“She’s all right with my girl till I get home,” he said. “Then the affair will take care of itself, like all those things do.”
Barrett had picked up one of the discarded bludgeons and was supporting himself on it. His legs trembled visibly when he walked to Ide’s side.
“Rodburd,” he said, appealingly, “I can see that you think this thing strange. I don’t want you to have wrong ideas. You and I have known each other too long to get into quarrels. You have seen that I have been trying to smooth matters here to-day. I can’t talk it over with you now. I’m sick—I’m a sick man, Rodburd! I’ve been through a dreadful experience up here.”
“You don’t look well,” returned Ide, solicitously, his ever-ready sympathy enlisted.
Barrett’s face was haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. He wavered on his feet, tipping from heel to toe like a drunken man.
“You ought to get out of these woods as quick as you can,” the Castonia man went on.
Even Britt saw now that his associate was in a bad way. He gave a keen glance at him, and shouted to MacLeod, who was waiting at the edge of the woods, “Send back four of my men!”
“I feel dreadfully,” mourned Barrett. His grit and his excitement had been keeping him up. Now, like most strong men who have to confess that they are conquered, he gave way to his illness with utter abandonment of courage.
“Mr. Barrett,” said Ide, surveying him pityingly, “I can see that you’re a sick man. I don’t want to say that to frighten you, but because you ought to know it. You’d better only try to make Castonia, and have a doctor sent there. My girl will be there as soon as you are. You go to my house, and get doctored up before you tackle the trip down-river. That buckboard ride will kill you if you try it in the shape you’re in now.”