NOTE XII
“AFRAID?” It was only because I was so thoroughly afraid I now arose from my seat and went toward the sick man. As for the imagined voices I did not believe in them. Did I not know the tricks of my own fancy and did the man think I was going to be fool enough to risk my hide for a stranger? It is true, had I been a man of physical courage, I might, without too great risk, have gone over to the table and snatched the roll of bills out of the sick man’s hands. When it came right down to it I could at the moment use such a roll of bills very handily. Had I been a man of courage I might have gone blustering and swaggering to the table and bluffed everyone in the place but being, as I knew I was, a coward did the man sitting there think I was going to risk my hide for him?
I moved slowly toward the table, all the time laughing at myself and telling myself I was not going to do what I was at the same time obviously doing and the bartender coming from behind the bar with a hammer in his hand fell in behind me. I could see the hammer from a corner of my eye. Well, he was going to hit me with it. In a moment more my head would be crushed and, as would be quite plain to any man of sense, I would only be getting what I deserved. What a confounded fool! I was terribly frightened and at the same time there was a smileon my lips. My appearance at the moment must have been disconcerting to the men at the table.
They were apparently as great fools as myself. As I approached, the sick man, perhaps to free himself from the others, threw the roll of bills carelessly on the table and one of his companions put a large hairy hand over it. Was he also afraid? All of the men were looking intently at me and at the bartender behind me. Were they but waiting to see my head crushed? One of them got rather hesitatingly to his feet and doubling his fist raised it as though to strike me in the face—I had now got within a foot of the sick man—but the blow did not descend.
Reaching down I put my arms about the sick man’s shoulder and half raised him to his feet, the foolish smile still on my face but as I saw he could not stand I prepared to take him in my arms. That would make me quite helpless but I was helpless enough as it was. What did it matter? “If I am going to be slugged I might as well be slugged doing something,” I thought.
I lifted the man as gently as I could, placing the slender body over my shoulder and waiting for the blows that were to descend upon me but at that very moment the hand of the bartender reached over and snatching the roll of bills from under the hand on the table put it in my pocket.
All was done in silence and in silence, with Alonzo Berners slung over my shoulder, I walked to the door and to West Madison Street where there were lights and people passing up and down. At the corner I put him down and looking back saw the bartender standing at the door of his establishment watching. Was he laughing? I fancied he was. And onemight also fancy he was keeping the others bluffed in the room until I had got safely away. I stood at the corner beside the sick man, who leaned helplessly against my legs, and waited for a cab that would take me to a railroad station. Already I had taken letters from his pocket and knew where he lived. He seemed unable to speak. “He will probably die on the way and then I’ll be in a hell of a mess,” I kept saying to myself after I had got with him into the day coach of a train.