Judson grunted. "What ails him?"
"Well, he wears a wreath of immortelles day and night. Haven't you guessed why he runs such desperate chances? He's sick—thinks he's going to die, anyhow, and wants to finish the job quick. I'm the one who has to endure him."
"Suicide?"
"It amounts to that."
"The devil!" Judson pondered for a moment. "Can't you cheer him up?"
"I?" O'Reilly lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "When I try he gets sore at my heartless indifference; when I sympathize he declares I'm nudging him closer to his grave—says I'm kicking the crutches out from under him. He's just plain vitriol. I—I'd rather live with an adder!"
O'Reilly's youthful asistente, who at the moment was painstakingly manufacturing a huge, black cigar for himself out of some purloined tobacco, pricked up his ears at the mention of Branch's name and now edged closer, exclaiming:
"Carumba! There's a hero for you. Meester Branch is the bravest man I ever seen. Our people call him 'El Demonio'!"
O'Reilly jerked his head toward the Cuban. "You see? He's made the hit of his life, and yet he resents it. The Cubans are beginning to think he carries a rabbit's foot."
"No rabbit's foot about it," the captain asserted. "He's just so blamed thin the Spaniards can't hit him; it's like shooting at the edge of a playing-card. Annie Oakley is the only one who can do that."