"You're quite sure? After all, in one way, the soul of Lamartine would be something of a trophy."
The American looked up at him with a faint kindling in his eyes. "Tiebout has so many to his credit—and he could afford to spare me this one. Still, at least, I can heal the body, if I am called in in time."
"Which is a good deal. Especially in a land where it is singularly difficult to believe that men have souls at all."
Nares shook his head. "If I didn't feel quite so played out I'd take your challenge up," he said. "Guess we'll join issue on that point another time. You mentioned once or twice that Lamartine was very sick?"
"There's about one chance in twenty we get there before he's dead. It's one of the reasons I'm taking the lower road. It's the nearest."
It was characteristic that Ormsgill did not state that it was also one of the reasons he had traveled for four days and most of four nights under an enervating heat. Lamartine was an alien of dubious character, and in some respects distinctly uncongenial habits, but Ormsgill had not spared himself to give his comrade that one chance for his life.
"Didn't Lieutenant Luiz' recommendation count?" asked Nares.
"No," said Ormsgill, reflectively. "I don't think it did. At least, not as he meant it to, though I've been trying to worry out what he did mean exactly. One thing's certain. He wasn't prompted by any solicitude for our safety. You see, he might have been counting on my distrust of him, or my usual obstinacy, and wanted me to take the higher road after all. Or he may have been playing another game. I don't know. That's why we'll take the nearest way and not worry. When you're in doubt, it's generally wisest to do the obvious thing."
Nares made a little drowsy gesture of concurrence. "Straight to the mark—and you get there now and then. At least, it can't be the wrong path—and if one doesn't finish the journey it's only a falling out by the way. A good many of us have done that in this country."
Ormsgill said nothing. He had somewhere buried deep in him a vague, unformulated faith which, however, seldom found expression of any kind in words, and was tinged with a bitterness against all conventional creeds, which was not altogether astonishing in the case of a man who had lived as he had done in the dark land. Still, he had traveled four days and nights to bring his sick comrade the assistance he felt would arrive too late and now, when he dragged himself along dead weary through the steamy shade, he had reasons for surmising that there was peril somewhere down the winding trail.