“Yes, and I’m going to help God help her,” I said suddenly, and I rose from the chair to walk the floor with the limp, white thing that had been the purple horror in my arms. “I didn’t know how to unpoison him, but if it’s strength and heat he needs, I can give him that,” and I held the tiny mountaineer close against my bare breast, from which his poor little convulsed fingers had torn all the foolish lace and embroidered linen.
“If a physician were here, he would try transfusion; the child is anemic, anyway,” said Gabriel, thoughtfully.
“We don’t need any physician but God to get my heat and strength into him. I only wish I had on a real flannel petticoat, as a decent woman ought to have for cases of emergency like this, to wrap him in. This old piece of blanket isn’t real wool.”
“Poor folks can’t buy much but shoddy these days,” said Stivers, with glum resentfulness.
“Here, my shirt’s the thing,” said Leader, and as quick as one of the flashes that came in the window with the thunder mutterings, he had peeled off his own gray flannel blouse, and was wrapping it around the baby, and tucking it close over my breast.
“Now fight, and I’m with you,” he said as he looked straight into my eyes in the dim light.
“He isn’t going to die; he’s got a right to live, and he’s going to do it, God helping,” I answered, as I got a firm grasp of the mite on my left arm, and put my warm right hand over the poor little collapsed stomach.
And then for what seemed hours of eternity I walked and rubbed and hugged that limp baby, while I prayed inside my own vitals to the tune of “Stand up.” Stivers stood smoking sullenly by the fire, the mother lay on the floor, moaning, and Gabriel stood over by the window, with his bare shoulders gleaming comfortingly with every flash of lightning. And the knowledge that all three of those strong, useful real people were depending upon ignorant, foolish me to lead the fight for that poor little life made the new wings of my spirit raise themselves and soar out into some wonderful space I had never been in before, but through which I knew the way and could take the baby with me.
How long I plodded across and across that rickety floor of the cabin I don’t know, but once I staggered as I came near Gabriel at the window, and my right shoulder sagged under its burden. Then, as I faltered and felt that I must stop and sink on the floor, a strong, warm, bare arm came around me, and under my arm around the baby, while a shoulder braced itself against mine, as Gabriel swung into step with me.