Ferguson smiled.
“You and Kermode strike me as differing in many ways; yet you seem strongly attached to him.”
“That’s true,” Prescott assented. “I can’t see that I owe him anything, and he once led me into a piece of foolishness that nobody but himself could have thought of. I knew the thing was crazy, but I did it when he urged me, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Still, when I meet the fellow I expect I shan’t have a word of blame for him.”
“He’s a man I had a strong liking for, though on many matters our points of view were opposite. However, I dare say it’s something to be thankful for that we’re not all made alike.”
“Kermode’s unique,” Prescott explained. “I’m of the plodding kind and I find that consequences catch me up. Kermode’s different: he plunges into recklessness and the penalty falls on somebody else.”
“You don’t mean by his connivance?”
“Never! It’s the last thing I meant. Kermode never shirks. Bring a thing home to him and he’ll face it, but somehow he generally escapes. There’s the matter I mentioned—he and I played a fool trick, and while he rambles about the country, flinging a foreman down an embankment, assisting a lady in distress, posing as a temperance reformer, in his usual inconsequent way, I’m deep in trouble, and so are other people who don’t deserve it. So far I’ve always reached the scene of his latest exploit soon after he had left; but the man must be found.”
Ferguson laughed.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Follow him to the Pacific, if necessary. As the country isn’t opened up, he can’t get off the line.”