Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/92

88 died, my aching limbs seem quite disposed to thaw. The day's work is over. He spreads his buffalo over the back of the great rocking chair, and bids me get well heated up before bed time. Daisy sleeps; so does the boy up over head. I think of my clerk only, just now, anxiously. He did not come in for his "toast and tea." My head lies easily against the warm buffalo. The poor clerk seems, to the almost dozing fancy, many, very many sick men resting in uneasy, crazy-looking beds, and very many in a bed; in fact, each bed seems a nest of rough, uncombed heads, with burning cheeks and shaggy beards; while hands, hard and sunburnt, reach after me; lips move imploringly for me to moisten them. I am hunting hopelessly the awful hopelessness of nightmare for water, napkins, and gruel. Oh, they will all die, and I can't help them. I utter a cry, which startles even myself. My surprise is momentary, to find myself in bed, with people watching carefully over me. My mind slips out of the things they say and do, into the states in which it has been strained to the utmost for many days. Now, the hurry is, to keep a poor forlorn woman