Get up, you cherub."

Instead of rising, he reached out a flask from his pocket, and uncorked
to take a little nourishment. I flicked the bottle into the river, and
assisted him to rise with my foot. "My poor erring brother," said I,
"please step this way, or I'll kick your tail through your hat."

He said he wasn't feeling very well, so when I got him into the cabin, I
let him lie on Brown's bed, lashing him down good and hard. I gave him a
stick to bite instead of my fingers, which is private. "Now," said I,
"your name is Polecat. You're due to rest right there, Mr. Polecat,
until I get the provincial constable." I gathered from his expression
that he'd sort of taken a dislike to me.

Swift and the mare were grazing on pine chips beside the cabin, and Mrs.
Trevor looked wonderfully peaceful.

"Your husband," said I, "is resting."

She gave me a wry laugh, and seeing she was in pain, I poured water over
her foot.

"That's better," said she, "how good you are to me!"

Old man Brown was coming across with the punt, mighty peevish because
I'd dropped a horse carcass to rot at his cabin door, and still worse
when he seen I had a lunatic roped in his bunk. Moreover, he wasn't
broke to seeing ladies used for cargo on pack-animals, or me naked to
the belt, and making free with his rifle. I give him his Winchester,
which he set down by his door, also a dollar bill, but he was still
crowded full of peevishness, wasting the lady's time. At last I hustled
the ponies aboard the punt, and set the guide lines so that we started
out along the cable, leaving the old man to come or stay as he pleased.
He came. Fact is, I remembered that while I took Mrs. Trevor to my home,
I'd need a messenger to ride for doctor, nurse, groceries, and
constable. I'm afraid old man Brown was torn some, catching on a nail
while I lifted him into the punt. His language was plentiful.

Now I thought I'd arranged Mrs. Trevor and Mr. Trevor and Mr. Brown, and
added up the sum so that old Geometry himself couldn't have figured it
better. Whereas I'd left out the fact that Brown's bunk was nailed
careless to the wall of his cabin. As Trevor struggled, the pegs came
adrift, the bed capsized, the rope slacked, and the polecat, breaking
loose, found Brown's rifle. I'd led the ponies out of the punt, and was
instructing Brown, when the polecat let drive at me from across the
river. With all his faults he could shoot good, for his first grazed my
scalp, ha