"I have not wanted to live, but I am looking at
things--more like a man now. . . . You need not worry any longer, Joe.
I'll sleep a little while, I think; and then I'll put my mind hard on
getting well, when I awake."
That marked the end of delirium, and with sleep which came almost while
he was talking, the fever began to abate. He "put his mind on getting
well," when he awoke, twelve hours later. Strength was flowing in a
steady tide back into his body long before Barbara's knees would again
bear her weight. For she had squandered her endurance without counting
the cost, and she paid the full penalty. She lay three days and three
nights railing at her weakness before she could get up at all; and even
then Cecile, her little maid, clucked discreetly at the dark circles
beneath her eyes.
Joe was several days absent on that errand which had all but emptied
the seething town of men; he returned the same day Barbara was about
again, forced to admit that Harrigan and Fallon and Shayne had won
clear. And there was nothing left to the disgruntled groups which
straggled in behind him, save tall and heated conjecture. Some said
that they must have managed to cross the border; others maintained that
they had found sanctuary in the lumber-camps of the lake country to the
west, but no matter which guess was right the net result stood
unchanged.
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