The men shuffled to their feet, and gathered round, silent but sharp-eyed. If there was to be any more of it they were ready. Finally, one of them took a drinking-pail from one of the tables and poured a generous stream on the cookee.
Some one offered a like service to Slocum, but Harrigan interfered, shouldering his way through the group. “Leave him be! I’ll take care of him. They ain’t no one goin’ to raise hell in this here shanty long as I’m boss. Here you, Sweedie, give us a lift.”
They carried the limp, unconscious Andy to the stable and laid him in a clean stall. Harrigan paused to throw a blanket over him. When he returned to the shanty the cookee was seated on a bench crying.
“Here, you! Shut up and git back on th’ job, quick!”
The strain eased a bit when the boy resumed his occupation. Andy Slocum’s friends evidently thought their man deserved his “medicine.”
“Joe took more lip than I would ’a’,” remarked a disgruntled belligerent.
“That so?” asked another. “Well, they’s some here as would of used boots followin’ the punch, and been glad to git the chanct at Andy—not namin’ any names.”
Next morning Harrigan sent the cookee out to call Slocum to breakfast, but the young riverman had departed. “Prob’ly back on the job,” remarked one.
“Yes, and it’s where we’ll all be afore night. Things is tied up bad in the gorge. Then the wangan fur us—tentin’ on the ole camp-ground fer fair, but, oh, Lizzie, when we hit Tramworth—lights out, ladies.”
“Lucky if some of your lights ain’t out afore you hit there,” came from a distant corner of the shanty.