Chapter 13 - Page 2

I get here, Al?" he asked.

"That's a pretty hard question to answer," replied Albert, smiling and still filling the room with his big voice. "You were partly brought, partly led, partly pushed, you partly walked, partly jumped, and partly crawled, and there were even little stretches of the march when you were carried on somebody's shoulder, big and heavy as you are. Dick, I don't know any name for such a mixed gait. Words fail me."

Dick smiled, too.

"Well, no matter how I got here, it's certain that I'm here," he said, looking around contentedly.

"Absolutely sure, and it's equally as sure that you've been here five days. I, the nurse, I, the doctor, and I, the spectator, can vouch for that. There were times when I had to hold you in your bed, there were times when you were so hot with fever that I expected to see you burst into a mass of red and yellow flames, and most all the while you talked with a vividness and imagination that I've never known before outside of the Arabian Nights. Dick, where did you get the idea about a Sioux Indian following you all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with stops every half hour for you and him to fight?"

"It's true," said Dick, and then he told the eager boy the story of his escape from the Sioux band, the terrible pursuit, the storm, and his dreadful wandering.

"It was wonderful luck that I met you, Al, old fellow," he said devoutly.

"Not luck exactly," said Albert. "You were coming back to the valley on our old trail, and, as I had grown very anxious about you, I was out on the same path to see if I could see any sign of you. It was natural that we should meet, but I think that, after all, Dick, Providence had the biggest hand in it."

"No doubt," said Dick, and after a moment's pause he added, "Did it snow much up here?"

"But lightly. The clouds seem to have avoided these mountains. It was only from your delirium that I gathered the news of the great storm on the plains. Now, I think you've talked enough for an invalid. Drop you head back on that buffalo robe and go to sleep again."

It seemed so amazing to Dick ever to receive orders from Albert that he obeyed promptly, closed his eyes, and in five minutes was in sound slumber.

Albert hovered about the room, until he saw that Dick was asleep and breathing strongly and regularly. Then he put his hand on Dick's brow, and when he felt the temperature his own eyes were lighted up by a fine smile. That forehead, hot so long, was cool now, and it would be only a matter of a few days until Dick was his old, strong and buoyant self again. Albert never told his brother how he had gone two days and nights without sleep, watching every moment by the delirious bedside, how, taking the chances, he had dosed him with quinine from