3

Morris pulled the door shut and barred it behind him, struck another match and went across to light the candle, then stood in the center of the room looking about him carefully.

When he went out he had left his mackinaw neatly folded over the foot of the bed. It now lay partly opened. In getting out the shirt he had used for a window curtain, Morris had left one end of a folded towel sticking up out of his valise. The towel was now neatly flattened down.

Small things, these, but Nate Morris had long trained himself to look for the small things. His was a precarious and dangerous way of life, and the man who neglected small precautions was not likely to survive long.

His shirt remained where he had hung it over the window. He went to it and unhooked one corner to peer out. It was quite dark outside, and very still. He could see nothing from his window. He replaced the improvised curtain and moved back to sit on the edge of the bed.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it, sitting immobile as though he were waiting for something without quite knowing what it was.

When the cigarette was smoked down until it burned his fingers, he got up and put the butt in the stove. His movements had a quality of finality about them.

He withdrew the pair of silver mounted guns from their shoulder holsters and laid them on the bed. He picked up his heavy mackinaw and put it on over his leather jacket, slid the guns into the convenient canvas sheaths sewed inside the slanting outside pockets. He hesitated for one last searching look about the room, then blew out the candle and went to the door. He opened it silently and went up the hall to the front of the cafe.

Karen Larson was standing beside the stove looking out of the window. She turned to look at him and her eyes seemed troubled when she noted the heavy coat. “Are you going out?” The words seemed to require great effort.

He smiled and said, “I thought the bulls might be lonely down by the tracks.”

She said, “No,” and her eyes pleaded with him.

He shook his head and the smile stayed on his lips. “I have to go out there, Karen. You know that, don’t you?”

She didn’t seem to notice that he had used her first name. A tremor shook her body and she wheeled back to the window again.

Morris waited a moment but she did not turn back. He went out the front door and closed it firmly behind him.

The afternoon promise of near-zero temperature was being fulfilled. Wispy clouds obscured a crescent moon overhead. The saddled TB horses still stood patiently outside the saloon next door. The thin night air was hazy with the threat of snow, and the Flat was blanketed by a stillness that seemed to ring in his ears.

Morris turned up the collar of his mackinaw and started to move toward the railroad siding. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Karen had moved from her position by the window.

He swerved to the right and made a wide circle that brought him around behind the cafe. In the dimness of the night, he saw two figures standing close together by the corner. He thrust his hands in his slanting pockets and strode toward them.

One of the figures melted away into the night. The other remained, waiting for him.

It was Karen Larson. She wore a hooded fur jacket, lined with fox fur that outlined her white face turned up to his.

Morris moved very close to her, but she did not flinch or attempt to retreat. She said, “I thought you were going to the cattle pens.”

“I changed my mind. Which one of the trappers was it that just left you?”

“Does it matter?” she asked composedly.

“The men in the saloon told me they never spoke to any of you others around here.”

“They furnish me with my meat.”

Karen didn’t appear to move, but suddenly her body was pressed close against him. The top of her fur-lined hood tickled his nose. Her voice was muffled against his mackinaw: “Go inside. Please don’t go down there.”

Her body trembled and he imagined he felt the warmth of her through his heavy clothing. She put her hands on his shoulders and threw back her head, lifting her face to his. Her lips were parted and they seemed to offer themselves to him.

He remained remote and strong, shaking his head slowly. “It won’t do, Karen. You know it won’t.”

She pressed her face against him and slid her hands down the sleeves of his mackinaw, down to the slanting pockets where his hands remained.

He stepped back abruptly as her hands started to creep inside the pockets with his. He said, “You’d better go inside, Karen,” and turned on his heel to swing around the side of the cafe.

This time he continued on toward the railroad siding where the prize bulls were bedded down for the night.

There was no sound from the wooden pens when he reached them. It was too dark to see the animals inside and he presumed they were asleep.

The two empty cattle cars still stood on the track where they had been spotted for unloading that afternoon.

Morris began to make a cautious circuit of the pens, pressing between the empty cattle cars and the heavy board fence.

A tiny, improbable sound stopped him as he passed in front of the open door of the first car. He whirled to face the door and a silver mounted six-gun came from his pocket.

Faint moonlight glittered on a thin sliver of polished steel a brief instant before it was buried deep in his throat. He sank to the frozen ground without uttering a sound.