“Sit down,” I said.
He sank into the armchair and raised his glass, waving it in my direction, then he rose to his feet, bowed, and said: “Your health, sir,” and drank thirstily. I saw then that he had been imbibing more than was good for him, but I could also see that he was literally sodden with fatigue, and something impelled me to offer him food.
“Now that’s kind—very kind,” he said throatily. “I could not think—” He reeled back against the chair and put his hand to his head suddenly.
I signaled to Joey, who left the room, and I went to the man and eased him into the depth of the chair.
“Rest here awhile and have something hot to eat,” I suggested.
His head sank on his chest, his lids dropped over his prominent eyes. “Yes—‘Abbe Constantine’—or ‘Hyperion’—‘Hyperion,’ preferably,” he mumbled. “Weak, disgusting fool—Nero!”
He roused sufficiently to eat a few mouthfuls when Joey and I served him royally with good corned-beef and hominy, and a steaming pot of coffee. But he sank again into lethargy, and I saw that he was in no condition to push on to Roselake in the storm.
I told him so frankly, and pointed to a built-in bunk covered with hemlock boughs in the corner. “Turn in here,” I said, giving him a couple of blankets. “I’ll bunk with the lad to-night.”
I had taken great pains with Joey’s room, and the narrow cedar strips with which I had paneled it shone with a silver lustre in the light of the two candles Joey insisted on lighting in my honor. Joey’s bed was a boxed-in affair, but I had contrived to make it comfortable by stretching stout bed-cord from the head to the foot and interlacing it across from side to side. This served in lieu of springs. The mattress was a crude one of straw, but the straw was sweet and clean, and Wanza had pieced a wonderful bed quilt of shawl-flower pattern calico, and presented it to Joey the year before when he had the measles. The bed had a valance of blue burlap, and I had painstakingly stenciled it with birds and beasts and funny fat clowns and acrobatic ladies in short skirts and tights, after a never-to-be-forgotten circus-day parade Joey had witnessed in the village.
There was a gaily striped Indian blanket for covering, and pillows stuffed with the feathers of many a mallard slaughtered in the marshes. I had converted a couple of barrels into chairs and covered them with tea matting. For floor covering there were the skin of a mountain lion that had prowled too close to my cabin one night, and the skins of a couple of coyotes that had ventured within shooting distance.