Not mortally—not mortally my enemy shall have harmed me,
For I have heard the crickets’ songs and the thin flutes and the thunder.
In the evening Edward met Stone Ponting in the corridor. The boy looked pale and hysterical.
“I bin out with Doc. He’s bin setting me up cocktails. Some drink I’ll say. I’ve had cocktails before, though—a boy and me knoo a man in Sacramento ... the other feller had a Buick.... I ain’t no sneezing innocent, believe me....”
Edward followed him into his room.
“I’ll say I’d be kinda lonesome here, without Doc—him and me’s buddies. Emerly was a sport, I’ll tell the world. Her and me raised hell in this one-horse city. My, we made ona these Chink traffic cops mad one day, having ricksha races.... Doc’s a piker. I didn’t feel but a little queer after that cocktail and now he says he’ll never buy me another. I tell you I ain’t no snivelling kid—he’s a piker—I feel queer now and no mistake.”
He was very sick. Then he began to cry. Edward sat on the edge of the bed and patted the prostrate boy’s knee awkwardly. All the time Edward was thinking, “This boy’s going to depend on me absolutely within a few hours. A thousand dollars.... Besides, it’s my duty to look after him. Melsie’s a friend of mine....”
“There must have been poison in that hooch,” sobbed Stone. “Mebbe Doc’s a thug, after my thousand bucks.... ’Sociating with foreigners has ruined him. Emerly was a sport though she was a foreigner.... My, I’m lonesome without Emerly, I don’t mind telling you. Emerly and me was affinities, like Mom and Lon Merriman. But she quit. Doc says women are all that way.” He cried again hideously. “She useter kid me along. She useter make up tales about the stunts Tam could put over. She said he was a saint like in the Bible. Her and me was sharks for the polo-game. We useter went and look at the polo-game and she useter kid me along about the things Tam done when he went to the polo-game. It was like the tales in the kid’s supplement of the Sunday papers. Once she said he waved his stick and there was eight balls on the field so’s all the guys went off quite happy with a ball and they all shot a goal, and often, she said, he’d stick the ball on to the ground by magic and the fellers’d whack at it and whack at it and ride over it and curse at each other for missing it ... just kid’s tales, but the way she telledum just tickled me to death someway. Gee, makes me laugh right now.... I don’t mind telling you, this is a bum city without Emerly.”
He was still crying a little but the effect of the cocktails was wearing off and soon he would hide himself again behind his rude walls.