George is the vainest man I ever see, and the biggest brag.  He could blow the biggest geyser in the Yosemite valley back into its hole with one whisper.  I am a quiet man, and fond of studiousness and thought.  The more we used to see each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together.  If he ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like I’ve seen men do to what they called their friends, I know I’d have had a rough-and-tumble with him on the spot.  Same way with George.  He hated my ways as bad as I did his.  When we were mining, we lived in separate tents, so as not to intrude our obnoxiousness on each other.

“But after a long time, we begun to know each of us could depend on the other when we were in a pinch, up to his last dollar, word of honor or perjury, bullet, or drop of blood we had in the world.  We never even spoke of it to each other, because that would have spoiled it.  But we tried it out, time after time, until we came to know.  I’ve grabbed my hat and jumped a freight and rode 200 miles to identify him when he was about to be hung by mistake, in Idaho, for a train robber.  Once, I laid sick of typhoid in a tent in Texas, without a dollar or a change of clothes, and sent for George in Boise City.  He came on the next train.  The first thing he did before speaking to me, was to hang up a little looking glass on the side of the tent and curl his moustache and rub some hair dye on his head.  His hair is naturally a light reddish.  Then he gave me the most scientific cussing I ever had, and took off his coat.

“’If you wasn’t a Moses-meek little Mary’s lamb, you wouldn’t have been took down this way,’ says he.  ’Haven’t you got gumption enough not to drink swamp water or fall down and scream whenever you have a little colic or feel a mosquito bite you?’ He made me a little mad.

“‘You’ve got the bedside manners of a Piute medicine man,’ says I.  ’And I wish you’d go away and let me die a natural death.  I’m sorry I sent for you.’

“‘I’ve a mind to,’ says George, ’for nobody cares whether you live or die.  But now I’ve been tricked into coming, I might as well stay until this little attack of indigestion or nettle rash or whatever it is, passes away.’

“Two weeks afterward, when I was beginning to get around again, the doctor laughed and said he was sure that my friend’s keeping me mad all the time did more than his drugs to cure me.

“So that’s the way George and me was friends.  There wasn’t any sentiment about it—­it was just give and take, and each of us knew that the other was ready for the call at any time.

“I remember, once, I played a sort of joke on George, just to try him.  I felt a little mean about it afterward, because I never ought to have doubted he’d do it.

“We was both living in a little town in the San Luis valley, running some flocks of sheep and a few cattle.  We were partners, but, as usual, we didn’t live together.  I had an old aunt, out from the East, visiting for the summer, so I rented a little cottage.  She soon had a couple of cows and some pigs and chickens to make the place look like home.  George lived alone in a little cabin half a mile out of town.