A GIRL LIKE HER
Save for a short and casual "see you in the morning, Garry," Stephen
O'Mara turned without a word that night and left the improvised
sleeping-quarters in the storehouse shack. It was a man's
leave-taking, short to abruptness, so badly stereotyped that it denied
utterly any consciousness of threatened, reckless tragedy and cordially
intimate only because in all man-to-man speech there is less and less
of actual sincerity in a multiplicity of words. But he might have
talked till daylight and still have failed to register the binding
acceptance of Garry's promise, which his silence, unaided, achieved.
Soundlessly, unemotionally, Steve closed the door on that figure on the
bunk edge which, suddenly slack of limb and shoulder, had averted its
face. But then, there in the darkness, with the gun swinging heavily
between loose fingers, he hesitated in his very first step back from
the threshold. And twice, head bowed in indecision, he halted in his
slow progress from that door to the lighted one of his own cabin which
framed Fat Joe's immobile form--halted each time as though he would
return--and each time went slowly forward again. Fat Joe's eyes barely
flitted over Steve's face that night; they clung in a fixed, pale blue
stare of fear to the weapon in his hand. And long after Steve had
drawn up a chair next the one which Garry had vacated and fallen to
filling his pipe, he stood, shifting from foot to foot in awkward,
uncomfortable silence. He crossed after a time and slipped into the
empty seat. His tongue was as haltingly guilty as his face was pink
with shame when he began to speak.
"Steve," he stammered, "Say, Steve, I--I didn't know I was going to
start anything like that when I begun talking my ideas of art and
literature and such like. I didn't see where it was leading us to--not
for a minute. Why, Steve, every blessed hour of the days and nights
since you've been away, I've been dodgin' every topic of conversation I
thought might hit him hard. I'm just several assorted kinds of
fool--and you followed him that quick and quiet!" The apology was
tinged with pride. "I just didn't think---- But ain't he got a poor
opinion of women folks, though? Was it--a close decision?"
Steve shook his head; he smiled and the returning surety in his face
did much to clear Joe's features.
"No," Steve answered, "not very. Somehow I know already that I needn't
have followed at all, so far as that contingency was concerned. And it
was my fault, Joe, not yours. I should have told you exactly how such
things stood in Garry's mind--would have, if I had had the time. His
opinion of women isn't very high. And it's odd, too, isn't it, that
both the very highest and very lowest of such opinions are always held
by men who base them upon what they have been taught by one woman
alone. Tell me, Joe, what's happened? How have you and Garry hit it
off, since I went down river? . . . Trouble?"
The fat man's eager denial was still self-consciously defensive.
"Not a bit!" he stated. "Not one little wrangle, even. Of course I
was expectin' it. I've watched 'em come around too many times not to
know how they can cuss a man cold one minute, and then make him plumb
ashamed of mankind in general, with beggin' and pleadin'. I just beat
him to it the morning he woke up; I told him what he could have, and
what he couldn't, and he took it calmly enough. He just set there,
pretty blue and shaky, and not quite clear in his head, and smiled that
slow grin of his that's hardly any smile at all.
"I don't mean that he didn't swear! O my--O my! It's nice, ain't
it, to have the gift of ease and eloquence in speech? He made me
feel sort of amateurish and inadequate--me! But he didn't beg.
Not--one--peep--out--of--him! He told me what he thought of me just as
polite and cool as could be and let it go at that. He said he guessed
I was boss, for a while at least, and asked for chopped fine!" Fat Joe
hesitated. His color grew higher again. "After what's just happened,"
he added, "I'm almost ashamed to mention it, but--but ain't this friend
of yours one of them chaps they call 'thoroughbreds' in novels?"
Steve flashed a glance at that earnest face. For a moment he had
forgotten the first glimpse he had caught of Joe that evening, bent
double over the block of yellow paper--a glimpse which still seemed
funny and yet not very funny either.
"He comes of a very old family," he replied. "Old as they are reckoned
in this country." And his answer held a question.
Joe shook his head.
"That ain't quite what I mean. I've seen lots of the younger sons of
them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres;
I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border.
They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico
ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the
saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it
was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most
of them hadn't had a family tree to lean up against at times, they
never could have kept their feet at all."
"No, that wasn't what I meant, Steve. I figured he was kind of a
regular chap--the hero guy that's too hot proud to bat an eye, you
know, even when he's--well, I just can't get it straight in words, but
this is what I'm driving at. The first night after you had gone he was
settin' right here where I'm settin' now, looking quiet into the fire.
