t you on that
Arizona ranch, so you needn't ask me."

"What's the matter now?" Matt asked.

"The Mexican cookin' on your ranch'd be too much for me. If I've got
blue blazes a-comin' in the next life, I'm not goin' to torment my
insides in this one!"

He smiled, expelled his breath forcibly to cool his burning mouth, drank
some coffee, and went on eating the steak.

"What do you think about the next life anyway, Matt?" he asked a little
later, while secretly he wondered why the other had not yet touched his
coffee.

"Ain't no next life," Matt answered, pausing from the steak to take his
first sip of coffee. "Nor heaven nor hell, nor nothin'. You get all
that's comin' right here in this life."

"An' afterward?" Jim queried out of his morbid curiosity, for he knew
that he looked upon a man that was soon to die. "An' afterward?" he
repeated.

"Did you ever see a man two weeks dead?" the other asked.

Jim shook his head.

"Well, I have. He was like this beefsteak you an' me is eatin'. It was
once steer cavortin' over the landscape. But now it's just meat. That's
all, just meat. An' that's what you an' me an' all people come
to--meat."

Matt gulped down the whole cup of coffee, and refilled the cup.

"Are you scared to die?" he asked.

Jim shook his head. "What's the use? I don't die anyway. I pass on an'
live again--"

"To go stealin', an' lyin', an' snivellin' through another life, an' go
on that way forever an' ever an' ever?" Matt sneered.

"Maybe I'll improve," Jim suggested hopefully. "Maybe stealin' won't be
necessary in the life to come."

He ceased abruptly, and stared straight before him, a frightened
expression on his face.

"What's the matter!" Matt demanded.

"Nothin'. I was just wonderin'"--Jim returned to himself with an
effort--"about this dyin', that was all."

But he could not shake off the fright that had startled him. It was as
if an unseen thing of gloom had passed him by, casting upon him the
intangible shadow of its presence. He was aware of a feeling of
foreboding. Something ominous was about to happen. Calamity hovered in
the air. He gazed fixedly across the table at the other man. He could
not understand. Was it that he had blundered and poisoned himself? No,
Matt had the nicked cup, and he had certainly put the poison in the
nicked cup.

It was all his own imagination, was his next thought. It had played him
tricks before. Fool! Of course it was. Of course something was ab