“Yep, and I'm Boylan. You're at liberty to correct if wrong. Are we ever going to die or get out?”
“I don't know.... Boylan, you've been good to me. We're two to make one—eye to eye—”
“You're making a noise like breaking down again. Don't, Peter. I've gone on a bluff all my life. I'm a rotten sentimentalist at heart—soft as smashed grapes. It's my devil. If you break down, I'll show him to you—”
“It wouldn't hurt you to bellow like a girl.”
“Maybe not, but I'd shoot my head off first.”
“Did you see the old leprous peasant to-day? He was hump-backed, and he had no lips, but teeth like a dog. He pulled at a soldier's stirrup as we came into town. The soldier was afraid and shot him through the mouth—”
“Shut up, Peter, or you'll get me. I've shown you more now than any living soul knows—”
“You ought to show it to a woman. A man isn't right until a woman knows him in and out.”
“For the love of God—go to sleep!”
They sank into restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck.