"The whole country's nigh down," he muttered. "If they don't heed the warning I've been trying to hammer into their systems for months now, there'll be a sad lot of sick and dead folk before the winter's out, I tell you."
"As bad as all that?"
He replied solemnly:
"Couldn't be worse. Mark my words, if the plague comes up to the country from Calgary, where it's got a foothold already, our population will be cut in half."
CHAPTER XXV
Like a thief in the night the plague crept into Alberta, disguised at first in the form of light colds to which the sufferers paid small attention, but before the year was out those neglected colds had turned into the scourge whose virulence singled out the strong, the fair and the young for its victims.
Calgary was like a beleaguered city at bay against the attack of a dread enemy. The printed warnings everywhere in the newspapers and placarded in public places and street cars; the newspaper accounts of the progress of the sickness in Europe, the United States and eastern Canada, with the long list of deaths threw the healthy city of the foothills into a state of panic.
Schools were closed; the people were afraid to go to church; disinfectant was sprayed over every store and office. The faintest symptom of a cold, the least sneeze was diagnosed as plague, and the growing fear in which the people awaited the disaster created a hysterical condition that probably precipitated its coming. Slowly and surely, undeterred by precaution and prayer alike, the terrible plague was drawing in upon Alberta.