ANCIENT HISTORY
Peter wasn't at all certain that he had done the right thing. One event had followed another with such startling rapidity that there hadn't been time to deliberate. Jim Coast was wounded, how badly Peter didn't know, but the obvious duty was to give him first aid and sanctuary until Peter could get a little clearer light on Coast's possibilities for evil. None of this was Peter's business. He had done what McGuire had asked him to do and had nearly gotten killed for his pains. Two fights already and he had come to Black Rock to find peace!
In his anger at McGuire's trick he was now indifferent as to what would happen to the old man. There was no doubt that Jim Coast held all the cards and, unless he died, would continue to hold them. It was evident that McGuire, having failed in accomplishing the murder, had placed himself in a worse position than before, for Coast was not one to relax or to forgive, and if he had gotten his five thousand dollars so easily as this, he would be disposed to make McGuire pay more heavily now. Peter knew nothing of the merits of the controversy, but it seemed obvious that the two principals in the affair were both tarred with the same stick. Arcades Ambo. He was beginning to believe that Coast was the more agreeable villain of the two. At least he had made no bones about the fact of his villainy.
Peter found Coast stripped to the waist, sitting in a chair by the table, bathing his wounded shoulder. But the hemorrhage had stopped and Peter saw that the bullet had merely grazed the deltoid, leaving a clean wound, which could be successfully treated by first aid devices. So he found his guest a drink of whisky, which put a new heart into him, then tore up a clean linen shirt, strips from which he soaked in iodine and bandaged over the arm and shoulder.
Meanwhile Coast was talking.
"Well, mon vieux, it's a little world, ain't it? To think I'd find you, my old bunkie, Pete, the waiter, out here in the wilds, passin' the buck for Mike McGuire! Looks like the hand o' Fate, doesn't it? Superintendent, eh? Some job! Twenty thousand acres—if he's got an inch. An' me thinkin' all the while you'd be slingin' dishes in a New York chop house!"
"I studied forestry in Germany once," said Peter with a smile, as he wound the bandage.
"Right y'are! Mebbe you told me. I don't know. Mebbe there's a lot o' things you didn't tell me. Mebbe there's a lot of things I didn't tell you. But I ought to 'a' known a globe trotter like you never would 'a' stayed a waiter. A waiter! Nom de Dieu! Remember that (sanguine) steward on the Bermudian? Oily, fat little beef-eater with the gold teeth? Tried to make us 'divy' on the tips? But we beat him to it, Pete, when we took French leave. H-m! I'm done with waitin' now, Pete. So are you, I reckon. Gentleman of leisure, I am!"
"There you are," said Peter as he finished the bandage, "but you'll have to get this wound dressed somewhere to-morrow."
"Right you are. A hospital in Philly will do the trick. And McGuire pays the bill."