nd Susan on the ground beside
him, trying to say heartening phrases with lips that were stiff. The
men did not know what to do. They pushed the children from the door
roughly, as if it were their desire to hurt and abuse them. In some
obscure way it seemed to relieve their feelings.

The rains came back more heavily than ever. For three days the heavens
descended in a downpour that made the river a roaring torrent and isled
the two log houses on their hillocks. The walls of the cabin trickled
with water. The buffets of the wind ripped the canvas covering from
the door, and Susan and Daddy John had to take a buffalo robe from the
bed and nail it over the rent. They kept the place warm with the fire,
but the earth floor was damp to their feet, and the tinkle of drops
falling from the roof into the standing pans came clear through the
outside tumult.

The night when the storm was at its fiercest the girl begged the old
man to stay with her. Courant had fallen into a state of lethargy from
which it was hard to rouse him. Her anxiety gave place to anguish, and
Daddy John was ready for the worst when she shook him into wakefulness,
her voice at his ear:

"You must go somewhere and get a doctor. I'm afraid."

He blinked at her without answering, wondering where he could find a
doctor and not wanting to speak till he had a hope to offer. She read
his thoughts and cried as she snatched his hat and coat from a peg:

"There must be one somewhere. Go to the Fort, and if there's none
there go to Sacramento. I'd go with you but I'm afraid to leave him."

Daddy John went. She stood in the doorway and saw him lead the horse
from the brush shed and, with his head low against the downpour, vault
into the saddle. The moaning of the disturbed trees mingled with the
triumphant roar of the river. There was a shouted good-by, and she
heard the clatter of the hoofs for a moment sharp and distinct, then
swallowed in the storm's high clamor.

In three days he was back with a ship's doctor, an Englishman, who
described himself as just arrived from Australia. Daddy John had
searched the valley, and finally run his quarry to earth at the Porter
Ranch, one of a motley crew waiting to swarm inland to the rivers. The
man, a ruddy animal with some rudimentary knowledge of his profession,
pronounced the ailment "mountain fever." He looked over the doctor's
medicine chest with an air of wisdom and at Susan with subdued
gallantr