THE BEANS WERE hard, half cooked and on the cool side. And the bacon was tough and stringy, off a hog that had lived longer than the average for its kind. But the beer served up in the saloon was the best Edge had tasted for many miles. So he figured he did not have much cause for complaint in a place like the Golden Eagle, and he did not complain.
Supper was more in keeping with his surroundings than the beer. The Golden Eagle was a pretty good match for the town of which it was a part.
Ross was a small two-street community on a gentle slope in the foothills of the Klamath Mountains in south western Oregon, north of the California line. Gold Rush country thirty years earlier, but timber land now. The gold had not lasted long enough for Ross ever to be a boom town and those few grubbers who got lucky had either frittered away their newfound wealth on transitory pleasures or hogged it and moved on. The wealth which was spent in Ross had not been used to make the town a better place in which to live.
More recently the timber company owners and their workers now made up the majority of the town’s population; but they, likewise, were not inclined to take any pride in Ross.
Which Edge thought he could understand. Because some day pretty soon, the timber in the vicinity would all be felled and there would be no need of a town here. Be it beautiful to look at or just a huddle of crudely-built, worse-for-wear shacks of varying sizes where a man, woman or family could eat, sleep and shelter from the worst of the north country weather and purchase the essentials of life or a few scant luxuries.
As Edge neared the end of the supper that eased his hunger but gave him no pleasure, he found himself reflecting that the stock-in-trade of the Golden Eagle Saloon was probably not considered a luxury in a town like Ross. That at the end of the day, a working man around here felt a compelling need to take a drink before he bedded down. To erase from his mind the knowledge that his existence was comprised so largely of work for work’s sake. A man with sufficient alcohol inside him might be able to blot out what had taken place during the day just over, sink into a deep sleep and gather strength for the next day’s work. Instead of tossing and turning, restlessly awake during the night hours while he wondered just what the hell he was doing with his life.
‘You ate it all up?’ Paul Calhern said.
When Edge looked around at the man who interrupted his train of dark thoughts, he saw an expression close to incredulity on the darkly-bristled, prominently-jowled face of the owner of the Golden Eagle Saloon; five and a half feet tall, more than two hundred pounds in weight, and forty years old.
‘Uh?’ the half-breed grunted, and as soon as the implied query was out the substance of what the fat man had said registered in his mind.
‘It surprises me you ate it all.’
The leather-aproned Calhern picked up the empty plate in one big and soft, unclean hand and the eating implements in the other as the expression of his square-shaped face with small eyes and fleshy lips altered to doleful disinterest. Which was how the saloon keeper usually viewed the world between brief intervals of pretended interest in the subject of any brief exchanges in which he took a part.
It was just an hour ago that Edge became the fifth customer in the saloon. And in that time had learned from Calhern, without asking, the potted history of Ross: seen enough of the man to decide he was at one with his place and the town. Disenchanted and apathetic, but prepared to go through the motions of acting friendly if there was material gain to be made out of the effort.
‘I was hungry,’ Edge told him, delved into a shirt pocket for the makings.
‘That’ll do it,’ Calhern allowed and looked down at the empty plate. Then he shook his head, not in disbelief this time: more like somebody who regrets the pain he has accidentally caused another. ‘I told you the wife, who usually does the cookin’, is—’
‘She’s visiting with her sick mother in Medford,’ Edge broke in on the excuse as the batwing doors swung open and a man entered. ‘You don’t do the cooking as a general rule, but you did your best and—’
His voice trailed away when he saw that the saloon keeper had lost interest in this subject they had already covered: then turned and waddled over to go behind his bar counter as the newcomer responded without enthusiasm to the greetings offered by three of the four men who played poker in a rear corner.
‘Hiya, Eddie. You want your usual, I guess?’ There was enforced cheerfulness in Calhern’s tone which did not completely mask the fat man’s uneasiness.
‘Don’t I always?’ Eddie answered sourly. ‘Which is why it’s my friggin’ usual, right?’
‘Sure thing, Eddie.’
Calhern clattered the plate down, then dropped the cutlery to the floor in his hurry to serve the man. Who was in his mid-thirties, tall and powerfully built with a bushy black mustache that looked like it was carefully shaped to emphasize the implied toughness of his jutting jaw and deep-set, brooding eyes.
