Lin took a few steps.
“Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.” And his Excellency beamed with professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon he had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
“It shows, does it?” said Lin. “Well, it don't usually. Not except when I'm—when I'm—”
“Down?” suggested his Excellency.
“Yes, Doc. Down,” the cow-puncher confessed.
Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the Governor's good heart. “I've got some whiskey along on the trip—Eastern whiskey,” said he. “Come over to my room awhile.”
“I used to sleep all night onced,” said McLean, as they went. “Then I come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts could make yu'—make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat, yu' know!” he stated, suddenly. “And I expect one or two in camp lately have not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.”
Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay; feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard balls reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars and calm splendid dimness of the plain. “'Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile,'” he quoted. “But don't tell the Republican party I said so.”