him since. It's mighty queer. The whole thing is queer.
And the queerest part of the whole business is this sudden commission
of mine at Fort Simpson."

Kent leaned back against his pillows. His breath came in a series of
short, hacking coughs. In the star glow O'Connor saw his face grow
suddenly haggard and tired-looking, and he leaned far in so that in
both his own hands he held one of Kent's.

"I'm tiring you, Jimmy," he said huskily. "Good-by, old pal! I--I--" He
hesitated and then lied steadily. "I'm going up to take a look around
Kedsty's place. I won't be gone more than half an hour and will stop on
my way back. If you're asleep--"

"I won't be asleep," said Kent.

O'Connor's hands gripped closer. "Good-by, Jimmy."

"Good-by." And then, as O'Connor stepped back into the night, Kent's
voice called after him softly: "I'll be with you on the long trip,
Bucky. Take care of yourself--always."

O'Connor's answer was a sob, a sob that rose in his throat like a great
fist, and choked him, and filled his eyes with scalding tears that shut
out the glow of moon and stars. And he did not go toward Kedsty's, but
trudged heavily in the direction of the river, for he knew that Kent
had called his lie, and that they had said their last farewell.

CHAPTER IV

It was a long time after O'Connor had gone before Kent at last fell
asleep. It was a slumber weighted with the restlessness of a brain
fighting to the last against exhaustion and the inevitable end. A
strange spirit seemed whirling Kent back through the years he had
lived, even to the days of his boyhood, leaping from crest to crest,
giving to him swift and passing visions of valleys almost forgotten, of
happenings and things long ago faded and indistinct in his memory.
Vividly his dreams were filled with ghosts--ghosts that were
transformed, as his spirit went back to them, until they were riotous
with life and pulsating with the red blood of reality. He was a boy
again, playing three-old-cat in front of the little old red brick
schoolhouse half a mile from the farm where he was born, and where his
mother had died.

And Skinny Hill, dead many years ago, was his partner at the
bat--lovable Skinny, with his smirking grin and his breath that always
smelled of the most delicious onions ever raised in Ohio. And then, at
dinner hour, he was trading some of his mother's cucumber pickles for
some of Skinny's onions--two onions for a pickle, and never a change in