No matter how early I unrolled myself from my blanket in the morning, Doc Means was puttering about the camp, searching with watery blue eyes for traces of animals that might have been near us during the night, or poking feebly at the fire—though the very feebleness of his poking seemed to set it to roaring unaccountably. And at night, too, if I waked and sat up for a smell of the weather, there would be Doc, peering around the fire into the darkness, or fumbling with one of the leaves, roots or berries he was perpetually pocketing during the day’s march.

When I told him about Nathaniel, he came shuffling back with me, and looked Nathaniel up and down. “So you got the symptoms, have you?” Doc asked helplessly.

Nathaniel nodded and gulped, nor could I blame him; for smallpox is a cruel disease, threatening its victims not only with death, but with disability, blindness, pain, disfigurement and social ostracism. It was true we had deliberately taken it mildly, to protect ourselves from catching it naturally in all its severity; but for all we knew, the mildness might, through some unforeseen accident, become violent.

All the men of our little company gathered around us with serious faces—expecting, no doubt, to see heroic remedies applied to Nathaniel. Doc stared from Nathaniel to them and back again so ineffectually that I had misgivings as to what our fate might be in the hands of such a doctor.

“I’m glad you got it,” Doc said. “You couldn’t have picked out a better day to be took sick—not unless you picked tomorrow. According to the Almanac, the next few days are the best days of the year to get anything in.” He moved closer to Nathaniel and scrutinized his eyes. “Where’s that pain under your arm, and how much of a pain is it?”

Nathaniel felt of his right side. “It’s sharp. Sharp.”

Doc shook his head. “You ain’t got it! You was scratched on the left arm. If you had a pain, there’s where it would be: under your left arm: not under your right. That’s the way with most of these inoculated cases: they ain’t sick at all, only because of being scairt, or because a doctor makes ’em sick.”

Cap Huff stopped him when he started to hobble away. “If he ain’t got the symptoms, he ain’t far from having ’em. If I was you, Doc, I’d give him a few pukes.”

Doc Means shook his head. “I don’t take any stock in ’em. Anybody that wants to take a puke can take one; but there ain’t no reason for doing so: not as I know of.”