Routt produced a flask. He held it toward Wint. “Have a slug?” Wint shook his head. Routt drank, again asked: “Sure you won’t?” Wint said:
“No.”
“If I were in your shoes,” said Routt, with the flask still open in his hand, “I’d want to soak myself in it. A good, stiff drunk. There are times when nothing else is any good.”
“I used to think so,” Wint agreed.
Routt took a second drink, wiped his mouth, screwed the cap on the flask and put it in his pocket. “If you want any, say the word,” he suggested. “Now, Wint, what are we going to do?”
Wint, leaning quietly against the wall, stirred a little. “I’m going to tell you something, Routt,” he said.
“This,” Wint went on gently, eyes a little wistful. “This. That I—know you now. At last.”
Routt sat for an instant very still; then he got to his feet. “Wint, what do you mean?”
“I thought you were my—friend,” said Wint. “Stuck to that thought. People warned me. Amos, and father; and—Joan. Said you were not—my friend. But I believed you were.”