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 "They know me," he went on with his biography; "they can tell you about Al Clemmons. I drove stages when they was stages, not job wagons like they run now, all over this mountain country for thirty years. Ive drove 'em where it was a hundred and seventeen in the shade, and I've drove 'em where it was forty below. I never froze my feet off, like some of the boys, but I've had my fingers froze to the lines so hard more than once I had to have help to let go of 'em. They can tell you about Al Clemmons. He's a man that ain't got nothing to hide."

Rawlins took this revelation as something more than a respectful bid, almost a demand, for news of himself and his intentions. He made short work of it, reserving nothing bearing on his expedition afoot from Jasper, which the old man told him was more than a hundred and twenty miles away.

"Rawlins, heh?" the old shepherd said, reflecting over it, turning the name as if he found something familiar in it, yet could not place it among the rusty accumulations of his memory. "What did you say the handle was?"

"Nathan, generally cut down to Ned."

"That's a good name for a feller," Clemmons approved. "Ned. Got a hard kind of a sound, like a wagon goin' over a rocky road. Yes, that's a good name for a feller—Ned. Strikin' out for Dry Wood, was you, Ned?"

"That was my aim. Have I missed it?"

Clemmons put his hat on, probably to indicate an end to the period of interrogation on his part. It seemed as if he had replaced some part of his anatomy,