I didn't ask him what was on his mind, not because I've learned not to
go trackin' across other men's mental preserves, but simply because I
didn't even have to guess more than once. He's a nice lookin' boy,
ain't he? Sort of fine cut and tight built, and clean and decent
looking. I'd been thinkin' of that, too; thinkin' he didn't look like
the others I've seen drop off so sudden it left me gasping. Nor like
them who went over so screamin' mad it left my palms wet and clammy
from hangin' on to myself while they were going. He looked different,
settin' here and staring into the fire, and hell burning inside him,
and saying nothing. I sort of got to figurin' over him about
then--sort of begun to wonder, even before I hunted up a deck of cards.
"Oh, you can smile if you want to, but you'll have to admit, just the
same, that it's helped you stay sane once or twice yourself, figurin'
whether or not I had an ace in the hole. Lonesomeness like what we've
both seen ain't so very different from what he was fightin' at that
very moment--not if the thing you're lonesome for and the thing you're
thirsty for are things you know you can't have.
"I invited him to set in for a bit of intellectual pastime; I had to
invite him twice, but he smiled then and agreed just as though he was
glad to. And then, careless and off-hand, I asked him would he care to
name the stakes.
"He waited quite a while before he answered me. You know how quiet it
can be here in the timber, Steve, when it starts out to be quiet.
Well, I could just feel the silence right here in this room. And then
he laughed! It wasn't hardly any sound at all he made, and yet it
might have been a blast, it hit me that sudden. I don't like that kind
of laughter.
"'Stakes?' he says after me, just as precise as could be. 'Why,
surely! I should be happy to back my play, but I'm afraid that my
present supply of cash would hardly stand a very heavy drain.'
"He didn't have to explain even that much. Right along I'd been
certain enough that he didn't have a copper with him. I'd put his
watch away where he couldn't find it and--and maybe swap it with one of
the hands for a half a pint. But I let on to be thinkin' for a while,
until I brightened up as if the idea just hit me.
"It wasn't exactly fair, I'll admit. It wasn't what either of us would
call a straight play, but--but--oh, I'd been watching him, just as I've
told you. I knew he would about pay his soul for the drink that was
due him in fifteen or twenty minutes; he was eyein' the bottle on the
shelf right that minute. But I'd never seen a man's face give the lie
to his spirit, either, the way his did, if he was the kind that would
quit cold.
"'Cash ain't no consideration with me,' I told him, generous enough.
'But, personally, I've reached that degree of excellence where I can't
play the game just for the sake of the technique of it any more. It's
a quarter to nine,' says I, 'and in just fifteen minutes you get your
gill of Three Star. Now, how much--how much, figurin' on the present
state of supply and demand--would you reckon that drink appeals to you,
in dollars and cents, U. S. A.?"
"Steve, you know he wasn't too steady. His hands were shaking--oh,
you've seen 'em, too. But there he sits and looks back across the
table at me, monkeyin' with a stack of chips, and giving me smile for
smile.
"'I wouldn't sell that drink,' he murmured, 'I wouldn't sell it
for . . . well'--and he licked his lips that were dry as leather.
"That was enough! I knew as well as he did how much he wanted it, but
I was kind of disappointed, too. I'd been hopin'--I thought
maybe--Say, don't you just naturally hate to have your judgment of
human nature miss the whole blamed target, just when you think you've
scored a bulls-eye? I do. It hurts my self-confidence; makes me
wonder if I ain't growin' careless of details. And then, right there,
I found out how close I'd come, and shootin' off-hand at that, mind
you! Right there he gave me my next lesson. The nice, gentle way he
cussed me out, that morning, was the first. Maybe he'd read the
disappointment in my face, because he laughed again, not quite so
sudden this time.
"'I wouldn't sell that drink for any price,' he repeats. 'But when it
resolves itself to a gamble, I suppose, Joe, no gentleman should refuse
the issue. If I understand you correctly, if cash is no consideration,
then suppose we say that one drink against the rest of the bottle, chip
for chip and stack for stack. Your confidence is not entirely
reassuring to me, and yet perhaps I should tell you beforehand that
I've always thought I could play this game half way well myself.'"
Fat Joe rose and crossed to the table for a match.
