"Fetch Pap," said he, in the same tone as he might have said, "Fetch
milk and water!" We made no remark.
"I think," said the doctor, gravely, "that if this man comes at once
the child may pull through."
"By Heaven! he shall come," said George Leadham to me. The doctor had
hurried away.
"He won't come," said Ajax.
"If he don't," said the father, fiercely, "the turkey-buzzards'll hev
a meal, for I'll shoot him in his tracks."
Ajax looked at me reflectively.
"George," said he, "shooting Pap wouldn't help little Sissy, would it?
You and I can't handle this job. My brother will go. But--but, my poor
old George, don't make ropes out of sand."
So I went.
When I started, the south-east wind, the rain-wind, had begun to blow,
and it sounds incredible, but I was not aware of it. The pestilence
had paralysed one's normal faculties. But riding due south-east I
became, sooner or later, sensible of the change in the atmosphere. And
then I remembered a chance remark of the doctor's. "We shall have this
diphtheria with us till the rain washes it away," and one of the
squatters had replied, bitterly, "Paradise'll be a cemetery an'
nothin' else before the rain comes.
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