TWILIGHT
by Don A. Stuart
“Speaking of hitchhikers,” said Jim Bendell in a rather bewildered way, “I picked up a man the other day that certainly was a queer cuss.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. “He told me the queerest yarn I ever heard. Most of them tell you how they lost their good jobs and tried to find work out here in the wide spaces of the West. They don’t seem to realize how many people we have out here. They think all this great beautiful country is uninhabited.”
Jim Bendell’s a real-estate man, and I knew how he could go on. That’s his favorite line, you know. He’s real worried because there’s a lot of homesteading plots still open out in our state. He talks about the beautiful country, but he never went farther into the desert than the edge of town. ’Fraid of it actually. So I sort of steered him back on the track.
“What did he claim, Jim? Prospector who couldn’t find land to prospect?”
“That’s not very funny, Bart. No; it wasn’t only what he claimed. He didn’t even claim it, just said it. You know, he didn’t say it was true, he just said it.
. . .
