‘Did you ever have anything to do with any curious specimen?’ I said carelessly. ‘Some,’ he said; ‘one mainly--Irishman--he travelled in wine; I guess he was the smartest coon I ever struck, but no head--or rather too much head, like a glass of stout.’ ‘All Irishmen are like that,’ I said, sententiously and untruthfully; then, with a cautious insertion of the opener, ‘what was his name?’ ‘Kinahan; we called him Kinjan,’ and--more to himself than to me--‘Jupiter! I was in the tightest kind of a hole with that cuss and one other.’ ‘Really tight?’ said I. ‘Never tighter, except about three times, and those I don’t take much stock in talking of.’ ‘Women?’ I said hardily. He nodded. ‘And others,’ he added, as if he had thereby over-committed himself. ‘It seems to me,’ said I, feeling the opener deepening in the shell, ‘you don’t “take much stock” in talking of anything, considering that you really have got something to say; tell me this yarn of Kinjan, and be a benefactor to a poor sleep-forsaken devil.’ Mr Denver chewed the end of his cigar. ‘Bore you world without end,’ he said. ‘Try me,’ I besought. ‘We must have drinks, then.’ He heaved himself up, and called melodiously over the car platforms. When the materials had been brought, Mr Denver constructed himself his favourite pick-me-up, in which raw egg and cayenne pepper formed the chief ingredients. ‘Let me mix you one,’ he said; ‘guess you won’t weaken on it; it’s short, but it’s breezy.’ We drank together, and our hearts were opened within us, and we became as brothers. Through the open door and window the wonderful silver prairie night came in, and the lamp of the smoking-room flickered and went out before its breath. We swallowed another prairie oyster each, and the strings of Mr Dick Denver’s tongue were unloosed, and he spake plain, if a little through his nose. And as he spake, the snoring from the sleeping-saloon and the snorting of the engine became to me as the roaring of the surf upon the sea-shore, and the rolling prairie as the sands of the desert, and afar off a lone clump of trees shining white under the moon as the minarets of a distant Moorish city. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was moving around one time on a cargo steamer, calculating to go to Madeira or Teneriffe, and see what I could strike out of those parts. Well, you know, I don’t cotton to “tramps;” they’re a pretty ordinary lot, and the one I was on that trip was tough, just tough; from the skipper down to the bacon the whole show was tough. There were only three passengers on board: myself, this Kinjan, and a long Britisher, by name Torin--the Hon. Christopher Torin was his full label.’ Mr Denver paused, and tilted his head back in his seat, and in this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, resumed, through a cloud of smoke.