“What’d you do to ‘em, Ken?” I said. “How did you settle their hash, anyways?”

“I, uh, I took care of ‘em, that’s what.” He gave me a lopsided wink. “You know, I—‘hic!’—took care of ‘em.”

“Good. You took care of ‘em for good, Ken?”

“God-danged right, I did. Them’s two pimps that won’t never bother a white man no more!”

He started looking around for the whiskey bottle. I pointed out that he was holding onto it, so he had himself a couple more drinks, and then he held the bottle up to the light.

“Why, god-dang! Danged if I ain’t drunk almost a whole quart of whiskey!”

“What the heck?” I said. “It don’t hardly show on you none.” And the funny part of it was that it suddenly didn’t show much.

I’d seen him drink before, and I knew how whiskey acted on him. A fairly small amount of booze, say, a pint or so, and he’d get drunk as a skunk. He’d show it, I mean. But when he went over that certain amount— and up to a point, of course—he’d seem to sober up. He’d stop staggering, stop slurring his words, stop playing the fool in general. Inside, he’d still be dead drunk, but you’d never know it by looking at him.

He finished the rest of the whiskey, and we headed for the railroad station. I introduced him to everyone we met, which was a big part of the population, and he stuck out his chest and told everyone how he’d taken care of the two pimps. Or rather, he just said that he ‘had’ taken care of ‘em.

“Never mind how,” he’d say. “Never you mind how.” And then he’d wink and nod, and everybody would be pretty impressed.

We stopped to talk to so many people that it was only a couple of minutes before train time when we got to the station. I shook hands with him and then, before I realized I was doing it, I laughed out loud.

He gave me a suspicious look; asked me what I was laughing about.

“Nothing much,” I said. “I was just thinkin’ how funny it was you rushing down here last night. Thinkin’ I might kill those pimps.”

“Yeah,” he grinned sourly, “that is funny. Imagine a fella like you killing anyone.”

“You can’t imagine me doing it, can you, Ken? You just can’t, can you?”

He said he sure couldn’t, and that was a fact. “If I’d stopped to think, instead of letting that god-danged Buck get me all riled up—”

“But it would be easy to imagine you doing that killing, wouldn’t it, Ken? Killing wouldn’t bother you a bit.”

“What?” he said. “What do you mean, I—”

“In fact, folks wouldn’t have to do any imagining, would they? You’ve as good as admitted it to dozens of people.”

He blinked at me. Then the wild sweat broke out on his face again, and a streak of spit oozed from the corner of his mouth. And there was fear in his eyes.