Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/359

Rh he come back.… So 'twas killed he was. Poor boy! Poor boy! … From the day he left I niver heard word of 'm, livin' ner dead." She wiped her cheeks again with a shaking hand. "What matter?" she said. "Sure, what matter? 'T 's all dead an' gone these forty years."

He looked at his foot—a small foot, neatly booted. "I went with the cav'lery after that," he explained anxiously, "fightin' Mexicans an' the Ku-Klux in Texas.… I been servin' out West ever since, enlistin' again when my terms expired.… I got my discharge now, an' my pension."

She scarcely heeded him. "We ust to call 'm 'Candy Jim,'" she said, picking at the soiled table-cloth that wrapped her bundle. 'Candy Jim'… So yeh knew 'm, sur? Well, well. It 's from afar off that God sinds sometimes.… D' yeh mind how he was killed?"

He answered after a pause: "With a bullet, ma'am." He added: "In the head." He took a package of fine-cut chewing tobacco from his hip-pocket, and helped himself hurriedly to a mouthful of it.

"He was a good lad," she said. "We ust to go ridin' time an' again on th' ol' stage down Tinth Street to the Batt'ry.… He was free of his money. An' that 's more than I 'll say fer Dolan. Did yeh know Tim Dolan, too?"

"No, ma'am," he said, and sat up with caution.

"I married Tim—rest his soul! Tim an' five children, I buried thim all." She fell back into silence.