Presently he returned with another tie, which he dropped near the fire; and then he looked sullenly toward Patsy.
"Share up, or chuck it alone?" he demanded, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.
"What you got?"
"As much as you have, and as good as you have."
"All right. I'm agreeable. Chuck it down."
Half an hour later, when it was almost dark, a third one appeared.
He was shorter and slimmer than the others, and the best dressed one of the three, although he was disreputable enough in all conscience.
He came noisily over the fence from the track, and the two at the fire could hear him long before he reached them. But they made no move. Anybody who approached them with as much noise as that was not to be dreaded, it appeared.
When he arrived within the circle of the firelight, he stopped and strangely enough began to laugh; and he laughed on, boisterously, amazingly, in fact; he laughed until there were tears in his eyes, and until he had to hold to a sapling near him for support.
"Aw, what's eatin' you?" called out one of the men from the fire. "What you see that's so funny; must be in your own globes. Come along inside if you wants to, and don't stand there awakin' up the dead."