He's a nice lookin' boy,
ain't he? Sort of fine cut and tight built, and clean and decent
looking. I'd been thinkin' of that, too; thinkin' he didn't look like
the others I've seen drop off so sudden it left me gasping. Nor like
them who went over so screamin' mad it left my palms wet and clammy
from hangin' on to myself while they were going. He looked different,
settin' here and staring into the fire, and hell burning inside him,
and saying nothing. I sort of got to figurin' over him about
then--sort of begun to wonder, even before I hunted up a deck of cards.
"Oh, you can smile if you want to, but you'll have to admit, just the
same, that it's helped you stay sane once or twice yourself, figurin'
whether or not I had an ace in the hole. Lonesomeness like what we've
both seen ain't so very different from what he was fightin' at that
very moment--not if the thing you're lonesome for and the thing you're
thirsty for are things you know you can't have.
"I invited him to set in for a bit of intellectual pastime; I had to
invite him twice, but he smiled then and agreed just as though he was
glad to. And then, careless and off-hand, I asked him would he care to
name the stakes.
"He waited quite a while before he answered me. You know how quiet it
can be here in the timber, Steve, when it starts out to be quiet.
Well, I could just feel the silence right here in this room.
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