Joe finished with a flourish but without a smile.
He pulled out his watch. “Doggone,” he said, “I never had no idear it was so late. We ought to of been asleep before now. Lanky, you ought not to let these boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death if you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.”
THE GENESIS OF PECOS BILL
“I suppose,” said Lanky, as he sat by the camp-fire with Red and Hank and Joe, now his fast friends, “that the cowboy’s life is about the most interesting one there is. I’d like it. Live outdoors, plenty of fresh air to breathe, interesting work—that’s the life.”
“I ain’t kickin’,” said Joe. “You see I’m still at it, though I’ve cussed it as much as anybody in my time, and swore off and quit, too, more than once. But somehow when spring comes, and the grass gits green, and I know the calves is comin’, somethin’ jest naturally gits under my hide, and I come back to the smell of burnt hair and the creak of saddle-leather.”
“Yeah,” said Red, “it’s jist like a dream I had once. I dreamt I died and went up to a place where there was big pearly gates, and I walked up and knocked on the door, and it come wide open. I went in, and there stood Saint Peter.
“‘Come in; welcome to our city,’ he says. ‘I’ve been lookin’ for you. Go over to the commissary and git you a harp and a pair of wings.’
“‘All right,’ says I, feelin’ mighty lucky to git in.
“As I walked along on the gold sidewalk, I sees a lot of fellers roped and hobbled and hog-tied.
“‘What’s the matter?’ says I; ‘Saint Peter, you’re not tryin’ to buffalo me, are you?’