“Double pneumonia and a slim chance, of course,” gloomed Raker. “Always so. Can’t have a man git useful and be a little decent, but he’s got to die! Why couldn’t it ’a’ been that tramp tried to set the jail afire?”
“What I’m a-thinking of is his poor ma, who used to write him such beautiful letters,” said Mrs. Raker, wiping her kind eyes. “They was so attached. Never a week he didn’t write her.”
“It’s his mother I’m thinking of, too,” said the sheriff, with a groan; “she’ll be wanting to come and see him, and how in—” He swallowed an agitated oath, and paced the floor, his hands clasped behind him, his lip under his teeth, and his blackest Indian scowl on his brow—plain signs to all who knew him that he was fighting his way through some mental thicket.
But he had never looked gentler than he looked an hour later, as he stepped softly into Paisley’s cell. Mrs. Raker was holding a foaming glass to the sick man’s lips. “There; take another sup of the good nog,” she said, coaxingly, as one talks to a child.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Paisley. “Queer how I’ve thought so often how I’d like the taste of whiskey again on my tongue, and now I can have all I want, I don’t care a hooter!”
His voice was rasped in the chords, and he caught his breath between his sentences. Forty-eight hours had made an ugly alteration in his face; the eyes were glassy, the features had shrunken in an indescribable, ghastly way, and the fair skin was of a yellowish pallor, with livid circles about the eyes and the open mouth.
Wickliff greeted him, assuming his ordinary manner. They shook hands.
“There’s one thing, Mr. Wickliff,” said Paisley: “you’ll keep this from my mother. She’d worry like blazes, and want to come here.”
There was a photograph on the table, propped up by books; the sheriff’s hand was on it, and he moved it, unconsciously: “‘To Eddy, from Mother. The Lord bless and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee—’” Wickliff cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know, Ned,” he said, cheerfully; “maybe that would be a good thing—kind of brace you up and make you get well quicker.”
Mrs. Raker noticed nothing in his voice; but Paisley rolled his eyes on the impassive face in a strange, quivering, searching look; then he closed them and feebly turned his head.