was someone I'd a little prefer dead! It ain't that scratch on the
head that's got him slippin', either." Joe paused and turned to
address Garry Devereau's still white face itself. "You sat in an'
backed my game like a gentleman born," he said, "and now I'm a-goin' to
play yourn, blue chips and white and yello'. But this is goin' to be
your last celebration, friend of mine, even if we do win through, or
you'll be holdin' your next one where the company ain't so select and
the climate nuthin' to compare with ourn!"

And while he talked he worked, for it was Fat Joe who gave the orders
that night. He called for ammonia, for brandy, for a half-dozen drugs
from the camp hospital chest; and each of them Steve brought in an
automatic fashion that finally penetrated even Fat Joe's professional
pleasure in the struggle.

"Friend of yourn?" he asked in an interval while they rested.

"A friend," Steve repeated with a tightening of his jaws, and Joe knew
what that tone meant.

After that they fought on in silence, side by side--sometimes waiting,
sometimes fighting, both of them, to hold that horribly racked man upon
the bed. He fought them with every pound of strength in his emaciated
body. He moaned up at them, screamed at them, cursed them frothingly,
and Fat Joe hung on and cursed him back--cursed him and promised him
profanely that he would not let him die. Steve's face was gray, sweat
was pouring from Fat Joe's scarlet face when the life-tide ebbed lowest
and there came a sudden cessation in that stream of babbled madness,
Garry Devereau lay so quiet that an oath jerked huskily from Fat Joe's
lips; but when he had listened at the motionless chest he lifted his
head and smiled, seraphically.

"There, by God," he stated in his high, complaining tenor, "there, by
God! And if I ain't created a vacancy in the angel chorus aloft, then
I'm a liar!"

And his explosive diagnosis proved to be as correct as it was utterly
unprofane in spirit. Before day broke there came an hour when Garry
Devereau lifted himself upon one elbow and opened his eyes to stare
half wildly, but very sanely, about the room. His gaze flitted
wonderingly from wall to wall before it rested, fearfully fixed, upon
Steve's brown face. Instantly he looked away, flinchingly, and met Fat
Joe's voluminous grin--and looked back again, cunningly cautious.
Finally he reached out a timid, blue-veined, pitifully unsteady hand
and plucked at Steve's blue