(4)
He ached in every bone and muscle and I thought that sounded like the flu so I nursed him the best I knew how for several days, but instead of improving he seemed to get worse. He talked out of his head all the time and kept me frightened half out of my wits. He ached so badly and it seemed to ease him for me to rub him, so I would sit up in bed and rub and rub until my own muscles ached.
One morning after he had been sick about a week, I was ironing, and he seemed to be raving more and more and I was becoming more and more frightened. I decided at once to take to the home of my parents in Roswell so that I could have some help with him and he could have a doctor. So I stopped right in the middle of my ironing, spread the remainder of the clothes out to dry and started out afoot to catch a horse.
We had a car but the battery was down and of course wouldn’t start the car and I couldn’t crank it. So I had to ride a horse three and one-half miles to the ranch where Bolly’s uncle lived and get someone to help me start it.
Luckily I didn’t have far to go for the horse but I had to go up and down several small hills and it seemed a long distance because I was getting more nervous and frightened by the minute. And of course I could imagine all sorts of things happening to Bolly while I was gone.
But I caught the horse without any trouble, led him back to our tent, saddled him and rode as fast as I could go. But when I arrived at the ranch there wasn’t a man on the place. So I had to ride another three miles to where a cousin of Bolly’s lived and luckily he was at home. So he got in his car and drove me back home. Then he tied our car on behind his and pulled it until it started.
We dressed Bolly and managed to get him into the car which was no small job as he is a large man, standing six feet and two inches in his stocking feet and weighting about two hundred pounds.
He was too ill to sit up and the car being a coupe, he couldn’t lie down so I fixed pillows for him to lean back on and started out with him. We got only as far as our store and post office that night though, which was eight miles, because the car began coughing and missing and I was afraid to try to go on. I knew nothing about the mechanics of the car, Bolly was to ill to do anything about it and I was afraid that we would be unable to get any one to stop and help us if the car should absolutely refuse to run. So I turned around and took him back to the ranch for the night.
The next morning we started out again. We had gone several miles when the car began to do the same thing again. I stopped it on the top of a hill so that we could coast it downhill to get it started again. Bolly, though very weak and barely able to stand, got out and with my help. Took the pump and blew out the vacuum tank. Then we got in, let it coast down the hill, and it started right off and ran all the rest of the way to town without giving another particle of trouble.
I took Bolly directly to the home of my parents, put him to bed and immediately called a doctor. His verdict was walking typhoid fever. Well, no wonder I didn’t know what to do for him, never having come in contact with that particular disease before. He stayed in bed thirty days while I nursed him and fed him on a soup diet.