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Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ajor. It was best, I thought, that I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell. The party formed for the march, an escort of Galu warriors ready to accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace's corral and bid him farewell.
"What a harrowing experience!" she declared. Hollis was grinning at her. "That was a bad thing to have happen to a man," he observed; "I suppose it rather shattered Ace's faith in woman. At least you could observe by his actions just a moment ago that he isn't taking any more chances." She fixed him with a defiant eye.
We had snatched her from the very clutches of Du-seen, who halted, mystified and raging. Ajor, too, was mystified, as we had come up from diagonally behind her so that she had no idea that we were near until she was swung to Ace's back. The little savage turned with drawn knife to stab me, thinking that I was some new enemy, when her eyes found my face and she recognized me.
But I'd like to have one of them pomes printed in the Kicker just to show the folks in this here country that there's a real pote in their midst." "Why " began Hollis, about to express his surprise over his guest's sudden determination to depart. But he saw Nellie Hazelton standing just outside the door, and the cause of Ace's projected departure was no longer a mystery.
If the boss recovered enough to be able to look at Ace's poetry before it was printed, why of course it would have to be shown him. He didn't want anything to go into the Kicker which the boss wouldn't like. But if he wasn't able to look at it, why he would leave the decision to Potter, and if it suited the latter he would be satisfied. He would keep the boys posted on the boss's condition.
"But he still admits that he takes pleasure in looking at a woman!" she told him triumphantly. "So he does. Still, that isn't remarkable. You see, a man couldn't help that no matter how badly he had been treated." She had no reply to make to this, though she gave him a look that he could not mistake. But he laughed. "I think Ace's effort ought to go into the Kicker" he said.
He wasn't quite sure about it, he said, but if Ace could write poetry he hadn't any doubt that during the next few weeks there would be plenty of opportunity to print some of it in the Kicker. He smiled when he saw Ace's face brighten. But he told him he would have to see Hollis if the latter got well enough to endure an interview.
I picked up the quilt, threw it over him, tucked him in as my mother used to tuck me in, thinking of her as I did it and went back to my bunk. I was sorry I had cut Ace's head, and had already begun to forget how cruelly he had used me. I seemed to feel his blood on my hands, and got up and washed them.
"How fortunate!" she said mockingly, after a pause during which he had time to realize that he had been very ungracious. He saw Ace's manuscript flutter toward him, saw her rise and heard the screen door slam after her. During the remainder of the afternoon he was left alone on the porch to meditate upon the evils that arise from thoughtless speech.
The thought of Ace's bandages, and the vision of wounds under them filled me with remorse but I was boss! Finally I dropped asleep, and awoke to find that Ace had got up ahead of me. I was embarrassed by my new authority; and sorry for what I had been obliged to do to get it; but I was a new boy from that day. It never pays to be a slave. It never benefits a man or a people to submit to tyranny.
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