“That’s all right,” he muttered, rolling his head from side to side, “nobody denies it. Run your own business; but I want my clothes. Damn it, I’m freezing!”
His teeth chattered and he shook his fist in an invisible face. Involuntarily, from a sense of helplessness, she looked vaguely about as if seeking aid.
Here, in the woods, was protection from the wind, but the branches aloft were moving and tossing from the fury of the gale above. The usual murmuring of the pines had become a roar. Great drops of rain, shaken from this surging vault, fell in fitful but copious showers. This constant roar,–not unlike the ocean in a gale,–the sombre light, the helpless and perhaps dying man before her, the chill and mortal dampness of all and everything around, for an instant congealed her courage and took away her strength. But this she fought against. All her powers of persuasion, and all her strength, she employed to get him on his feet. Pats, although wild in speech and reckless in gesture, was docile and willing to obey. The weakness of his own legs, 110however, threatened to bring his rescuer and himself to the ground. And, all the time, a constant flow of crazy speech and foolish, feeble song.
Half-way to the cottage he stopped, wrenched his arm from her grasp and demanded, with a frown: “I say; you expect decent things of a woman, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.” And she nodded assent, trying to lead him on again. But he pushed her away and would have fallen with the effort had she not caught him in time.
“Well, there’s this about it,” he continued, trying feebly to shake his arm from her hands yet staggering along where she led, “I’m not stuck on that woman or any other. I’m not in that line of business. Do I look like a one-eyed ass?”
“No, no, not at all!” And, gently, she urged him forward.
“Because three or four fools are gone over her, she thinks everybody else–oh! who cares, anyway? Let her think!”
It was a zigzag journey. He reeled and plunged, dragging her in all directions; and so yielding were his knees that she doubted if they could bear him to the house. Once, when seemingly on the point of a collapse, he muttered, 111in a confidential tone: “This hauling guns under a frying sun does give you a thirst, hey? Say, am I right, or not?”
“Yes, yes, you are right. Come along: just a little farther.”