“I’m glad you ain’t dead, Captain,” Pea Eye said. “I’m real glad you ain’t dead.” Augustus was a little startled by the force of the young man’s emotion. The trip must have been even more of a trial to him than he had imagined. “No, I ain’t dead,” Augustus told him. “I just rode off to think for a few days, and one of the things I wanted to think about was the fact that I ain’t dead.”
