that was to come. He had walked miles in his restlessness, but could not have found again the paths he walked over. He had talked with some of the people who were wakeful in the night, but could scarce have told of any words he had said.
He had felt dazed by the dread of what the new day would bring, and now he looked up at the morning star with a great thankfulness in his heart. The new day had come, and with it a breath of hope.
Miss Lavina met him at the door, and whispered that the doctor thought the fever had taken the hoped-for turn for the better. ’Tana had opened her eyes but a moment before, and looked at Miss Slocum wonderingly, but fell asleep again; she had looked rational, but very weak.
“Well, old fellow, I am proud of myself,” said Lyster, as Overton entered. “It took Miss Slocum and me only 213 one night to bring ’Tana around several degrees nearer health. We are the nurses! And if she only wakes conscious—”
His words, or else the intense, wistful gaze of the man at the foot of the bed, must have aroused her, for she moved and opened her eyes and looked around aimlessly, passing over the faces of Miss Slocum, of the squaw, and of Overton, until Lyster, close beside her, whispered her name. Then her lips curved ever so little in a smile as her eyes met his.
“Max!” she said, and put out her hand to him. As his fingers clasped it, she turned her face toward him, and fell contentedly asleep again, with her cheek against his hand.