CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT was Flagg’s reiterated lament on the journey back to Adonia. “It’s my right hand, Latisan!”
Ward had insisted on being the charioteer for the stricken master, promising to rush back to headwaters and take charge of the crew. He tried to console the old man by urging that getting in touch as soon as possible with capable doctors might restore his strength. “It may be only a clot in the brain, sir. Such cases have been helped.”
“It’s my right hand. It’s like my mother’s. She never could lift it again.”
They had started before dawn; a gibbous moon shed enough light on the tote road to serve Latisan. Flagg was couched on a sled, his blanket propped up by hay. His scepter, the curiously marked cant dog, lay beside him. He had made sure of that before he allowed the team to start.
“I propose to be your right hand in so far as I’m able, Mr. Flagg,” declared Latisan, at last, pricked by the repeatedly iterated plaint. “You can depend on me just as far as I can stretch my ability.”
“But you told me you didn’t like me for myself. You said you were joining drives with me because I was proposing to fight. Now I can’t fight. No man will do my fighting for me unless he likes me for myself.”
“I’ll do it for you, sir,” insisted Ward, determinedly. “It’s right in line with my plans. I’ll take your orders. I’ll come to you regularly at Adonia. You shall know every move. I’ll be merely your right hand to do what you want done.”
“I’m a hard man with my help, Latisan. You have agreed with me on that point. I shall be ugly when I’m chained up. I shall say something to you, and then you’ll quit.”
Latisan had been looking the situation squarely in the eye on his own account. He was confronted by something wholly outside all his calculations. He had enlisted merely as a lieutenant and had never considered that he would be called on to assume authority as chief in the field. He had been led to serve with Flagg because the old man was the personification of permanency in the north country—seemed to be something that could not be shaken by the assaults of the Comas—a man who impressed all as being above the hazards of death and accident. Somehow, after all the years and because he had been there as a fixture through so many changes, Echford Flagg was viewed as something perennial—as sure as sunrise, as solid and everlasting as the peak of Jerusalem Knob, which overshadowed the big house on the ledges at Adonia; he was a reality to tie to in a fight against a common foe.