Sam dropped beside his ally.
“Well, how is he?” he whispered.
“Dunno,” Lon answered dubiously. “If he was anybody else, I’d call him a mighty sick man. Bein’ Peter Groche, mebbe he’s soldierin’. He’d be powerful glad to get away—don’t lose sight o’ that.”
Sam bent over the suspect. Groche’s face was flushed; his breathing was labored.
“Certainly he’s feverish, Lon. And he couldn’t feign that, could he?”
“Umph! I ain’t no doctor.”
“Wish you were!”
“So do I,” said Lon. “As ’tis, I dunno—the pair of us went through enough to send some folks to hospital, what with that rassle and then the tramp through the drifts. And I did hammer him up—had to, or he’d ’a’ done for me. Clear case o’ survival of the fittest—feller that fit hardest, you know. And I ain’t in what you’d call the pink o’ condition myself. Sam, I’m as stiff as a bunch o’ ramrods, and I ain’t got a j’int that feels as if it had been greased in a coon’s age. That’s one trouble—I don’t dare take chances with him. If he got two jumps’ lead, I’d never catch him. And for all his takin’s on, and his wild yellin’, and them fever signs—wal, jest remember he’s as tough as an oak knot and as crafty as a fox. And he’s got the biggest kind o’ cause to bolt, if he can. Arson’s a state prison job, sonny.”
“So I suppose. Only”—Sam hesitated—“only that wouldn’t be ground for failing to call a doctor or—or carrying him to one.”
Lon listened for a moment to the shriek of the gale.