The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1898-08-13

ly on the abdomen and ask if it hurt,
and take down the fiaring candle and hold
it close to the eyeballs. They would
kindly leave you to your sleep then, but
if you didn't drop off at once you could
see them beckon one of your friends out
side the door and you could hear them
whispering together.
This was annoying and made you feel
that great deal of unnecessary fuss and
solemnity was being INDUCED in about
plain case of malaria or bilious fever.
Then you dropped off to sleep and
dreamed nervously of bathtubs and
cracked ice, only to me awakened every
two hours by friend who said: Here's
your medicine, old man." He gave you a
pill or two pills and drink of water,
took the candle and went scuffing away
in his bare feet to the next tent or TO
the next compartment of the shanty, if
you happened to be living in a shanty,
there TO give medicine to somebody else.
This condition lasted a day or two
more, the pains in the bones grow less
sharp, the loathing for food and the de-
cline of strength increased.
Maybe the fifth day, to the patients
great amazement, his clothes, or such of
them as lay handy, were gathered up
and wrapped in his blanket, and he was
told he would be taken "up in the woods"
a vague wave of the hand toward the
south indicating where "up in the woods
was.
Questions as to the reason of this were
not answered with the completeness to
be desired. A newly established hospital
was there, it was clean and dry, the
air was pure, you would get more care.
and be better off in every way. But you
didn't want care, nor did you yearn for
the pure air of cup in the woods" You
wanted only to be let strictly and Sc
verely alone. The prospect took on
dreadful possibilities to a mans sick and
fevered brain. You got quite dramatic
and said, with a fine air: "If I'm going to
die, | want to die among my friends. If
you try to pack me off up there I'll cut
and run"
Remembering how uncertain my legs.
then We're, l think as a runner | would
have been a picturesque failure. Oddly
enough, my friends didn't seem to relish
the proposition of having me "die among
them," nor yet to tarTy in their midst.
They kept steadfastly at work gathering
up my belongings, and in way quite
regardless of meas if had been child
or an insane man-saying to one another:
Think he'll need this?" or Had better
pack two suits of underwear or three %
Protests were in vain. Flatly l said 1
wouldn't go, and somebody said: Don't
talk that way, because they'll take you
by force if you don't go willingly
With that a great hatred of mankind
and the realization that L was a martyr
overlook me and l said, every we'll"
The little engine that hauls the coal trains
of the Spanish-American Iron company
steamed up the line with a lamshackle-
and very primitive open summer" car
and flat car attached to it. Cots,
blankets, clothes and men were bundled
into it, some of the men ON stretchers,
All were angry-at least those who had
strength left for an emotion and all
were ignorant of the fact that the dreaded
scourge, of which we had deard so much
and which we feared so greatly was heavy
upon them.
The engine yelled twice, and slowly
moved toward "up in the woods" Where
we were to stay for days that seemed as
long as weeks, days in which nothing
seemed to happen, so weary were they.
Yet so many things happened that l
can make another story about them Y