Part 25 (2/2)

”That's the way, 'Snooks,'” commented Con. (He had nicknamed his shack-mate ”Snooks.”) ”Just you laugh, it will do you no end of good, don't you know.”

But in spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy found a cake of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur.

The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel of coals. The tar soap was a blessing both to himself and the patient, and the salts they both swallowed manfully and daily. There was rice, oatmeal, tapioca, jam, tinned stuffs and prunes, and Con knew as little of cookery as he knew of nursing, but he made s.h.i.+ft with the little store in hand. Snooks kept alive and the boy remained well. But the nights were long periods of horror. Snooks would become delirious with fever, and the torture of the foul disease would become unbearable.

Once they had an out-and-out fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man to his back. Then flinging his whole weight above the prostrate body he held him by sheer force, conquering and saving this life which had no claims on him except that of all common humanity. An onlooker would have thought that the dread disease had no horrors for the boy, but Con was only human, and many a time he fought it out with himself when the terrors of the threatened infection were upon him. Then he would say to himself, ”Con, are you going to try and be a gentleman through your whole life, or just be a cad?” Then all thought of quitting would vanish, and back he would go to the shack, to be rewarded by a wonderful look of dog-like grat.i.tude that would s.h.i.+ne in Snooks' festered eyes, replacing the haunting fear that always lurked there whenever the boy remained outside any length of time--the fear that Con, too, had gone, as had his ”pardner,” leaving him forever alone.

”Don't you get scared,” Con would say on these occasions. ”I'm with you to the finish for good or ill, and it will be for good, I think.”

”It sure is for _my_ good,” Snooks had said once. ”If I pull out of this I'll be another man, and it will be owing to having known you, pard. I had forgotten that such bravery and decency and unselfishness existed.

I had--”

”Oh, quit it! Stop it!” Con smiled. ”This isn't anything--don't you know.” But Snooks shook his head thoughtfully, muttering, ”I _do_ know, and you're making another man of me.”

One day, after two weeks had dragged wearily past wherein no human being had pa.s.sed up the unfrequented trail, Con heard gun shots, distant at first, then nearing the shack. Like a wild being he sprang to the door, hoping some range rider, chancing by, would at least bring food and a doctor, when, to his horror, he saw Banty riding by, almost exhausted, peering to right and left of the trail, searching--searching, he well knew, for his lost cousin. Con made a rapid bolt for a hiding place, but Banty, whose quick eyes had caught sight of the fleeting figure, gave a yell of delight as he leaped from his saddle.

”Don't you come _near_ this place! Get out, _get_ out, I tell you!”

screamed Con, while Banty stood as if petrified, staring wide-eyed at his seemingly insane cousin.

”You come near here and I'll trim you within an inch of your life,” Con roared anew, shaking his fist menacingly. ”I'll trim you the way I did the fellow who sent me the blue ribbon for my hair. We've got smallpox here. I'm looking after a chap who is down with it. Get us a doctor and beef tea and more tar soap and food, but don't you come an inch nearer, Banty, _don't_. Think of aunt and the people at the ranch. You can't do any good, and I'll go clean crazy if you expose yourself to this. Oh, Banty, get out of this, get out of this, or, I tell you, _honest_, I'll lick you if you don't.”

Banty was no coward, but Con looked terrifyingly fierce and in dead earnest, and the boy's common sense told him that he could far better serve these stricken shackmen in doing as he was bidden. So after more explanations and instructions, he mounted and rode away like one possessed, Con's last words ringing in his ears: ”Don't forget _barrels_ of tar soap, and _tons_ of tea. I haven't had a drink of tea for ten days.”

Late that night a young doctor rode up from Kamloops, and in his wake a professional nurse with supplies of food, medicines, and exquisitely fresh, clean sheets. While the physician bent over the sick man, Con seized a package of groceries and in five minutes was drinking a cup of his beloved English tea, as calmly as if he had been nursing a friend with a headache.

Presently the doctor beckoned him outside. Con put down his cup regretfully and followed.

”Young man,” said the doctor, eyeing him curiously, ”Do you know who this man is you've been nursing, exposing yourself to death for?”

”Haven't an idea; I call him 'Snooks,'” said Con.

”Much better call him 'Crooks,'” said the doctor, angrily. ”You've been risking your life and that pretty pink English skin of yours for one of the most worthless men in British Columbia; he's been a cattle rustler, a 'salter' of gold mines, and everything that is discreditable; it makes me indignant. He tells me he at least had the decency to warn you, when you came here. What ever made you come on--in?”

Con stared at the doctor, a cold, a ”stony British” stare. ”Why, doctor,” he said, ”because Snooks has been a--a--failure, I don't see that's any reason why I should be a cad.”

The doctor looked at him hard. ”I wish I had a son like you,” he remarked.

”My father is an army surgeon; he's been through the cholera scourge in India twice. I never could have looked him in the face again if I hadn't seen Snooks through,” said Con, simply.

”Well, you can look him in the face now all right, boy!” the doctor replied, gravely. ”Say good-bye to your sick friend, for we've brought a tent and you are to be soaked in disinfectants and put into quarantine.

No more of this pest-shack for you, my boy.”

So Con went back to shake hands with ”Snooks,” who said very quietly: ”I can't even say 'Thank you,' as I want to; I guess the best way to thank a pard is to live it, not speak it. I ain't said a prayer for years till the day you came here, and I've prayed night and day, _real_ prayers, that you wouldn't get this disease. Maybe that'll show you, pard, that I've started to be a new man.”

”Yes, that shows,” answered Con confidentially, and with another handclasp, he left for his little tent, with a great faith in his heart that the sick man's prayers would be answered.

At last one joyous day the doctor sent for Banty, who rode over with a led horse, and Con, leaping into the saddle, waved good-bye to Snooks, who, now convalescent, stood in the door of the distant shack. As the boy galloped off up the trail, Snooks turned to the nurse and said:

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