Perhaps
it was fortunate that there was no medecine at hand, for if there had
been I might have killed him with it.
He suffered most intensely, and soon became very thirsty, and, there
being no water within many miles of us, he appealed to me to bleed one
of the animals and let him drink the blood; I refused: he insisted; I
again refused: he commanded; I still refused. He swore, and called me
almost everything except a good Christian; he even expressed the wish
that I, his friend, might be sent to a certain place where the heat is
most intense, and the fire is never quenched.
At about eleven o'clock, when his pains were most severe, a dark cloud,
the first we had seen for months, came over us, and a little rain began
to fall, when I at once opened our little camp kettle and turned the lid
upside down, and into both kettle and lid there fell perhaps two or
three teaspoonfuls of pure water, every drop of which I gave to the
sufferer, whereupon he expressed thanks for another God-send, and at
once apologized for bestowing unmerited abuse on me. He afterwards often
asserted that he believed that the little rain-cloud was sent by God for
his special benefit, and that the water caught from that cloud was the
sweetest and best that he had ever tasted. I did not doubt the latter
half of the above statement, but I did have some doubt about the truth
of the former half when I called to mind the scene which followed my
refusal to bleed the horse. Whether the small quantity of water gave him
much relief, or not, I do not know, but I do know that he soon became
better and slept some while I watched.
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