“Oh, look here!” cried Stacey. “Then you were one of them! I swear I’m sorry! This will put you in bad with the others, won’t it?”
Burnham grinned. “They won’t exactly be coming around and begging me to have another drink of ginger extract on them,” he admitted. “It don’t matter, Captain, honest it don’t! I was going back to Omaha anyway.”
Stacey stopped walking and stared at him curiously. “Why on earth did you side with me?” he asked.
“I dunno,” said the other, looking down and shuffling with his feet on the sidewalk. “Habit, I guess. No,” he added, looking Stacey in the eye, while a dull flush spread over his face, “no, it ain’t that. I’d go anywhere you went, Captain, even if it was straight to hell. Pshaw, hell would be a song compared with some of the places I’ve gone with you!”
Stacey was touched and also disturbed. What a responsibility! Here was a bond with a vengeance!
“I’m blessed if I know why,” he murmured, and they walked on. “And yet,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you’ve been here in Vernon for I don’t know how long and haven’t even come to see me! Is hell the only place you’ll accompany me to? Have you got a special preference for it?”
Burnham hung his head. “Well, you see,” he muttered, “you’re such a confounded swell up here, Captain!”
Stacey again paused abruptly and turned on the man. “Damn you, Burnham, I’m not!” he cried. “What do you say that for?”
“Well,” said Burnham apologetically, “maybe you don’t want to be, maybe you ain’t, but I guess you’ll have a hell of a time not to be. Looks to me like every one’s gone back the way they was before.”
Stacey felt profoundly discouraged, the comment was so obviously true.