“It’s only that I’m sick of it all. Sick of the fight, and the mud-throwing. And getting no thanks.”
“Hell’s bells,” Sam exclaimed. “You talk like a woman!”
Wint looked at him curiously. “What’s Kite up to, Sam? Have you heard?”
“Heard some rats say he would rip you up. And I told them you’d be doing some ripping, about that time. You’re not going to make me out a liar, Wint. Are you now?”
“Oh, I suppose I’ll fight.”
He left the restaurant and walked down to Hoover’s office and secluded himself in the back room; but his studies could not hold him. There was a curiously passive despair upon the boy. He could not shake it off. The whole thing seemed so little worth while. If there had been a chance to fight.... But the peril was intangible. He could not come to grips with it. He could not even be sure there was peril. He could not be sure of anything. Not even of himself. He asked himself despairingly: “Are you going to be a quitter, Wint?” And then thought hopelessly: “Oh, what’s the use?”
In mid-afternoon, Dick Hoover looked in and said Gergue wanted to see Wint. Wint was surprised. “What does he want?” he asked. “Gergue?” He got up and went to the door and saw Peter waiting; and he called: “Come along in here.”
Gergue came at the invitation. His hat was off; he was fumbling in the tangle of hair at the back of his neck. There was a curiously furtive uncertainty about the man. Wint thrust a chair toward Peter with his foot, and said: “Sit down.” When Gergue was seated, and slicing a fill for his pipe, Wint asked:
“What’s on your mind?”
Gergue looked at him sidewise, stuffing the crumbled tobacco into the black bowl. And he asked: “Wint, where do you figure I stand?”