“Them three years would of kilt me, but I had to live to git Snake.”
“Uh-huh. Now I’ll go home and send up the best medicine I have. It isn’t much: mostly quinine. But you take it. To-night, when there isn’t much chance that anybody’ll be prowling up here, you make a fire, boil some water, bake your chest with hot cloths. Marion can fix you up a mustard plaster, too, and fetch it back with the medicine; you wrap it around that lung, and it ought to draw out the misery. I’ll send you up some good wool socks, too. And you wear ’em! Now will you follow Old Doc Hampton’s orders?”
“I’ll foller ’em, Hamp.”
“Good enough. Now I’ll go get that medicine.” He arose and clapped on his hat. “I won’t be back here myself unless I’m needed—the fewer that come here the better. But take care of yourself.”
Steve gripped the extended hand, his face softening.
“Much ’bliged, Hamp. An’ take care o’ yer own self. Snake’s a-fixin’ to git ye some way, I bet ye. Cuss him, will I ever git to him?”
In the cavernous eyes, in the prediction of trouble from Snake, were a significance which Douglas was to remember later on, but which he hardly noticed now. He only answered the rebellious question.
“Not until you’re able to handle him. Right now you can’t even handle yourself.”
Steve’s mouth tightened in angry admission that he realized it. With a last long draw at the pipe he handed it back.
“I’ll handle him right rough ’fore long,” he gritted. “G’by.”