“And all the time Johnny kept getting sicker and sicker,” he said, “so that I got more frightened about him than about anything else. At night he would be out of his head, sometimes, and in the daytime he would just trudge along at my heels and never say a word. Only once, when I said that if we ever found the lake we might come out somewhere near Oscar Dansk’s house, he got furiously angry and made me promise that I would never ask him for help. I don’t know yet what idea he had in his poor confused head, but I had to promise, to quiet him.”
He told further of their growing weakness, of the shorter and shorter distances they could travel in a day, of a final afternoon when, having gone to shoot a partridge, he had come back and found his brother had disappeared.
“Perhaps I hadn’t realized until that minute how desperately ill he was. He had wandered off; I could see the storm coming and I looked and looked and called and called, but I couldn’t find him. I felt pretty hopeless, I can tell you.”
It was Nicholas who had discovered John Edmonds at last, lying insensible under a big tree near the foot of Jasper Peak. They had sat by him a long time, the boy and the dog, helpless and exhausted both of them. Dick had caught a glimpse of the cabin on the side of the mountain and had decided, when the storm broke, that they must get there at any cost.
“I carried Johnny on my back,” he said, “don’t ask me how, but some way or other we made it. I was so anxious to get him in out of the storm that it didn’t matter much where we went. I don’t think I had sense enough to mind a great deal even when I realized it was Jake’s cabin. We found something to eat, although we didn’t take more than we could possibly help. John seemed to revive a little, but still I was desperately anxious, and felt that I must do something, no matter what. I think I believed Two Rivers and Rudolm were much nearer than they are and I had not counted on the streams all being in flood. I could see the light from your cabin, but—well, I had promised. Now, I can understand that the promise was a foolish business, but your judgment isn’t quite so good when you are worn out and half starved, as when you are rested and fed. You don’t see things quite so clear.”