The other sat with his hands loosely clasped in his lap. His wide eyes looked far away, and there was about his lips that looseness, that lack of compression, which one sees so often in children. He might have sat, in that posture, for the statue of thoughtlessness.
"What folks?" he asked at last
Buck Daniels had lighted a match, but now he sat staring blank until the match burned down to his fingers. With an oath he tossed the remnant away and lighted another. He had drawn down several long breaths of smoke to the bottom of his lungs before he could speak again.
"Some people you used to know; I suppose you've forgotten all about 'em, eh?" His eyes narrowed; there was a spark of something akin to dread in them. "Kate Cumberland?" he queried.
A light came in the face of Dan Barry.
"Kate Cumberland?" he repeated. "How is she, Buck? Lately, I been thinkin' about her every day."
A trembling took the body and the voice of Daniels; his errand, after all, might meet some success.
"Kate?" he repeated. "Oh, ay, she's well enough. But Joe Cumberland ain't."
"No?"
"He's dyin' Dan."