"What do you think about the next life anyway, Matt?" he asked a little later, while secretly he wondered why the other had not yet touched his coffee.
"Ain't no next life," Matt answered, pausing from the steak to take his first sip of coffee. "Nor heaven nor hell, nor nothin'. You get all that's comin' right here in this life."
"An' afterward?" Jim queried out of his morbid curiosity, for he knew that he looked upon a man that was soon to die. "An' afterward?" he repeated.
"Did you ever see a man two weeks dead?" the other asked.
Jim shook his head.
"Well, I have. He was like this beefsteak you an' me is eatin'. It was once steer cavortin' over the landscape. But now it's just meat. That's all, just meat. An' that's what you an' me an' all people come to—meat."
Matt gulped down the whole cup of coffee, and refilled the cup.
"Are you scared to die?" he asked.
Jim shook his head. "What's the use? I don't die anyway. I pass on an' live again—"
"To go stealin', an' lyin', an' snivellin' through another life, an' go on that way forever an' ever an' ever?" Matt sneered.