“How about them bandages, Doc?” demanded Cavendish.

“Oh, I reckon they’ll do,” replied the doctor indifferently.

“Will he live?”

“I can’t say.  You’ll know all about that inside the next forty-eight hours.  Better let the rest have a look.”

“Just feel of them bandages—­sho’, I got money in my pants!” Mr. Cavendish was rapidly losing his temper, yet he controlled himself until each man had taken a look at Yancy; but always with the same result—­a shake of the head.  “I reckon I can leave him here?” Cavendish asked, when the last man had looked and turned away.

“Leave him here—­why?” demanded the doctor slowly.

“Because I’m going on, that’s why.  I’m headed for downstream, and he ain’t in any sort of shape to say whether he wants to go or stop,” explained Cavendish.

“You picked him up, didn’t you?” asked one of the men.

“I certainly did,” said Cavendish.

“Well, I reckon if you’re so anxious for him to stay hereabout, you’d better stop, yourself,” said the owner of the woodyard.  “There ain’t a house within two miles of here but mine, and he don’t go there!”

“You’re a healthy lot, you are!” said Cavendish.  “I wonder your largeness of heart ain’t ruptured your wishbones long ago!” So saying, he retired to the stern of his raft and leaned against the sweep-handle, apparently lost in thought.  His visitors climbed the bank and reestablished themselves on the wood-ranks.

Presently Mr. Cavendish lifted his voice and addressed Polly and the six little Cavendishes at the other end of the raft.  He asserted that he was the only well-born man within a radius of perhaps a hundred miles—­he excepted no one.  He knew who his father and mother were, and they had been legally married—­he seemed to infer that this was not always the case.  Mr. Cavendish glanced toward the shore, then he lifted his voice again, giving it as his opinion that he was the only Christian seen in those parts in the last fifty years.  He offered to fight any gentleman who felt disposed to challenge this assertion.  He sprang suddenly aloft, knocked his bare heels together and uttered an ear-piercing whoop.  He subsided and gazed off into the red eye of the sun which was slipping back of the trees.  Presently he spoke again.  He offered to lick any gentleman who felt aggrieved by his previous remarks, for fifty cents, for a drink of whisky, for a chew of tobacco, for nothing—­with one hand tied behind him!  He sprang aloft, cracked his heels together as before and crowed insultingly; then he subsided into silence.  An instant later he appeared stung by the acutest pangs of remorse.  In a cringing tone he begged Polly to forgive him for bringing her to such a place.  He bewailed that they had risked pollution by allowing any inhabitant of that region to set foot on the raft—­he feared for the innocent minds of their children, and he implored her pardon.  Perhaps it was better that they should cast off at once—­unless one of the gentlemen on shore felt himself insulted, in which event he would remain to fight.