‘But that would be a lie.’
‘How do you know?’
‘But I couldn’t prove it, Hashknife.’
‘Any girl who likes you well enough to marry yuh won’t make yuh prove when yore father died, kid.’
‘But I don’t even know I had a father.’
‘Well, yuh won’t have to prove that. Just forget that yuh went through life kinda one-sided on parents. And don’t argue with me. I want to set down and think about Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs and a dirty Navajo rug.’
Sleepy went into the house, where he flopped on the old couch, burying his nose in an old magazine, while Rex sat down on a corner of the porch, watching the changing lights on the hills as the sun sank lower in the west.
It was as though a painter, unsatisfied with an effect, would swiftly blot out a streak of gold and draw in a full brush of violet; only to change it to a deep mauve and then to an opaque cobalt; striking new highlights with glowing gold.
Farther to the north a great flock of birds, like a lot of black sheets of paper caught in a whirlwind, spiraled up from among the hills, always traveling in circles. Rex watched them, fascinated. They did not seem to flap their wings, but mounted higher and higher. Some of them circled back to earth, but seemed to come back, flapping their wings, as though in haste to gain altitude.
‘What kind of birds are those, Hashknife?’ asked Rex.