Short Stories
"She's a dandy," was Jim's judgment, after his first mouth-
ful. "But I tell you one thing straight. I'm never goin' to visit
you on that Arizona ranch, so you needn't ask me."
"What's the matter now?" Matt asked.
"Hell's the matter," was the answer. "The Mexican cookin'
on your ranch'd be too much for me. If I've got hell 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 eat-
in'. 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."
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