"Now wasn't that meeting me half way?" he continued, when he was seated
again. "Wasn't it neatly done? Why, for a moment I was most ashamed
to go through with it. I wouldn't have, only he sat there, smilin' so
easy and confident. But we played. We played until daylight came
around. And accordin' to the way he scored it, just before we went
down to the works in the morning, he didn't have a drink comin' to him
for the next forty-eight hours! I play a real involved and scientific
game, Steve--but that ain't what I'm drivin' at. When we'd got
done--when we'd finished--I tried to make him take the glass that had
been comin' to him at nine. And he needed it, don't doubt that. He
needed it and could have had it, for I made it just as easy as anybody
could. . . . Steve, he ain't had a drink since that first night. That
was what I meant when I spoke about him being what they call a
thoroughbred."
They sat for a time in silence after Joe had finished.
"Pride!" Stephen O'Mara exploded softly. "Pride! And Garry thinks his
is dead; he thinks he has killed it himself. But it was there on his
face to-night, too, laughing up at me, Joe, just as it did at
you--laughing at me, all amused at itself, out of that crooked smile of
his. And it'll never die. It'll live as long as he does!"
He looked down at the gun on his knee.
"That's all, Joe?"
Fat Joe cleared his throat.
"I--I gave him a job the next morning," lamely. "We seemed to be
getting along together fine so I---- Shucks, I was just afraid to have
him go! That's the flat truth of it. And you told me to keep him, if
I could. So I set him to checking up the stock in the storeroom and
put him on keepin' time for the squad up here. He's drawin' eighteen a
week, Steve. Was that all right? You were figurin' on keeping him
here?"
And then Joe Morgan saw Steve's eyes light up. He saw a swift
something flash out from within, which, once or twice before in the
years of their friendship, had set his face to burning.
"Joe," Steve exclaimed, "you're right about that matter of family
trees. I know a man right now who doesn't have to go back one minute
in his pedigree to prove that he's a gentleman. I've left some tough
propositions for you to solve, Joe. Lots of times, when I couldn't see
the way out, I've put it up to you. If I merely say 'thanks, Joe,' and
let it go at that, do you think it will do?"
"Suits me!" Joe's jauntiness was large. "And it goes double on the
rebound. But how--how do you suppose any woman ever came to set a--boy
like that to slipping? Or why didn't he sit down where it was quiet
and figure it all out for himself? One bad guess don't make the whole
world wrong. And say, wouldn't it be lucky, though, if he could meet a
real nice girl about now?"
Steve leaned back and gave way to rare and subdued laughter. It was
much as though he did not want the sound to penetrate to that dark end
room in the shack beyond. And then he was quickly sober-faced again.
"I think he is going to, Joe. I think I may promise that he is likely
to, very, very soon. And it will make a difference--a mighty big
difference for Garry. For, if you don't mind my mentioning the matter
again, in spite of the preachments of many of your novelists to the
contrary, it's just about as Garry has argued it to be. Most men are
just as fine--just as decent--as women demand they shall be."
He lifted the revolver and tossed it negligently across the room. It
struck with a thud in the middle of his own bunk.
"Where did he get that six-shooter? It looks like one of yours?"
"It is," said Joe. "Nothing gaudy nor ornamental, but a right handy
thing. And, there! That's another error I made, ain't it? I reckon
it's going to be difficult for me to get used to the idea of any man
being a dangerous enemy to himself. I gave it to him the first day he
went to work."
Joe's eyes traveled across to the object under discussion.
"Harrigan came back before you did," his explanation seemed to veer to
another quarter. "He was most punctual, I'd say, wouldn't you? He
came in tuned up real melodious on the last load with Big Louie. He
sung big-voiced that night; he's been talkin' big-voiced since, I'm led
to understand." Again that mental shift. "Gun-play always did seem
awful foolish to me--to talk about! When men start to advertisin'
trouble to come, by word o' mouth, it never does worry me particularly.
I just gave your friend the gun to keep around handy, if he should
happen to need it. Did you know he could make the ace of spades look
shopworn and weary at thirty paces with one of those toys? Well, he
can."
Steve smiled.
"You're not totin' one of them yourself, yet, I see?" he remarked
lazily.
Fat Joe spat in vast contempt. He clenched one pudgy hand and sat
watching the knuckles pale, iron-hard, beneath the seeming softness.
"Are you?" he countered.
This time Steve's laughter was soundless.
