Nason sent Cap pelting back toward Rumford on his gray mare to buy or borrow a fresh cow; and the rest of us pitched our camp and went to work. In an hour’s time we had chopped trees for a three-sided cabin, long enough to hold bed-places for all of us, and open on the front. It had a bark roof that overhung the open side by four feet, so that we could have protection from the weather and yet be warmed by the fires that burned before it.

“There!” Doc Means said benevolently when the work was finished. “Anybody’d be altogether too dirty for my gizzard that didn’t think this was a terrible nice place to have the smallpox in.” To me he added, soothingly, “You and your brother got your inoculation the same day as those in Wells, so the whole company ought to be bustin’ out pustulin’ before tomorrow night.”

When Cap Huff returned, early the next morning, dragging a protesting black and white cow at the end of a halter, the symptoms had set in on all of us, and we were a silent and thoughtful crew. My head felt as though a peck of potatoes had been stuffed into my skull; and my muscles ached as though Cap’s cow had slept on me for a week.

Cap staked the cow near the spring: then stood before our cabin and stared at us, his thumbs hooked in his belt and his huge hands slapping his barrel of a stomach. Doc Means stumbled out from behind the camp and stood beside Cap, contemplating us with moist blue eyes.

“You want to go to work on that cow,” Cap told Doc. “She’s fresh, and she ain’t afraid to let go of her milk. I had mebbe a quart this morning, with some rum in it, but it’s kind of wore off.” He smacked his lips. “You better feed these boys right away, because I’d ought to have a little more before I start off to the westward. Half milk and half rum makes a nice drink.”

Nason came from behind the cabin and looked hard at Cap. “You’re going to the westward?” he asked. “What’s the matter with staying right here?”

Cap’s fingers tapped the front of his tow-cloth smock. “Stevie, I got a lot of trading to do, off to the westward.” He glanced over his shoulder and added, in a lower tone, “I picked up a few things in Rumford.”

“I told you to get a cow,” Nason said. “I don’t recall asking you to pick up anything else.”