"I run an axe into my foot here sometime back, and the thing's festering."
"Festering" it certainly was. Tom, working about the cabin after examining it, wondered if he could get Gus out after all. The Swede was feverish; he had had little food for a week, and for the last day or two had been eating snow for water. He could not get to the creek. But that was not the worst of his grievance. His two horses had been stolen.
As he ate and drank the coffee Tom made he grew more garrulous. It was plain that his fever was rising. He began to ramble; Tom gathered that he knew who had taken his horses, and tried to find out, but Gus's eyes grew cunning.
"That's my business," he said shortly. "Yust keep out. I'll attend to it."
Later on he fell asleep; he tossed and muttered, but when he roused he was apparently rational enough. Tom was overwhelmingly weary. He piled wood on the fire and lay down in the bunk across, and was soon asleep.
He was roused by the creaking of boards and opened his eyes. A long knife in his hand, Gus was coming stealthily across the floor; his eyes were blazing, his face tense. Tom sat up.
"Here!" he said. "What're you doing?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Gus bawled. "I'd have had him in a minute."
"Had who?"
"That pack rat. He was yust over your head. He's the one that's carried off most of my grub."
Grumbling, Gus went back to his bunk and to sleep, but Tom did not close his eyes again. He never knew the truth; whether there had been a pack rat above him that night or whether Gus, in a fit of delirium, and dreaming of some mysterious revenge, had meant to kill him.
The next day he got him out and sent him to the hospital at Ursula. Sometime later on Tom heard he had lost the foot; then he lost sight of him for months, until it was time for Gus to take his place in that small and unimportant drama of the back country which was Tom McNair's life.
