The Buccaneer Farmer, page 159 by Harold Bindloss
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an effort:
"Vanhuyten told Hattie, and I found out afterwards, that she had had trouble at home. Her folks had never trusted me and wanted to keep her back, but she had rich friends who sent her out, like an American princess, on a big steam yacht. She got to the mission when I was at my worst, and finding I could not be moved, sent the yacht away. It was some days before I knew she had come. There was no doctor to be got. Alvarez could not send help, and the government soldiers were hunting for his friends, but Father Herman knew something about medicine and Hattie helped him better than a trained nurse. I can see her now, going about the mud-walled room in her clean, white dress, without a hint of weariness in her gentle eyes. That was when she thought I was watching, but sometimes at night her head bent and her figure drooped.
"It was blisteringly hot and when the sun went down the poisonous steam from the swamps drifted round the spot. Sometimes I begged her not to stay, and sometimes I raged, but Hattie could not be moved and my weak anger broke before her smiles. She was strong and would not get fever, she said; she had come to nurse me, and, if I insisted, would go home when I was well."
Adam stopped and asked for a drink, and afterwards Kit hoped he had gone to sleep, but he presently roused himself again.
"I have got to finish, partner, because there's a reason you should hear it all. By and by Father Herman had to nurse us both, and when I got better Hattie died. We buried her by torchlight in the dusty mission yard--she was a Catholic--you'll see the marble cross. I've been lonely ever since, and that's partly why I sent for you; Peter came next to Hattie and you are Peter's son. Now I'm ready to pull out and somehow I think Hattie will find me when I'm wandering in the dark. Love like hers is strong. But I want you to listen when you have given me another drink."
Kit held the glass to Adam's cracked lips. He drank and lay still, breathing hard, and Kit heard the ripp