"Scarcely! We're going to hear some of them yap lots louder than they
do now, before the winter is over. But you might give that one back to
Garry in the morning. And, as for the rest of it, I suppose we'll be
quite likely to forget, won't we, Joe, that either of us has so much as
seen or thought of a gun to-night?"
Both of them had risen. Joe puckered his lips.
"Forget it? How can we," he demanded, "when we don't even know
anything to forget! Why, as I reckon it, we'll both get up in the
morning and regard it as a dream just too foolish even to bother to
relate."
Their eyes held for a moment, before Steve turned again toward the
door. And perhaps his manner was a little too unconcerned that
evening, a little too carefully careless, for almost before he had
lifted the latch Fat Joe stepped forward, one quick, protesting step,
and then stopped on second thought.
"You ain't goin'----" he began, and suffered that spoken protest also
to remain uncompleted.
"It's not late," Steve's voice was thoughtful. "It's not late, but
it's surely very quiet." He stood gazing out into the gloom. "Maybe
I'd best run down and see what ails our soloist to-night. Somehow, the
more I've thought about it, the more I've come to fear that he is
temperamental, Joe--too temperamental, for such a wearing proposition
as this one is likely to be. And you haven't slept much since I've
been gone. Oh, that was easy, just from your eyes! So you'd better
turn in. I'll just stroll down and let them know that I'm back home."
It is odd how much of finality there can be in the quietest of
statements. Eyes narrowed, Joe stood in the middle of the floor and
watched him depart without further objection. But the moment the
blackness had swallowed him up he backed to the bunk, fumbled for the
gun which Steve had tossed upon the blankets, and followed out into the
dark.
Stephen O'Mara stood a long time outside the door of the men's
bunkhouse that night, fingers upon the latch, before he made any move
to enter. But neither a wish to eavesdrop nor a desire to frame,
experimentally, the words he meant to speak was the reason behind that
pause. It was in itself a new thing to find the long, low building
lighted at that hour, even though, as he had himself put it to Joe an
instant before, it was hours from being late. That night the almost
absolute silence beyond the closed door was an even more unusual state
of affairs. The voice of one man only was audible; the words he spoke
indistinguishable altogether. But sudden bursts of laughter,
punctuating the recital which he could not clearly follow, were
indication enough to the man outside of what manner of tale was holding
the ears of that roomful of rivermen. Stephen O'Mara, who had long
ceased to wonder at the discovery in them, of new and impulsive
finenesses which bordered close upon inherent nobility, knew fully as
well how utterly and unspeakably gross could be the premeditated
coarseness of those same men.
There was no movement to mark his entrance when he finally pressed the
latch and swung the door open; not so much as a single glance to
indicate that his presence was noted. Under the yellow light of
flickering oil lamps the eyes of all those scores of gaudy-shirted
figures lounging against the walls were fixed eagerly upon the face of
him who held the middle of their stage--him who talked from where he
half-lay, propped on one elbow, in his bunk at the end of the room.
Harrigan, red-shirted, red-headed, was lounging at case, waiting for
the last gurgle of appreciation to subside, before he gave them the
close of the story--the last titbit, the savor of which already had set
him noisily to licking his lips. And in the doorway Steve, rigid of a
sudden, sensed what that climax was to be.
"--Her fi-an-say inside," the droningly indistinguishable words were
very plain now, "her fi-an-say inside, consoomed with pr-ride and
anticipation, tellin' all who had come to dance that she had pr-romised
to be his, for-river more! And her, at that same minute outside with
him--and both av thim. . . ."
Harrigan did not hurry it in the telling. And if his portrayal of
Archibald Wickersham was unmistakably deliberate, neither did he fail
for want of sufficient detail, to make the other picture clear. Vilely
he gave them the complete imagery of his vile brain.
A shout went up, a louder, hoarser outcry of applause which rocked the
room. And then that rigid figure in the doorway had started forward.
Between those lanes of suddenly silent men Steve passed in silence, to
stand before him who had achieved his climax a breath before. And at
his coming Harrigan slid from the bunk, started to reach within the
blanket pack at the head of what had been his bed, and then thought
better of such impulse. Bravado intermingled with blank surprise, he
came haltingly to his feet. The voices of few men have been as
unhurriedly deadly as was that of him who Harrigan that night.
"That was wise, Harrigan," Steve told him slowly--far too gently.
