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there came a shiver in the air, "The birds are flying south," he said. "The winter

has begun."

His companion looked up at him who quoted.

There ain't no track," he said, "an' that 'dobe shack don't look much like a town;

but otherwise his Knibbs has got our number all right, all right. We are the birds

a-flyin' south, and Flannagan was the shiver in the air. Flannagan is a reg'lar

frost. Gee! but I betcha dat guy's sore."

Why is it, Billy," asked Bridge, after a moment's silence, "that upon occasion you

speak king's English after the manner of the boulevard, and again after that of

the back alley? Sometimes you say 'that' and 'dat' in the same sentence. Your

conversational clashes are numerous. Surely something or someone has cramped

your original style."

"I was born and brought up on 'dat,'" explained Billy. "SHE taught me the other

line of talk. Sometimes I forget. I had about twenty years of the other and only

one of hers, and twenty to one is a long shot--more apt to lose than win."

"'She,' I take it, is PENELOPE," mused Bridge, half to himself. "She must have

been a fine girl."

"'Fine' isn't the right word," Billy corrected him. "If a thing's fine there may be

something finer, and then something else finest. She was better than finest. She--

she was--why, Bridge, I'd have to be a walking dictionary to tell you what she

was."

Bridge made no reply, and the two trudged on toward the whitewashed hut in

silence for several minutes. Then Bridge broke it:

And you, my sweet Penelope, out there somewhere you wait for me With buds of

roses in your hair and kisses on your mouth.

Billy sighed and shook his head.

"There ain't no such luck for me," he said. "She's married to another gink now."

They came at last to the hut, upon the shady side of which they found a Mexican

squatting puffing upon a cigarette, while upon the doorstep sat a woman,

evidently his wife, busily engaged in the preparation of some manner of foodstuff

contained in a large, shallow vessel. About them played a couple of half-naked

children. A baby sprawled upon a blanket just within the doorway.

195

The Mucker