Eddie, who was dressed in denim pants held up by an ornately buckled belt and a garishly checked shirt, stood with his flat belly pressed up against the counter, hands splayed on the top, his back to the room until Calhern delivered a glass of beer and a shot of rye to him. Then he grasped a glass in each gnarled hand, threw the whiskey down in one and took a swallow that sank half the beer. Next he put the empty shot glass down on the counter, nodded for the waiting Calhern to refill it, and belched loudly.
All of this was done with a kind of studied intent that suggested that he was engaged in a ritual that never varied from night to night as soon as he entered the Golden Eagle. Likewise, there was a stilted, over-rehearsed quality about the way he finished the beer, placed this empty glass down on the bar for Calhern to refill, then turned to rake a scornful and almost insolent stare over the small saloon with two of its half dozen tables occupied, in opposite corners of the room.
Three of the four card players met his contemptuous gaze fleetingly and looked away. Edge, carefully rolling a cigarette, returned the man’s attention with an equal degree of frost: which caused Eddie to twist his mouthline into a more pronounced scowl before he ran the back of a hand across his mustache, wiped off beer foam.
‘Ain’t nothin’ much in tonight?’ Eddie said as he turned to belly up to the bar again. And timed a pause to let the words add up to an insult if that was how anybody chose to hear them, before he added: ‘In the way of business for you?’
‘There are the two passin’-through strangers, Eddie,’ Calhern replied as he delivered the refilled beer glass. ‘Makes it a kinda unusual evenin’, I guess.’
‘Whoopee!’ Eddie growled in a parody of how the expression was supposed to sound. ‘Two strangers breeze into Ross and we’re meant to figure that’s somethin’ to celebrate.’ Calhern shrugged his fleshy shoulders and stooped to pick up the fallen knife and fork, took them with the dirty plate to the far end of counter where there was a basin of water.
The card game continued in the same quiet way as it had been played since Edge came into the Golden Eagle.
The half-breed struck a match on the underside of the table, lit his cigarette.
Eddie remained facing the bar, the glass of rye in one hand, beer in the other. Stood as rigid as a statue for a few moments, then began to drink in the same deliberate way he had done everything since he entered the saloon. First he sipped the whiskey, then took a larger swallow of the beer: left an unvarying interval of about ten seconds between each double drink.
Edge figured him for the local blowhard bully who might or might not raise a little hell, depending on what kind of day it had been for him and how the booze settled in his stomach. He arrived at this decision in the same way he had catalogued so much else about the town, the saloon and the men in here when he entered: as a mental exercise to keep his mind occupied, unable to dwell on other lines of thought that had no appeal for him but were irritatingly insistent.
In fact, it did not matter what kind of town this was. So long as it had a place where he could get something to eat and a glass of good beer, maybe a shot or two of whiskey that would not take the skin off the inside of his throat on the way down. Somewhere to bed down for the night. A livery where he could arrange for feed and water and shelter for his horse ...
Though it did not really matter if there were none of these requirements in Ross, for he was either self-sufficient or the lush Oregon country could provide what he lacked if need be.
But, after a long ride of several weeks out of winter and into spring over the Cascade Mountains he felt a few of the creature comforts would not come amiss. So he was pleased to discover the Washington Livery Stable and the Grogan boarding house were both adequate for his purpose. Likewise the saloon. And Joel Washington, the Grogans and Paul Calhern were reasonably eager to provide for the requirements of this hard-looking but quiet-talking man who was the second stranger to come to Ross today.
The first was named Vincent Mitchell, sent to the Golden Eagle by Maud Grogan, now one of the players in the poker game that was underway when Edge entered the saloon. Mrs. Grogan cooked breakfast for her roomers, but no other meals. That was the province of the Calherns: although Peggy Calhern was off visiting her sick mother in Medford and Mrs. Grogan could not speak for the cooking skills of her husband.
While Edge had sipped a first glass of the good beer and waited to find out what kind of cook Paul Calhern was, he watched the poker game: ignored by all four players after three of them had greeted him, one of them invited him to take a hand. Vincent Mitchell, whose stylish mode of dress marked him out as the stranger among the others in their hard-wearing working clothes, had not offered a greeting to the half-breed.
And outside of the laconic monosyllables that are all a poker player needs to voice, he spoke just once within Edge’s hearing: a sour-toned objection to the invitation after the half-breed declined to take a chair at the table.
