“You tote your own in this town,” he grumbled to the little man beside him. “You stay here, Ducky, till I come back, and don’t go wandering off anywhere. We gotta be traveling. It’ll be dark as the ace of spades, time we get home, as it is.”
“Don’t we meet the stage or nothin’?” whined Ducky.
“No, we don’t meet the stage or nothin’,” answered Dog, pushing back his wide hat and swinging a booted foot over the edge of the coverless Ford. A stranger would have known at once why he who had been named Percival John was known to his fellows as “Dog.” He looked like a dog—very much like a bench bull, with his button nose, his underslung chin, his sharp little eyes and forehead that was almost no forehead at all. As for his partner, he came quite readily by his nickname—not through any facial resemblance to a duck, but because, with his short bowlegs, he walked like one. A preacher in a day long past had baptized him Elbert Spence.
Minutes passed, during which Ducky dozed, slumped low in the front seat, and when Dog finally came and climbed over into his place slowly, the face which Ducky opened his eyes on, was drawn and sober.
“You remember that I had a sister,” Dog said at last. “I don’t often speak of her.”
“Uh-huh!”
“Married an artist guy.”
“They’re never no good.”
“Not generally, but this one wasn’t so bad, take him altogether. Used to draw waterfalls and such, but he gave it up. Now he makes pretty pictures for toothpowder ads.”
“Uh-huh! What about it?”