"Corliss! When did you lose track of him?"
"In that wreck, 'bout a year ago. We was ridin' a fast freight goin' west. He said he was goin' home, but he never said where it was. Hit a open switch—so they said after—and when they pulled the stitches, and took that plaster dingus off me leg, I starts out huntin' for Billy. Nobody knowed anything about him. Wasn't no signs in the wreck,—so they said. You see I was in that fadeaway joint six weeks."
"What did he look like?"
"Billy? More like a girl than a man. Slim-like, with blue eyes and kind o' bright, wavy-like hair. He never said nothin' about his folks. He was a awful quiet kid."
John Corliss studied Sundown's face. "You say he was killed in a wreck?"
"I ain't sure. But I reckon he was. It was a bad one. He was ridin' a empty, just ahead of me. Then the whole train buckled up and somethin' hit me on the lid. That's all I remember, till after."
"What are you going to do now? Go back to Antelope?"
"Me? Guess I will. I was lookin' for a job cooking but the pay ain't right here. What you lookin' at me that way for?"
"Sit still. I'm all right. My brother Will left home three years ago. Didn't say a word to any one. He'd been to school East, and he wrote some things for the magazines—poetry. I was wondering—"
"Say, mister, what's your name?"