"By gum!" Wrinkle cried. "Where the hell did you blow from?"
"Georgia—from back home, Dick. Just got here on the night mail-stage. Gosh, what a ride! My windpipe is lined with dust. Quick! Gimme something to wash it out. Three men on the stage, and not a drop in the bunch. I'm burning up."
"By gum!—by gum!" Wrinkle muttered, as he slid behind the counter and set out a long bottle and glasses. "Help yourself, but I'll tell you now it ain't any o' the simon-pure moonshine we used to get in the old red hills. And you say you are direct from there? My Lord! It seems funny to see a man in this God-forsaken place fresh from them old mountains. Since I clean cut myself off—burnt my bridges, as the feller said, I kind o' realize what I lost. Say, Hank, you didn't give me away, did you?"
Bradley drank a half-tumbler of the whiskey, and took a sip of water and cleared his throat. "No, I kept mum, Dick. I said I would, and I did. It wasn't anything to me, nohow. I ain't no gossiper. That was your game, and I saw no reason to spoil it. Shucks! you needn't worry; you are deader back there than a door-nail. Where is that old pal of yours?"
"Dead." Wrinkle raised his hand warningly. "Don't talk about him. He was a good chap, and stuck to me like a friend and a brother."
"Gee! then you must be lonely, away out here—"
"Don't talk about it. Cut that out, Hank. I'm blue enough as it is." Wrinkle moved the bottle and glasses to a crude table near the door and took a chair. Bradley drew up another and sat down. The rising sun blazed in at the open door, and flared like flame in the gilt-framed mirror back of the bar.
"All right. Out she goes. I didn't mean to touch on a sore spot, but I didn't know. You didn't write often."
"I was afraid my letters might be opened by somebody else. I wanted all that to stay wiped out, Hank. I didn't care so much for Het as I did for the old man and woman."
"I wrote you about your wife marrying again?" Bradley said. "I reckon that ain't news?"