"I'm getting bad-luck signs, Bill. That's the short of it."
"How come?"
"The old scars are prickling."
"Scars? What scars?"
"Ain't you noticed 'em."
It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat and shirt. The rounded body, alive with playing muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks—scars left by healed wounds.
"At your age? A kid like you with scars?" Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed scars and gasped. "How come, Ronicky," he asked huskily in his astonishment, "that you got all those and ain't dead yet?"
"I dunno," said the other. "I wonder a pile about that, myself. Fact is
I'm a lucky gent, Bill Gregg."
"They say back yonder in your country that you ain't never been beaten,
Ronicky."
"They sure say a lot of foolish things, just to hear themselves talk, partner. A gent gets pretty good with a gun, then they say he's the best that ever breathed—that he's never been beat. But they forget things that happened just a year back. No, sir; I sure took my lickings when I started."