My finger is caught in the block!
Leggo!”
“Sounds like a drinking man,” the doctor observed. “If that's the case, this attack will go hard with him.”
It did. However, life had the habit of going hard with Webster so frequently that fortunately he was trained to the minute, and after three days of heroic battling the doctor awarded Jack the decision. Thereafter they kept him in the hospital ten days longer, “feeding him up” as the patient expressed it—at the end of which period Webster, some fifteen pounds lighter and not quite so fast on his feet as formerly, resumed his journey toward New Orleans.
In the meantime, however, several things had happened. To begin, Dolores Ruey spent two days wondering what had become of her quondam knight of the whiskers—at the end of which period she arrived in New Orleans with the conviction strong upon her that while her hero might be as courageous as a wounded lion when dealing with men, he was the possessor, when dealing with women, of about two per cent, less courage than a cottontail rabbit. She reproached herself for the wintry glance she had cast upon the poor fellow that night at the Denver railway station; she decided that the amazing Neddy Jerome was an interfering, impudent old fool and that she had done an unmaidenly and brazen deed in replying to his ridiculous telegram, even though she did so under an assumed name. Being a very human young lady, however, she could not help wondering what had become of the ubiquitous Mr. Webster, although the fact that he had mysteriously disappeared from the train en route to New Orleans did not perturb her one half so much as it had the disappearee! She had this advantage over that unfortunate man. Whereas he did not know she was bound for Buenaventura, she knew he was; hence, upon arrival in New Orleans she dismissed him from her thoughts, serene in abiding faith that sooner or later her knight would appear, like little Bo-Peep's lost sheep, dragging his tail behind him, so to speak. The only regret she entertained arose from her disappointment in the knowledge of his real character, and its wide variance from the heroic attributes with which she had endowed him. She had depended upon him to be a daring devil—and he had failed to toe the scratch!
Dolores spent a week in New Orleans renewing schoolgirl friendships from her convent days in the quaint old town. This stop-over, together with the one in Denver, not having been taken into consideration by Mr. William Geary when he and Mother Jenks commenced to speculate upon the approximate date of her arrival in Buenaventura, resulted in the premature flight of Mother Jenks to San Miguel de Padua, a fruitless visit on the part of Billy aboard the Cacique, of the United Fruit Company's line, followed by a hurry call to Mother Jenks to return to Buenaventura until the arrival of the next steamer.
This time Billy's calculations proved correct, for Dolores did arrive on that steamer. It is also worthy of remark here that shortly after boarding the vessel and while La Estrellita was snoring down the Mississippi, Miss Dolores did the missing Webster the signal honour of scanning the purser's passenger list in a vain search for his name.
At Buenaventura the steamer anchored in the roadstead; the port doctor came aboard, partook of his customary drink with the captain, received a bundle of the latest American newspapers and magazines, nosed around, asked a few perfunctory questions, and gave the vessel pratique. Immediately she was surrounded by lighters manned by clamorous, half-naked Sobranteans, each screaming in a horrible patois of English, Spanish, and good American slang perfervid praises of the excellence of his service compared with that of his neighbour. Dolores was particularly interested in the antics of one fellow who had a sign tacked on a short signal mast in his lighter. “I am a poor man with a large family, and my father was an American,” the legend ran. “Kind-hearted Americans will patronize me to the exclusion of all others.”
Dolores had made up her mind to heed this pathetic appeal, when she observed a gasolene launch shoot up to the landing at the foot of the companion-ladder and discharge a well-dressed, youthful white man. As he came up the companion, the purser recognized him.
“Howdy, Bill,” he called.