"That was wise to let your knife lie safe within your pack. For if
you'd touched it, I'd have killed you--as I ought to kill you now. But
you're drunk, Harrigan! You were drunk a minute ago when you lied your
lie. . . . You're soberer now. You're sober enough to start again and
tell me you're a liar!"
They waited--the roomful of rivermen. Nothing stirred save the clouds
of filmy blue smoke floating against the rafters--that and a bulky blot
of shadow outside which shifted a little, noiselessly, just beyond the
patch of light that streamed through the door. They waited,
heavy-breathed, while Harrigan began to recover from the disconcertment
into which O'Mara's coming had flung him. Slowly the former's lips
twisted into a mocking leer; mockery rose and swam with the hatred in
his inflamed eyes. He would have spoken, sparring for time, when
Steve's hand leapt in and made of the joking effort only a rattle in
his throat. Beneath the stiff red stubble the flesh was livid where
those fingers had been, when he was able to draw breath again.
"'Twas only a bit av a joke," he gasped, and gulped and swallowed hard.
"'Twas only a bit av a joke I was tellin' the bhoys, about seein' you
an'----"
Steve's voice bit in and cut him short.
"Your turkey's ready, Harrigan!" He pointed at the pack toward which
the other had groped and then thought better of the impulse. "You were
going, of your own accord, I see. Well, I'm telling you to go, now!
The door's open; I left it so for you, when I came in. And I'm telling
you too, before you leave, that you'll do well not to come back.
There's not room for both of us on this river any more, Harrigan!"
The riverman's eyes shifted. Furtively they flitted from face to face
in those rows of faces at the walls. But whatever he thought or hoped
to find--fleeting flash of support or encouragement--was hidden behind
a common mask of astonishment as blank as had been his own. They were
waiting for his answer; he knew they were waiting for that as he
crossed to the door. And when he paused there, to turn in sudden
savagery, he realized that his tardiness had robbed him of his chance.
It was too late to talk back then.
"You're tellin' me," he rasped out, "and I was going--sur-re! But
things ar-re not yet finished between you and me. For I'm pr-romisin'
you that I'll be back; I'm pr-romisin' you I'll be wid ye again. I'll
be wid ye again, come spring!"
He disappeared. And hard upon his going Steve wheeled and fronted
those scores of silent men. His eyes leaped from point to point, as
Harrigan's had craftily flitted. Briefly, crisply, he accompanied the
sweeping survey with a voice that was loud enough for all of them to
hear.
"Big Louie! . . . Fallon! . . . Shayne! This is your chance to say
so, if you're going to be lonesome, now that your song-bird has flown.
Speak up! I came down tonight just to hear you talk."
Nothing but an indistinguishable murmur answered him, a low growl that
was neither argument nor evasion. For those hottest partisans, whose
names had been called aloud, knew with Harrigan's going toward whom the
chill finger had been pointed, even though Death had entered and
stalked through their ranks and slipped back out at the door almost
before they realised its nearness.
Rebellion was still a long way ahead for most of them. They had not
yet had time to talk themselves to the pitch of open revolt. They had
merely begun to listen to Harrigan whose disciples in dissatisfaction
they were. And now, in his absence, they stirred uncomfortably under
the gaze of him who remained; they dropped their heads and searched for
matches. But Steve felt the weight of unspoken thoughts when he, too,
faced back in the doorway. This time there was no naming of names; he
embraced the whole room when he spoke.
"They tell me, boys," he said, "that there's talk among you of no more
work on the river when we've put this railroad through. I've heard it
said that some of you think you are cutting the ground out from under
your feet with every shovelful of earth you lift. You ought to know
better than that; you ought to know for yourselves that there'll be
need for more men in these woods than there has ever been before. But
if you don't; if you can't see it that way, why not come around and let
me have a fair chance to talk things over with you, myself, before you
decide to turn on this job? I want you to remember that a man who is a
liar in one thing is mighty likely to talk loose-tongued, no matter
what he preaches."
And there, without lifting his eyes from the floor, Big Louie cleared
his throat and made answer.
"Maybe," he retorted. "Maybe. And maybe not so sure, either! I have
listened to big words before now, me, that have put no food under my
belt, no coat to my back."
