Near midnight down in Jim Shirley’s cabin Asher Aydelot turned from a lull in the sick man’s ravings to see Dr. Horace Carey entering the door with a pair of saddle bags in his hand.
“Hello, sir! Aydelot? I’m Carey, the doctor.”
Then as his quick eye took in the haggard face of the man before him, he said cheerily:
“Everything fit as a fiddle up your way. I left your cabin snug and warm as a prairie dog’s hole, and your wife is sound asleep by this time, with a big dog on guard. Yes, I understand,” he added, as Asher silently gripped his hand. “You’ve died a thousand deaths today. Forget it, and give me a hand here. My own are too stiff, and I must get these wet boots off. I always go at my work dry shod.”
He had pulled a pair of heavy shoes from the saddle bags, and was removing his outer coat and sundry scarfs, warming his hands between whiles and seemingly unconscious of the sick man’s presence.
“You are wet to the knees. You dared the short trail and the strange fords of rivers on a night so dark as 71 this,” Asher declared as he helped Carey to put off his wrappings.
“It’s a doctor’s business to forget himself when he sees a distress signal.” Then Carey added quietly: “Tell me about Shirley. What have you been doing for him?”
He was beside Jim’s bunk now and his presence seemed to fill the whole cabin with its subtle strength.
“You know your business, doctor; I’m a farmer,” Asher said, as he watched this frontier physician moving deftly about his work.
“Well, if you mean to farm so far from pill bags you have done well to follow my trade a little, as you seem to have done with Shirley,” Carey asserted, as he noted the evidences of careful nursing.