‘Four is fine for five card draw. Five is one too many, so it ain’t. Nothing personal, mister?’
Edge had nodded he did not take the objection personally, then had begun his indifferent watch on the game across the room while he sipped the beer, waited for the food to be cooked and managed to cure his hunger with it.
And pondered his present surroundings, the people who gave it whatever kind of life it had. Which train of thought was little more edifying but a whole lot less irritating than notions about the kind of life he had chosen to live, and where it had gotten him!
First there was the dour-faced but eager-to-please liveryman, Joel Washington, ‘just like the first president, mister, but my folks never claimed no direct line from good old George’. Then the garrulous Maud Grogan and her agitated husband Ray, who did a lot of wan smiling and bobbed his head a great deal, spoke fast whenever he talked like he was anxious to get said what he needed to before his wife cut him off in mid-flow.
The mostly unsmiling people he saw on the streets when he rode into this unprepossessing town of a couple of hundred citizens, walked between the livery and the boarding house, the boarding house and the saloon: some of whom were too preoccupied to notice him, a few who nodded curtly or even offered a terse greeting, most who pointedly ignored him.
Then Paul Calhern, who knew the secrets of keeping beer in fine condition but could not cook worth a damn. The three local lumber company men—either retired clerks or on light duty suitable to their age, he guessed—who accepted Edge’s presence in Ross with equanimity.
Vincent Mitchell who seemed to be the kind of inveterate gambler who cared for nothing outside the game which presently engaged his attention. Had strong feelings only about the ground rules of such a game, one of which held there should be no more than four players in the game. Thus, Edge decided as he dropped the cigarette butt to the floor, crushed out its glowing embers under a boot heel, if one of the other players withdrew, Mitchell would have no objection to Edge replacing him.
Or the sour-tempered, taciturn Eddie who continued to stand at the bar, gazing into space and drinking beer and whiskey with unvarying intervals between. Of the people Edge had come across since he rode into Ross, Eddie was the odd man out. And yet paradoxically, he was more like the kind the half-breed would have thought would be in the majority in this grim timber town. Hard, narrow minded and not kindly disposed to strangers—especially the kind of stranger that Edge was.
Because Edge was himself hard, suspicious of strangers and ... well, maybe he wasn’t narrow minded, but he had certainly gotten to nurture some fixed ideas lately! Like the way, damnit, he elected to spend his life among strangers he viewed with mistrust as he drifted from one frontier town to another, striving never to ride the same trail twice.
But it was getting time to change!
He was pushing fifty, which showed with every line engraved by time and experience into his leather-textured face, along with the world-weary expression of impassivity that seldom left the features shaded and shaped by the mixed parentage of a Scandinavian mother and a Mexican father.
The skin was deeply burnished, although outdoor living had shaded it darker than Latin heritage had colored it at the outset. The black coloration of his hair, streaked with gray now, which hung long enough to brush his shoulders, and the basic bone structure of his face also came from his father’s side.
The predominant physical feature drawn from his mother were his eyes: pale blue and permanently narrowed, which surveyed his surroundings with a brooding coolness that implied total lack of interest in what they saw, yet at the same time warned that they missed no detail of any consequence.
He clothed his six feet two inch, two hundred pound frame to suit the kind of life he led, in a hard-wearing, dark-hued outfit that had been much worn and was stained and dirtied by many miles on the trail and more rough sleeping than the kind of less than luxurious comfort that would be his tonight at the Grogan boarding house. Alone of the men in the saloon this evening, he carried a visible gun: a Frontier Colt that jutted from the holster tied down to his right thigh.
He was the way he was, did nothing for effect either in the style of his garb or, like Eddie, in his manner. So it was a matter of being the kind he was that caused him, more often than not, to arouse feelings of resentment, unease, even anger caused by fear, among people he came across in towns like Ross.
Whereas Vincent Mitchell would be generally more welcomed most places he went. For the pattern of the drifter into which he fitted was more acceptable, less provoking to ordinary working men and their womenfolk in frontier towns.
He was about the same age as Edge, an inch or so shorter but still tall. They weighed about the same, but there were some sagging bulges of flabby fat on the body of Mitchell, whose pale face had a dissipated look, like he was accustomed to enjoying the good life to excess when the cards were kind enough for him to cover the expense of high living.
