He whacked Pete's shin with a rubber hammer, but Pete never kicked. His foot hung loose like, not doing a blamed thing that the doc said it would if his spine was in repair. The doc was plumb dumb-foundered.
"Most remarkable case of volitional control—" he began.
"Volitional your grandmother!" yells the lawyer. "Mr. Peterson is ruined also! He was stricken prone in the same negligent accident that killed dear Mr. Brady! He is doomed! A few months of progressive induration of the spinal cord, and breaking up of the multipolar cells, and—death, friend, death!"
The widow begun to whimper, and the lawyer grabbed Pete's hand and bursted into tears. Pete, being a Swede, never opened his face.
"But," said the lawyer, cheering up, "we'll make them sweat for this. Shall we not vindicate the right of the working-man to protection, Mr. Peterson?"
"Yu bat!" said Pete. "Ay bane gude Republican!"
"And vindicate his right," went on the lawyer, "to safe tools and conditions of employment?"
"Ay tank we windicate," said Pete.
"Nobly said!" said the lawyer and hopped to it making agreements for contingent fees and other flimflams. It was wonderful how sort of patriotic and unselfish and religious and cagey he always was.
We quit the Golden Fountain, and I got some assessment work for Sile Wilson. Pete wouldn't go. He was sort of hanging around the widow, but his brains were so sluggish that I don't believe he knew why. I picked up a man named Lungy to help. Sile's daughter Lucy kept house for Sile in camp, and in two days she was calling Lungy "Mr. Addison," and reproaching me for stringing a stranger that had seen better days and had a bum lung and was used to dressing for dinner. I told her I most always allowed to wear something at that meal myself, and she snapped my head off. He was a nice fellow for a lunger.