“You sing!” said I.
Breaking off his song and turning about on his mule, he said quietly, as though he were discussing the best way to make biscuits when you haven’t any soda: “Did you ever see a dead liar?”
“Perhaps,” said I; “but none in particular.”
“And that is why you never sing.”
That was the last word that day. Up to this time the weather had been rather too warm for winter—an ominous sort of a warm, you know. A mist hung over the country, drifting with a light wind from the southeast. During the night the wind whipped into the northwest, and in the morning we had a genuine frank old blizzard howling around us; one of those fierce old boys that nobody cares to face. We had camped in a wooded nook on the south side of the river bluffs and were pretty well protected, so I decided to lay up there until things brightened up a bit.
The man, for I had not yet learned his name, which was not necessary, as the mail I carried attended to that, volunteered to gather wood; and so I lay in the tent near the fire that roared in front, smoking my pipe and swapping cusses with myself on account of the delay.
After a while the man came in with a big arm load of wood, whistling merrily. “Well, you beat ’em all,” I said. “I say a man who can whistle like that on his last trip is a game one. What’s your name and who are you? Here, want to smoke?”
I gave him my pipe. He took it and blew rings meditatively for a while. “Well,” said he, “the name doesn’t matter much, and I’m the fellow who’s elected to be elevated!”
We both laughed strangely, and I began to open my stock of yarns, truthful and otherwise, to relieve the tedium of the day. I had told a number of stories when the man seemed to brighten up all at once. His eyes became on a sudden unusually brilliant.