"He's gone where all the good fellows go," said another.
"You mean that he is dead?" asked Peacocke.
"Of course he's dead," said Robert. "I've been telling him so ever since we left England; but he is such a d–––– unbelieving infidel that he wouldn't credit the man's own brother. He won't learn much here about him."
"Ferdinand Lefroy," said the first man, "died on the way as he was going out West. I was over the road the day after."
"You know nothing about it," said Robert. "He died at 'Frisco two days after we'd got him there."
"He died at Ogden Junction, where you turn down to Utah City."
"You didn't see him dead," said the other.
"If I remember right," continued the first man, "they'd taken him away to bury him somewhere just there in the neighbourhood. I didn't care much about him, and I didn't ask any particular questions. He was a drunken beast,—better dead than alive."
"You've been drunk as often as him, I guess," said Robert.
"I never gave nobody the trouble to bury me at any rate," said the other.