About a month later, the gang was all in the tavern again; sitting in their usual places, when the door flew open and the stranger, Harvey, burst in again. He had the look of a wild man in his eyes. He wore the same clothes he had been wearing the last time I saw him, only now they were faded and torn. The scarf was gone and he now had a full beard. His appearance was so bad that Jack poured him a free shot; something none of us had ever seen Jack do before.
"Oh, it was awful!" Harvey exclaimed.
"What happened?" Old Man Wiggins asked.
"We'd been out there for about three weeks," Harvey began, "when one night, while we were in the tent, the wind picked up something fierce. But, when I looked outside, everything was as calm as a house cat. After a while, though, it started to sound like the wind was wailing his name. 'Iiiiaaggggoooo,' it would say. I turned to him and saw Iago all crunched up in the corner lookin' like the Devil himself was out there callin' for him.
"I guess he couldn't take any more of it, 'cause after a while Iago stood up and lit off out of the tent like a fire cracker. Later, I thought I heard him screaming something about the wind, but can't be too sure. The next mornin' I set out to try 'n find my way back here.
"Lord, I thought I'd never find it. "
Jack poured Harvey another drink when the stranger had finished his tale. A true rarity.
We all wrote Harvey off as being crazy, even though we all knew Iago's fate. It wasn't the first time we'd heard a story like that, but it was easier to chalk it up to the mad ravings of a lunatic than to admit what had really happened to the poor Indian. Harvey left the next day, none the wiser of the horrible fate he was lucky to have escaped, and everything went back to normal. Iago and the stranger slipped from our memories.
