When Lancaster left him, Hector lay gasping. The effort of the interview, short as it had been, had completely played him out. The realization wounded him bitterly. The man whose physical strength was proverbial was, he had discovered, at this crisis, as incapable of action as a baby. He revolted madly against it, but the fact remained. As with his body, so with his brain. Fiercely as he tried, now, to form some plan, he found himself utterly unable to do it. His penetration, his self-control and powers of concentration were all gone. He could not get Antoine out of his mind. The man's absence tortured him, shut out everything else. Through the coming days, this was to dominate his thoughts, jeering, like a fiend, at his helplessness.
Exhaustion brought him rest at last.
Blythe awakened him some hours later, with a collation prepared from eggs. Hector took the glass, astonished. Eggs were as rare as women in Black Elk.
"You bin havin' 'em ever since you got sick, sir," said Blythe proudly.
"I have, eh? A dollar apiece! This will ruin me financially, I see that."
"No 't'won't, sir," exclaimed Blythe quickly.
He watched his chief drink the mixture with intense satisfaction.
"How's that?"
"Well, sir—" Blythe became hesitant. "Fact is—Sergeant Savage, he said he'd break my neck if I told you—the boys passed 'round the hat, sir—seein' you were ill, it was all they could do——"
"You mean—" said Hector slowly, "that the men bought these eggs for me, out of their pay?"