Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/206

 man at keeping the camp awake. Bill Dancing talked and, after Sinclair’s name had been dropped from the roll, ate and drank more than any two men on the division. A little apart, McCloud lay on a leather caboose cushion trying to get a nap.

“It was the day George McCloud came,” continued Dancing, spinning a continuous story. “Nobody was drinking—Murray Sinclair started that yarn. I was getting fixed up a little for to meet George McCloud, so I asked the barber for some tonic, and he understood me for to say dye for my whiskers, and he gets out the dye and begins to dye my whiskers. My cigar went out whilst he was shampooing me, and my whiskers was wet up with the dye. He turned around to put down th’ bottle, and I started for to light my cigar with a parlor-match, and, by gum! away went my whiskers on fire—burnt jus’ like a tumbleweed. There was the barbers all running around at once trying for to choke me with towels, and running for water, and me sitting there blazing like a tar-barrel. That’s all there was to that story. I went over to Doc Torpy’s and got bandaged up, and he wanted me for to go to the hospit’l—but I was going for to meet George McCloud.” Bill raised his voice a little and threw his tones carelessly over toward the caboose cushion: “And I was the on’y 182