He did not look at all hard, except on that occasion when he remarked on how he liked to play poker. Then there had been a just discernible gleam in his eyes for part of a second that suggested he could get vicious if he were pushed too far.
But in normal circumstances, it was unlikely that people who gave him no more than a passing glance would see any such signs of the darker side of the man’s character. And in towns like Ross, few would see beyond his dudish, city-style mode of dress, the present threadbare condition of his three-piece suit suggesting the cards had not been running for him lately.
Discount the build of the man, but register his dudish ways, his liking for gambling and the menacing capacity for viciousness that lurked under the outer shell, and Vincent Mitchell reminded Edge of Adam Steele, Goddamnit! The Virginian who featured in the train of thought the half-breed endeavored to keep out of his mind! Along with the kind of thinking that visualized himself putting down roots, the way Steele had!
But not as a horse breeder, running a three-thousand acre spread in some California valley: maybe a pillar of the local community now! All that took planning and patience: single-minded dedication to achieving an ambition to rebuild something approaching the kind of rich life fate had stolen from the man.
Edge was not a planner. He had little patience in that respect. And he did not possess single-minded ambition to achieve anything specific, be it a replacement for what had been lost or something entirely new.
But he was searching for something, some purpose to his life. That was what had to change! Without a predetermined aim, there was risk he would finish up in some two-street town like Ross. Turn into somebody like Joel Washington, liveryman. Or Ray Grogan, henpecked husband. Paul Calhern, saloon keeper: no, he had tried that in a place called The Lucky Break in some Texas town long ago.
Much more likely, he would end up an older version of Eddie: local hardnose who drank for effect rather than pleasure while he waited for trouble to start, maybe would start some himself if the fancy took him when the liquor hit the wrong spot.
So, Edge found himself contemplating, should he finish riding this trail that had led him through the Cascades and into the Siskiyou Forest spread over the western slopes of the Klamath Mountains? With a purpose that had never been single-minded. Instead, the trip had been motivated by an irritating curiosity about what he might find if he crossed the California line and located the Providence River Valley. Where, he had heard, Adam Steele had set up in business on a horse ranch called Trail’s End.
He did not consider himself a friend of the Virginian. Hell, their trails had crossed only three times. Troubled times, when circumstances had allied them on the same side. But they could just as easily have been enemies—as they had been during the War Between the States ...
But this was not a matter of a man being curious about how things had turned out for an erstwhile partner. It was just that they were two of a kind, a matched pair in terms of their basic characters and the way they had been living their lives when their paths converged on those three occasions.
But Steele, so Edge had heard, was leading a very different, settled existence now. And because of the affinity the half-breed felt for the Virginian, it was natural that he should be curious to discover if the new life-style was successful or if the Trail’s End venture had gone wrong. For if a man like Adam Steele could stop drifting and make something of himself, then sure as hell so could Edge.
‘You gotta be out of your mind if you figure we’ll go for that!’ somebody snarled.
The angry tone of voice jerked Edge out of deep thought. And for part of a second he was sure he had spoken aloud and the rebuttal was directed at him. But before that second was complete he saw that Eddie in front of the bar and Calhern behind it were staring with surprise toward the table where the poker game had come to an abrupt pause. While Mitchell was half risen from his chair and the other three men were glaring at him with the same degree of scorn Eddie had shared among all the patrons of the Golden Eagle earlier.
‘Markers ain’t worth the paper they’re scrawled on unless you got somethin’ of worth to back ’em with!’ a man who had not been the first to speak said, less stridently.
‘And they sure as hell ain’t worth nothin’ from a passin’-through stranger we’ll likely never see again!’ This again from the man who had interrupted Edge’s failed mental exercise.
‘But you people have taken me for eight hundred bucks!’ Mitchell complained as he lowered his rump back in his chair. ‘And I Figure I’ve got the beating of him with this hand!’ The five cards in which Vincent Mitchell had so much faith were face down in a fan on the table in front of him. The two men who were so adamant that IOUs were unacceptable had folded. The fourth man, seated directly across the table from Mitchell, held his Five cards in a stack on the palm of a hand, ran the tips of the forefinger and thumb on his other hand back and forth along their sides as he said:
‘You were kind of hard set about the four hands to a school rule awhile back, Mr. Mitchell. Well, Cecil here, Seymour and me, we have this rule about not allowing any markers in the pot. And we never play the game of poker unless we can afford to lose. Right, boys?’
