"Guess I'd better get up, Mamma."
His wife gripped him as if he was struggling violently, although his Honor was lying motionless as an alligator.
"You shan't--you'll get pneumonia and leave me and the children without any insurance! You've no right to take chances. Let somebody else go that hasn't any future."
There was that side to it.
"Some hobo most like." The future statesman turned over. "Tuck my back in, Mamma."
Mr. Sudds was awakened, and his first impulse was to rush to the man's assistance, but he was not sure where to find matches, and it took him such an unconscionable time to dress that by the time he got there-Scales was restrained by the arms of his fragile wife who threatened hysterics if he left her. Between love and duty Mr. Scales did not hesitate with the thermometer at forty below zero, and the knowledge that loss of sleep unfitted him for business.
So Mormon Joe, screaming in his agony, staggered up the alley, leaving a crimson trail behind him, the sheep dog following like a shadow. He had nearly reached Main Street when he lurched, groped for a support, then fell to his knees. The hot drops turned to red globules in the snow as he kept crawling, gasping, "Oh, God! Won't somebody come to me?" The dog walked beside him as he dragged himself along, perplexed and wondering at this whim of his master's.
Mormon Joe was leaning against the side of the White Hand Laundry, his head fallen forward, when Bowers and the drug clerk got to him. The collie was licking his face for attention, but the warm caressing hand--now red and sticky--was lying in the snow, limp and unresponsive.
Mormon Joe had "gone over"--dying as he had lived--a man of mystery.