"They lie," said Ole Bar. "Abry Linkhorn hain't never gone nowhere near crazy at no time."
"Maybe he didn't go clear crazy, but Doc Allen said he was hit hard and wasn't likely to git over it no time soon."
"I bet a bottle against a bottle he's over it now," said Buck Thompson. "Who'll take it up? Will you, Jack Armstrong?"
"If it was somebody like you are I would. You get petticoat-fever every change of the moon, take it like spring pimples that's always goin' and comin'. But some take it like the smallpox and don't never get over the scars. Abe Lincoln's the kind that will wear the scars."
"Bars is the same," Ole Bar ventured. "Most bars is done with their women folks after matin' season. Once in a lifetime you find a pair of bars stickin' together. Nobody but their maker knows what they do it fur. It's the same with men, and Abry Linkhorn, he picked him out one worth stickin' to.
"Yeh—nobody blames him for gettin' sweet on Ann Rutledge. But poke up the fire and let's get jolly or this dead talk will stir up the spooks."
While they were piling up the fire and stacking up the bottles, someone looked down the road and saw a tall, slightly bent figure approaching in the darkness.
"Boys, he's comin'," Kit Parsons announced.