The sick girl was
forgotten in this nightmare of a personal encounter. As a physician, he
knew the danger of mania, and prescribed hard labor to counteract it.
Dismounting under the bluff and tying his horse, he had many times
toiled and sweated up the ascent, and let himself down again, bruised
and scratched by stones and briers.
Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor
fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The
doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the
common meadow had become a wide picnic ground under the slant of a low
afternoon sun. Those outdwelling settlers, who had other business to
transact besides storing political opinions, now began to stir
themselves; and a dozen needy men drew together and encouraged one
another to ask Colonel Menard for salt. They were obliged to have salt
at once, and he was the only great trader who brought it in by the
flatboat load and kept it stored. He had a covered box in his cellar as
large as one of their cabins, and it was always kept filled with cured
meats.
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