"I guess it's a go, Steve," said John Davis.
"Looks like it, John," replied Steve.
And then the rain that had held back so long came down through the forest in a deluge.
XI
BLOOD MONEY
"A man," says Poor Richard, "has three friends—an old wife, an old dog, and money." Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. He had an old wife and he had an old dog, but he had no money. And there are times when, let comfortable moralists say what they please, a man's need for money overshadows everything else. Such a time had come to Jim Taylor.
It came at one o'clock on a cold, starry March morning. Since sundown he and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.
"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not gone.