The others were already at the table, and a Chinaman was removing the soup plates.
“Jerry Sims and Tom Daly got it today— Just got a radiogram,” barked Kennard from the head of the table.
“What?” yelped Slim. “How?”
“Must have been a forced landing in the fountains within a few miles of El Paso. In a cañon, crashed, burned.”
“God Almighty.”
The table had been quiet, Moran noticed, when they entered. Those tanned faces were set, and the eyes somehow old. Kennard directed his gaze to Moran.
“Know either one of ’em?” he inquired. “Marfa flight. They were great eggs.”
Moran shook his head. The death toll of the border flyers totaled one out of eight, every year, he knew, and that very afternoon two of them had gone. In the mountains of the Big Bend.
He cleared his throat as he helped himself to bread. Because the simply told news affected him, he said bruskly—
“Well, that’s what any man in this business has got to expect, and he can’t kick when he kicks off.”