Steve's smile was unruffled and kind. No matter what the hidden
verdict of the rest of that room might be, he had known already that
Big Louie was past saving. For there were not so many like him among
those hills but what the type was instantly recognizable, wherever it
was encountered. He had the frame of a giant--Big Louie--the splendid
legacy of generations of men who had lived out of doors. But there was
no depth in his seal-brown eyes which always seemed to brood; no
decision in any move of his ponderous body. He had little chin; he had
no name, save Big Louie which his size alone had sired. And Steve was
very patient in making answer.
"If it's only food and shelter, and clothes for your back, Big Louie,
you'll not have to worry. But I'm not promising either, mind, that
there'll be easy money to blow on white whiskey. Were you expecting
any?"
That brain which could cope with but one idea at a time was fertile
ground for seed which such a one as Harrigan might sow. Big Louie
failed to reply. He sat quiet, deep in thought when Stephen O'Mara
closed the door noiselessly behind him.
* * * * * *
It was minutes after Steve had gone back up the hill before Garry
Devereau reached out a hand in the darkness and touched,
experimentally, what had seemed to be only a shapeless black blotch at
the edge of light, a rod or two from the door. And instantly at his
touch the shadow was galvanized into life. It reared and plunged and
enveloped the slighter man in a crushing embrace and bore him over
backward. With the muzzle of a revolver chafing his ear Garry managed
to worry his head high enough to free his mouth and nostrils from dirt.
"Get off me! Get off me, you fat romancer, you!" he whispered fiercely.
An explosive grunt of dismay answered him, before Fat Joe let him rise.
In a thin and profane tenor he was bidden to explain his presence there.
"I couldn't sleep," Garry replied, his voice still peevish, "so I came
out for a breath of air. I saw him start this way--saw you following
him with that gun in your hand. I just slipped over, too, in case
there might be doings. What's the row, Joe?"
Joe took him ungently by the elbow, turned him about and started him up
the rise.
"An old grudge," he deigned an ungracious explanation. "It's years and
years old. Steve licked him once. Once when they were boys the folks
that live down next to Allison's dressed Steve up like a picture-book,
the nearest I can make out, and sent him to town a-shoppin'. Harrigan,
he----"
"I know! I remember!" Garry's eager whisper interrupted. "That is, I
didn't know that Harrigan was one of the mob Steve whipped that day.
But that wasn't what I meant. Who was the--the girl Harrigan was
talking about, when Steve--when Steve----"
Joe's fingers tightened a little as the other evinced a tendency to lag.
"Hurry a bit, will you?" he urged complainingly.
"Show a little speed! I'm supposed to be up there asleep." And then,
gruffly: "It was the Allison girl, of course."
In spite of the hand upon his elbow Garrett Devereau stopped short in
his tracks.
"Barbara!" he stammered. "Barbara Allison? Joe, was that the girl he
meant to-night, when he said he was going to 'marry one of those women
himself?'"
Joe peered at him, trying to make out the expression upon his face.
"Why not?" he wanted to know. "Why not? Ain't he good enough for her?"
There came a pause--then Garry's stunned rejoinder.
"Good enough!" he repeated senselessly. "Good enough?" He laughed
half wildly, as though he had suddenly hit upon a very funny thought
indeed. "That man in love with a girl like her. . . . Good Lord!"
And Fat Joe, who had failed to understand, swore again beneath his
breath because there was no time left in which to argue the matter.
His face was still very red from his struggle for self-restraint, and
his whole mental balance so disturbed that he forgot entirely to
conceal the blued revolver dangling in one hand when he re-entered the
cabin a moment later. The latter object ruined the effect of his
insouciant rendition of "Home, Sweet Home."
"Thought you were going to retire, Joe?"
Steve was already undressed and crawling into bed. His question was
slow-worded and a trifle stifled.
"I was," Joe assured him hastily. "I was. I just stepped out to see
that everything was tight and tidy for the night, that's all."
Quizzical eyes contemplated the revolver now.
"Taken to carrying a weapon, after all, eh? Well, perhaps that's
wisest. And blow out the light, will you, Joe? I'm tired. You'll
have to undress in the dark."
Then Steve buried his face in his pillow. But sundry sounds, escaping,
were unmistakably hysterical. Joe's mouth opened and closed, fishlike.
He stood and stared down at his side, in beautifully eloquent
profanity, if a stare can be both eloquent and profane.
"You need a nurse," he stated sulkily at last. He finished the light
with a vicious blast. "You need a chaperon!"
But once again, just before he slept, Steve heard him mutter to
himself, less injuredly, as he heaved over in his bunk.
"This has been a very busy evening," he opined.