“We owe you for it,” Buck said. “He’s our friend––”
“And he’s ourn, too,” Grell declared, “so we’ll split the difference. I expect it was worth a hundred dollars what we two did to-night. That’ll be fifty, boys, if it’s all right.”
“Yes, suh,” Slip said, handing over five ten-dollar bills, and Grell handed two of them to his companion, who shook his head, saying:
“Nope, Doc! Ten only to-night. My first fee!”
“And you’ll never have a more interesting case,” Grell declared. “No, indeed! You’ll see cases, come you go to college, but none more interesting, and if we’ve pulled him through, you’ll never have better reason for satisfaction.”
The two got into a little motorboat and went bounding and rocking in the wind and waves toward the town 99 behind the levee on the far bank. The two gamblers watched the little boat rocking along till it was but a black fleck in the midst of the weltering brown waters.
“I don’t reckon any one’ll drap down to-day,” Slip muttered, looking up the river.
“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Buck replied. “You needn’t to worry, you’re plumb worn out, Slip. Git to bed, now, an’ I’ll slick up around.”
It was a cold, dry gale. From sharp gusts with near calms between the wind grew till it was a steady, driving storm that flattened against the shanty-boat sides, and whistled and roared through the trees up the bank. And instead of dying down at dusk, it increased so much that the big acetylene light was not hung out, and if any one came down to the opposite shore he saw that there would be no game that night.
Buck went in and sat down by the wounded man’s bed, giving him the medicines Doctor Grell had left. For the attentions Prebol, in lucid intervals, showed wondering looks of gratitude, like an ugly dog which has been trapped and then set free. What he had suffered during the night even he could hardly recall in the enfeebled condition of his mind, but the spoonfuls of broth, the medicine that thrilled his body, the man’s very companionship, lending strength, took away the feeling of despair which a man in the extremities of anguish and alone in the world finds hardest to resist.