"How long have I lain here?" I asked suddenly.
"Just since morning," said he. "A mere nothing, man. After another sleep you will be better, and then we——" he paused then.
"We will get out of here and away home," he said, and took my hand just as a woman might have done, and wiped my brow and kept smoothing my hair till I slept again.
From this I woke to a sound of drumming, as of thousands of pattering feet.
It was the rain on the roof. Rain trickled from it in many places, running down in pools upon the floor. The smoke hole was again covered, the fire out, but the door was open, and through it I had a glimpse of the hills, streaming with rain and mist.
Apache Kid sat on one of the rough stools by the door, looking outward, and I called him.
"Better?" he said. "Aha! That’s what the rain does. And here ’s the man that was going to die!" he rallied me. "Here, have a sip of this. It is n’t sweet, but it will help you. I ’ve been rummaging."
"Just a little nip of cognac. They had that left, poor devils. It’s a wonder Canlan——" he continued, and then stopped; doubtless I squirmed at the name.
I took over the draught, and he sat down on the fir-boughs and talked as gaily as ever man talked. All the substance of his talk I have forgotten, only I remember how he heartened me. It was my determination to fight the fever and sickness, that we had nothing in the way of medicines to cure, that he was trying to awaken. And I must say he managed it well.
With surprise I found myself sitting up and smoking a cigarette while he sat back nursing a knee, laughing on me and saying:
"Smoking a cigarette! A sick man! Sitting up—and inhaling, too—and blowing through the nose—a sick man—why, the thing’s absurd!"
I looked and listened and smiled in return on him, and some thought came to me of what manner of man this was who ministered so kindly to me, and also of how near death’s door he himself had been.
"How are you?" I asked. "Where was it you said you had been wounded? I fear I was so sick and queer that I have forgotten everything but seeing you again."
"I?" he said. "Oh, I have just pulled myself together by sheer will-power. I have a hole in my side, filled up with resin. But that’s a mere nothing. It ’ll hold till we get back to civilisation again, or else be healed by then. Thank goodness for our late friend’s shaky hand." And at these words it struck me, thinking, I suppose, how narrowly Apache had missed death, that Canlan might be alive despite his fall.