He leaned back in his high and rocking seat, grasping the back rail with his right hand. He felt as if the waves of a troubled and tumultuous sea were throwing him up, broken and torn, on some island of possible safety. He felt dizzy, as though he were being tossed and plunged forward to some narrow bar of impending release and rest. He did not ask of himself just what seas boomed and thundered on the opposing side of that narrow stretch of promised security. He knew that they were there, and he knew that the time would soon come when he must face and feel them about him. He had once demanded rest; but he knew that there now could be no rest for him, until the end. He might hide for a day or two, like a hunted animal with its hurt, but the hounds of destiny would soon be at his heels again. All he asked, he told himself, was his man's due right of momentary relapse, his breathing spell of quietness. He was already too stained and scarred with life to look for the staidly upholstered sanctuaries, the padded seclusions of simple and honest wayfarers. He was broken and undone, but his day would come again.
He looked at his limp and trailing left hand. To his consternation, he saw that it dripped blood. He tried to push back his coat sleeve, but the pain was more than he could endure. So with his right hand he lifted the helpless arm up before his eyes, as though it were something not his own flesh and blood, and for the first time saw the splinter of bone that protruded from the torn flesh, just below the wrist-joint.
He felt for his handkerchief, dizzily, and tried to bandage the wound. This he never accomplished, for with a sudden little gasp he fainted away, and fell prone across the oil-skinned lap of the big driver.
That astounded person drew up in alarm at the side entrance of a street-corner saloon. He was on the point of repeating his sturdy call for help, when a four-wheeler swung in beside his wagon-step, and delivered itself of a square-shouldered, heavy-jawed figure, muffled to the ears in a rain-coat. The newcomer took in the situation with a rapid and comprehensive glance of relief.
"So there he is, at last!" he said, as he came forward and caught up the relaxed and still unconscious figure.
"Where'd you get a license for buttin' in on this?" expostulated the surprised driver.
"Buttin' in?" cried the man in the raincoat, as he lifted the limp figure in his great, gorilla-like arms. "This isn't buttin' in—this is takin' care o' my own friends!"
"Friend o' yours, then, is he?" queried the weakening driver.
"A friend o' mine!" cried the other angrily, for his man was already safely in the cab. "You damned can-slinger, d'you suppose I'm wastin' cab-fare doin' church rescue work? Of course he's a friend o' mine.
"And not only that," he added, under his breath, as he swung up into the cab and gave the driver the number of Penfield's uptown house, "and not only that—he's a friend o' mine who's worth just a little over a quarter of a million to me!"