It was near evening when a teamster drove up with a broken sleigh from which Campbell and the man strove in vain to tear the twisted runner. Reivers from the steps of the store looked on, sneering. Toppy, his lips drawn back with pain and weariness, laughed shrilly at the efforts of the pair.
“Yank it off!” he cried contemptuously. “Yank it off—like this.”
He drove a pry-iron under the runner and heaved. It refused to budge. Toppy gathered himself under the pry and jerked with every ounce of energy in him. The runner did not move. His left ankle felt curiously weak under the awful strain. Across the way he heard Reivers laugh shortly. Furiously Toppy jerked again; the runner flew into the air. Toppy felt the weak ankle sag under him in unaccountable fashion, and he fell heavily on his side and lay still.
“Sprained his ankle,” grunted the teamster, as they bore him to his bunk. “I knew something had to give. No man ever was made to stand up under that lift.”
“But I yanked it off!” groaned Toppy, half wild with pain. “I didn’t quit—I yanked the darn thing off!”
“Aye,” said old Campbell, “you yanked it off, lad. Lay still now till we have off your shoe.”
“And holy smoke!” said the teamster. “What a yank! Hey! Whoap! Holy, red-roaring—he’s gone and fainted!”
This latter statement was not precisely true. Toppy had not fainted; he had suddenly succumbed to the demands of complete exhaustion. The overdriven, tired-out organs, wrenched and abused tissues, and fatigue-deadened nerves suddenly had cried, “Stop!” in a fashion that not all of Toppy’s will-power could deny. One instant he lay flat on his back on the blankets of his bunk, wide awake, with Campbell tugging at the laces of his shoes; the next—a mighty sigh of peace heaved his big chest. Toppy had fallen asleep.
It was not a natural sleep, nor a peaceful one. The racked muscles refused to be still; the raw nerve-centres refused to soothe themselves in the peace of complete senselessness. His whole body twitched. Toppy tossed and groaned. He awoke some time in the night with his stomach crying for food.
“Drink um,” said a voice somewhere, and a sturdy arm went under his head and a bowl containing something savoury and hot was held against his lips.