The wrangler looked at him reproachfully and murmured, “Durned if he wouldn’t sing at a wake and spoil everybody’s enjoyment.”
“His heart was open as the day,
His feelin’s all were true.
His hair it was inclined to gray,
He wore it in a queue,”
intoned the vocalist.
“Not news,” the wrangler told himself bitterly. “I done heard all them interestin’ details two hundred and seventy-three times.” Aloud, he attempted a diversion. “Len’ me a loan of a chew of tobacco, Jim.”
The station keeper dived into his left hip pocket, produced a ragged plug, and offered it to his helper. Meanwhile he gave further information about the wearing apparel and physical idiosyncrasies of one Grimes, defunct.
“Wonder what’s holdin’ Tim,” the stableman interposed at the end of another stanza.
“He ain’t been late before in a blue moon. I don’t recollect as he ever was late,” answered the fat man, drawn momentarily from his rhymed epitaph.