Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!”
It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the world.
“Wot ever did become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant grouch.
Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, saying nothing.
“Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so long?” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson t'ree or four years ago.”
“He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last mont'.”
And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim.
“Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?”
“A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'. Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.”
“He didn't neither,” said Looney again.