It took nearly an hour for the snow to become hot water. When its temperature finally satisfied her, Johnny lifted the tub from the stove to the floor. Then he seated himself at the table with his back to the tub and began to lay out a deck of cards for solitaire.
Cynthia was acutely conscious of the size of the room as she began to undress, for the position of the table in the cabin’s center placed Johnny’s back not more than three feet from the tub. Nevertheless she had no intention of going bathless for six weeks, and decided she might as well steel herself to the unconventional circumstances from the beginning.
She did hurry, however, and she bathed as quietly as possible, hoping the absence of splashing would make Johnny less conscious of her nakedness immediately behind him. From his bunk Harry watched this struggle between modesty and hygiene with evident amusement.
It was not until she had stepped from the tub and was rubbing herself down with a towel that she remembered the window directly in front of Johnny. Against the blackness outside it acted as a dull mirror in which she could see her reflection clearly. As she looked, she met the reflection of Johnny’s eyes staring straight at her, and quickly covered herself with the towel.
Johnny’s eyes dropped to his cards and he did not look up again as she slipped into the thick flannel nightgown. She had picked it out when they stopped to buy sufficient clothing to last their stay at the cabin. Barefooted she ran to her bunk and slipped beneath the covers.
Silently Johnny rose, dragged the washtub to the front door and emptied it into the night.
That night it stormed. The earlier snowfall had been windless, the flakes settling straight down like an endlessly unrolling curtain. But during the night wind began to whisper about the eaves and steadily increased its force until it screamed and howled like a million caged animals.
When Cynthia awoke at seven in the morning, Harry was still asleep and breathing heavily, but Johnny was gone from the cabin. He had rebuilt the fire, for the room was pleasantly warm. She took advantage of his absence to dress quickly in woolen slacks and ski boots she had bought for the winter siege, and pulled over her head a tight-fitting turtle-necked sweater with long sleeves.
She washed briefly in cold water from a bucket next to the sink, brushed her teeth and had just finished brushing her hair in the small shaving mirror over the sink when Johnny came in the back door. He was dressed in hunting pants and leather knee boots, a Mackinaw coat and a woolen cap with ear mulls, and he carried the snow shovel.
Stomping snow from his boots, he said, “I cleared a path to the outhouse and lighted the kerosene stove. It’s stopped snowing finally.”
As she made her way to the outhouse Cynthia discovered the snow either side of the path Johnny had shoveled reached clear to her shoulders at one spot, but at another place faded in depth to below her knees. Glancing at the surrounding country, she realized the night wind had piled snow in the drifts which might vary from a matter of inches to spots where it would be over her head. It was cold, still hovering around zero, but the sky was clear with the promise of sunshine and the air was entirely still.
When she returned to the cabin Harry was still asleep and she let him sleep until she had warmed herself with a cup of coffee.
Then she poured some cold water into a bowl, added boiling water from the kettle on the stove and carried the bowl over to Harry’s bunk, where she set it on a chair close to the bunk. Over the back of the chair she placed a neatly folded towel and wash cloth.
“What you doing?” Johnny asked.
“I’m going to give him a bed bath and change his dressing.”
Gently she shook Harry awake. He looked up at her dully and licked at lips she suddenly noticed were dry and caked. Quickly she laid a hand across his forehead.
“You’ve got fever,” she said. “A lot of fever. I wish I’d thought to buy a thermometer when we stopped for clothes.”
“Get me a drink of water, baby,” Harry said thickly.
He drank two glasses, which seemed to make him feel better and removed the thickness from his speech, but his forehead remained hot to the touch. Johnny Venuti watched interestedly as Cynthia stripped her patient and gave him a bed bath with such dexterity not a drop of water spilled on the blankets.
As Cynthia removed the old wound dressing, her face grew momentarily pinched when she saw the inflamed area around the wound and the narrow red streak leading upward along Harry’s thigh toward his groin. Harry noticed the streak at the same time.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Just an after-effect of your wound,” she said calmly. Reaching down, she grasped his bare big toe and gave it a sharp pinch. “Feel that?”
“Not very much,” Harry said. “My foot feels kind of numb.”
Without comment Cynthia redressed the wound and helped Harry back into his pajamas. As Johnny handed the wounded man a cup of coffee, she walked to the window and stared out at the sedan. It was nearly buried in a snowdrift which covered it clear to the top of the windshield.
Abruptly she turned around and announced with loud calmness, “You’ve got septicemia, Harry. Blood poisoning.”
Both men stared at her.
“How far is the nearest telephone?” she asked.
“Twenty miles,” Johnny said. Walking to the window, he swept his gaze over the jagged white landscape, then turned and glanced about the room. “We should have brought snow shoes, boss.”
Harry merely watched his face quietly.
In the same unnaturally loud voice in which she had made her announcement Cynthia said, “There’s nothing I can do with only a first aid kit. Without antibiotics and blood transfusions he’ll be dead in a matter of days. He’ll probably die anyway unless we get him to a hospital by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
Again Johnny’s eyes searched the countryside through the window. “Even a tank couldn’t get up here through this snow,” he said. “Some of those drifts must be twenty feet deep. It will take a helicopter, providing I can get hold of one.”
He crossed the room, pulled on a thick sweater and donned his Mackinaw over it. Cynthia and Harry watched silently as he selected a number of chocolate bars from one of the shelves over the sink and thrust them into his coat pocket. Then he removed a flyrod from the wall, stripped off its reel and laid the reel on the table.
“You won’t make it, Johnny,” Harry said in a low voice.
Johnny made no reply, but he flashed Harry a look which was a mixture of assurance and the unvoiced understanding that exists between men who possess a deep and mutual personal attachment. Then he walked to the door, pulled it open and was confronted by a wall of snow nearly waist high. For a moment he seemed taken aback, but with a slight shrug he plowed through, dragging the door shut behind him.
Through the window Cynthia watched his slow progress. A few yards from the cabin the snow became only knee deep and he stopped to brush himself off. Then he probed ahead with the flyrod, jabbing it through the crust clear to the ground before every step. He had traveled no more than a dozen yards when he encountered a hole which swallowed the rod clear to its handle. Withdrawing it, he probed again until he located solid foothold and moved slowly on.
Behind her she heard Harry’s teeth begin to chatter.
For the next eight hours Cynthia alternately combatted Harry’s chills and fevers, one moment burying him under blankets and the next bathing his fevered body with cool water, pouring more into him in an attempt to satisfy a raging thirst, and placing snow packs on his brow. The chills were less frequent than the fevers, the latter, which she estimated by feel might run as high as 105 degrees, being her most constant foe.
By the middle of the afternoon the patient’s right foot and lower calf had turned a dull purple and there was an inflamed area four inches in diameter around his wound. From it a thick red streak ran clear up his thigh to his groin.