My father fixed my eyes with his. “Truer words were never spoken,” he said. “You’ll find game, fish, wild vegetation, insects. Although I wouldn’t order them for dessert, you can even eat the common moth. If a bear can stay healthy on grubs and ants, so can you, although I confess that the last time I tried ants, I didn’t like them. They were really bitter.”

He laughed, and so did we, and so we drowsed off to sleep, never suspecting what was really in the back of his mind as he entertained us with his delightful tales. Oh, my brave father, alone with your fear and pain, keeping it from us while driving your poor body in a final effort to help us survive! The years between have not dimmed my memory of that night in front of the camp fire, one of the last happy ones we were ever to have together.

We didn’t head down river the next morning nor did we have a partridge breakfast. I’m not sure how my father could have known that he had something more seriously wrong with him than a broken leg, but when we woke up, his face was flushed and he was burning up with fever. When he breathed, it was easy to see that he was in considerable pain. His every breath rasped in his throat. He tried to persuade us to pack up camp and help him to the canoe, but we refused.

“You’ve caught a bad cold,” I said. “We’re in no danger here on this shore, so it would be foolish to set off today with you sweating with a fever. If we took another spill, the shock of the cold water might stop your heart.”

Reluctantly, he agreed. He was so weak that the mere effort of sitting up to take a few swallows of water turned his face gray and beaded his forehead with sweat. We covered him well and, assuring him we were only going a few hundred yards from camp to hunt for food, went out into the woods.

Tim caught my arm as soon as we were out of ear-shot. “Lizzy, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think he has pneumonia.”

Tim said, “How can that be? It’s only been a day since he got wet.”

“He may have been carrying the germs for some time, and it only took the dunking to set them off. His leg isn’t infected, so the fever can’t be caused by that.”

“Maybe it’s just flu,” Tim said.

“I hope so.”

“What do we do?”

“We must keep him quiet and warm, unless the fever goes too high, in which case we’ll have to bring it down with cold compresses.”

Tim stared at me. “You’re a whiz-bang wonder,” he said. “How do you know all these things?”