THE STEADFAST HEART
“Yes, yes. To be sure. Kid that shot Bates.” He glared over his spectacles at Angus. “Well, what in thunder did you come back for?”
“He needed me,” said Angus.
The doctor eyed him sharply a moment, growled in his throat and made a most disagreeable face. “Huh,” he snorted. “Rainbow’ll make it pleasant for you…. Dummed pleasant! You’ll wish you was in Jericho with the walls cavin’ in before you’re here a week—or I don’t know this town.”
“Doctor!” expostulated Mary.
“Rainbow’s Rainbow,” he said, glaring at her and snorting contemptuously. “Kills whatever it can’t understand. Gawd help an angel that busted a wing and fell down on Main Street. If it wa’n’t placarded ‘Angel’ in big letters, the town’d set onto it and kill it with brickbats.”
“Can he see Mr. Wilkins?”
“Can if he wants to…. Come on.”
Dave Wilkins lay quiescent, eyes closed, sunken cheeks hot with fever. Now and then the bedclothes stirred with a spasmodic twitching of his limbs. An odor of drugs and of super-heated flesh oppressed the room. A nurse, imported, seated by the window, appeared indifferent. It seemed to Angus that nobody was doing anything. He felt a surge of resentment toward doctor and nurse…. Yet, he himself stood
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