He spoke in a quiet, even tone: but there was an undercurrent in his voice that warned its softness was not a sign of weakness.
‘Right, Prentice,’ Cecil agreed. ‘When we know we’re gettin’ in deeper than we should, we back off outta the game.’
‘That sure is right,’ Seymour added earnestly. ‘Why, I guess all of us have folded hands we figure could’ve won the pot for us. But we knew we didn’t have enough of the foldin’ green to find out, one way or the other.’
‘You don’t have to tell me how a hand of poker’s played!’ Mitchell snapped.
‘I’m sure we don’t,’ Prentice countered in the same mild-mannered way as before. ‘Nor do I need to remind you, I’m certain, that it will cost you the amount of one hundred dollars to have me show, Mr. Mitchell? Or you fold and I take the pot?’ The dudishly-garbed gambler abruptly looked haggard rather than dissipated. He licked his lips rapidly and mopped absently at his pale face with a handkerchief: the sweat not oozing from his pores because of the temperature of the spring evening. For the recently ended winter was still discernible in the Oregon air once the sun dipped into the not too distant Pacific Ocean. Then he began to knead the handkerchief between his sticky palms, stared fixedly at the heap of bills and dollar coins on the center of the table.
‘Well, are you going to fold, Mr. Mitchell?’ Prentice asked, not quite as mildly as before, an undercurrent of impatience in his tone.
‘Or you gonna ante up the hundred bucks?’ Cecil urged eagerly.
‘In cash or in kind, mister?’ Seymour reminded. And in his voice, the look on his face and the way he leaned forward there was undisguised avariciousness.
This caused Edge to suspect all three local men were in line for a share of the pot if Mitchell could not call, or he could but his hand was no match for Prentice’s cards. Which was none of his business, the half-breed told himself as he finished the heeltaps of beer in his glass.
While Prentice, Cecil and Seymour were urging Mitchell to take some form of action, the man at the center of attention dragged his agitated gaze away from the money to look at each of his fellow players in turn, then at Edge, Calhern and Eddie: finally down at the fan of five cards on the table.
‘No good lookin’ at me, mister,’ Eddie growled in his studiedly tough voice as he toyed with his carefully-shaped mustache. ‘Gamblin’ ain’t a vice of mine. So ... Hey, I can’t give you no advice.’
He considered the clumsy play on words was uproariously funny and vented a loud belly laugh. But curtailed the sound after he looked around and saw nobody else shared his good humor.
Then he scowled as he turned to face across the bar counter again, complained to the saloon keeper: ‘Guess nobody got it, uh?’ He threw back the whiskey in one, banged his glass down, groaned: ‘This sure is some kinda fun place you run here, Calhern!’
‘I run a saloon, Eddie,’ Calhern answered dully. ‘I sell booze. What my customers do while they’re drinkin’ it is none of my concern. Long as they don’t cause trouble.’
He did not shift his attention away from the source of potential trouble: the table where four men still sat, one of them glaring angrily at the other three who waited with mounting impatience for a response to the ultimatum they had issued.
Mitchell was experiencing a greater degree of frustration now, and Edge wondered if the man had come to the same conclusion he had: that the pot was to be shared, which meant the game had been loaded three to one from the start.
Edge again told himself it was none of his business. Then he asked himself if he needed a shot or two of liquor to help the beer kill the aftertaste of the food.
Eddie banged his shot glass on the bar top. Giggled a signal that he had started to feel the liquor and beer mix hitting the right spot. Then he slurred: ‘Well, give me another drink and let the other folks wallow in their misery while I have a little fun, Calhern.’
He giggled again, took a swig of beer, belched and swung around to survey the saloon, a lopsided grin on his face. After he failed to capture the attention of any of the card players, who suddenly all leaned forward to put their heads together, deep in secret discussion, he fixed his glassy gaze on Edge, asked sneeringly:
‘How about you, stranger?’
‘How about me? Edge countered.
‘Ain’t you got a sense of humor? Don’t you enjoy a joke?’
‘Sure,’ Edge told him evenly, shifted his eyes away from the drunk to look to where Mitchell suddenly rose from the table with a grunt of qualified satisfaction as the other three card players looked up at him with a mixture of incredulity and eager anticipation. ‘But there are some jokers who just ain’t funny.’
‘Do me a favor, mister?’ Mitchell asked of Edge.
Eddie did not understand exactly what had been said to him, but was convinced he had been insulted. He demanded to know: ‘You lookin’ to make trouble, stranger?’
Edge returned his gaze to the drunk, put more ice into the glinting slits of his eyes as he answered: ‘No, feller. What I’m looking for is private. What I see of you, you’re just a part of that.’
‘Uh?’ Eddie was totally perplexed.
‘What did you ever do for me?’ Edge asked of Mitchell.
Calhern vented a genuine belly laugh, said when it ended: ‘It’s a funnier joke than the one you made, Eddie!’
Which intrigued Edge for a moment. Until he realized that Calhern knew when one of his regular customers had downed enough liquor to be used as the butt of humor without taking violent offense.
‘It’s not like that, mister,’ Mitchell said. ‘Won’t cost you anything except a little time. And it’ll be worth ten bucks out of the pot if I win it.’
‘What if you don’t?’
Mitchell managed to check the threat of a flare of anger by venting a sigh. He sounded strained when he insisted: ‘You’ll only be putting up some time. I’m not asking you to risk anything.’
With each moment that passed he was having greater difficulty holding on to his temper: the typical gambler convinced he is on to a sure thing and cannot understand how others don’t have the faith to back his judgment.
‘How much time are we talking about?’
‘Long as it takes me to get to the Grogan boarding house and back here. I’d say no more than five minutes tops?’
‘So time really is money,’ Edge said. ‘What are you buying at two bucks a minute?’
‘Your attention.’ He shrugged. ‘And your neutrality, I guess.’
‘Get to the point!’ Cecil urged.
‘Like for you to keep a careful eye on this hand of mine.’ Mitchell waved at the fan of cards on the table in front of his recently vacated chair. ‘Ensure nobody fools with it until I return?’
‘Sir, you can rely upon Cecil, Seymour and myself not to interfere with—’
‘I’m a gambler!’ Mitchell cut in on the indignant Prentice. ‘But I do not like to take unnecessary chances when I gamble with strangers. No offense intended, and as gambling men yourselves, I’m sure you gentlemen will take my point. I alone know the value of my cards and I need an independent witness to see that their value remains the same while I am absent.’
‘What d’you mean, no damn offense?’ Seymour snapped. ‘Easy now,’ Prentice placated, and spread his cards in a fan on the table in front of him. ‘It’ll be in our interest as well. If—although I feel it is more like when—my hand beats that of Mr. Mitchell, he will not be able to claim he was cheated.’
‘That’s right,’ Mitchell agreed eagerly. ‘A third party with no financial interest in the game, except the token fee I have offered, will ensure there has been no fooling with either hand.’ Seymour and Cecil both looked about to press the point about being offended. But Prentice spoke first, allowed with a nod:
‘Very well, Mr. Mitchell. I am prepared to go along with this.’ He looked over at Edge, smiled as he promised: ‘And in the event I win the pot, I will pay the fee of ten dollars for the services of the independent third party?’
‘The money’s as neutral as I am,’ Edge said as he rose from his table. ‘It doesn’t matter to me who pays me.’
After a final glance at his cards in the fan on the table in the opposite corner of the saloon, Mitchell hurried out of the Golden Eagle without looking back.
Eddie picked up his latest whiskey, knocked it back in one and slurred scornfully: ‘What’s with this third party shit? We ain’t even had a first party yet! With the bunch of deadbeats you got in here tonight, Calhern! Hey, what the ...’
He was startled by the sound of Edge’s tread close behind him. And he whirled, his mustache no longer making him look hard now his deep-set eyes were filled with fear while he worried he had said something that stirred rage within the tall, lean, impassive-faced, gun-toting stranger.
But Edge merely glanced coldly at him without pausing as he went past, toward the table where there was now an empty chair, the footfalls of its previous occupant still audible but diminishing fast along the street outside.
‘Yeah, feller,’ the half-breed directed over his shoulder as Eddie did not quite manage to hold in another belch. ‘I’m a real party pooper.’ Then he swept his glinting-eyed gaze over the trio of men still seated around the table, added: ‘Hired on to see there’s no fooling around with a game.’