Texas by the Tail

"Why, Mitch! You're not even ready yet!"

"Oh, my God!" Mitch groaned. "Don't tell me this was the night!"

"It most certainly was. And you were supposed to have Harvey here, too. Alice is down in the car waiting for him."

Mitch apologized. He introduced her to Lord as Helen Harcourt and explained the seeming mixup. "A friend of mine and I had a date with Helen and her sister tonight. But it completely slipped my mind."

"And aren't you ashamed!" Red pouted. "I'll bet Mr. Lord wouldn't have forgotten, would you, Mr. Lord?"

"You just bet your sweet little ass-ankles, I wouldn't!" Lord declared gallantly. "Your sister anything like you, baby?"

"Oh, no," Red simpered. "Alice is the pretty member of the family."

Lord was completely carried away by the reply. "Couldn't be any prettier than you are, tutz! You're the prettiest little package of tail I've ever seen in my life!"

"Now you're just being polite." Red gave him an icy smile. 'You're just saying that to be gentlemanly."

"I mean it!" Lord insisted. "The prettiest tail I ever saw in my life! And I'm a guy that's seen plenty of tail!"

Mitch decided that was about enough. More than enough. Regardless of the need to get Lord out of here, he wasn't going to have Red put up with this.

"Maybe you'd better run along now," he told her. "We'll have that date some other night."

"Well -.." Her eyes told him it was all right. "I was just thinking that Mr. Lord might like to come along. To keep Alice company."

"Oh, he probably wouldn't want to bother. After all, it's getting late, and we were having a little game-"

Lord said to screw the game and how goddamned late it was, then bowed wobblingly in Red's direction. "Have to excuse the language, honey. Be perfectly all right as soon as I have a drink."

"I understand," Red murmured. "I hope you don't mind putting on a dinner jacket."

"Don't mind a bit, baby. What kind you like-plaid, white, black-?"

"Black will be fine. Alice and I will be waiting down in the car, Mitch."

She swept out of the room, with another brilliant smile at Lord. He promptly returned to the bar, took a long drink direct from the bottle, and slammed it down with a shuddery hiccup. Then, turning slowly, he treated Mitch to a long, thoughtful and seemingly sober stare.

"Seen you somewhere before, haven't I?" he said.

"Have you?" Mitch said.

"Seen that redheaded broad, too. Seen the two of you together."

"We've been together before," Mitch nodded. "Now that I think of it, I believe I've seen you somewhere, too."

"So who cares? Everybody's seen me. Known far and wide."

"I'm sure you're right. Hadn't you better be getting dressed if we're going to meet the girls?"

"Don't be so goddamned rude," Lord scowled. "Can'tcha see I'm havin' a drink?"

"You can take the bottle along with you if you like."

"Now you're tryin' to patronize me," Lord declared. "Actin' like I don't have any whiskey of my own."

Mitch sighed, wondering vaguely if there wasn't an easier way to make a living. Lord would have to be carried to his suite if he didn't leave very soon. His appearance to the contrary, he must be very near the point of collapse. And yet, well, he just might not be. With Winfield Lord, Jr., one could never be sure.

His behavior was always erratic. His speech was invariably obscene. He had been sodden with alcohol for so long that drunkenness was the norm for him. Now, he was apt to be sober when he appeared to be drunkest.

"Tell you where I saw you," he was saying. "In a cage at the zoo. You were trying to slip it to another ape."

"Imagine that," Mitch yawned. "I didn't know anyone was watching."

"Just testing," Lord said wisely. "Always test people like that. Keeps 'em worried, know what I mean? Think I remember 'em they don't try to pull anything."

"That's very shrewd of you," Mitch nodded. "Then you haven't seen me before tonight?"

Lord said hell no, he hadn't, and that was one thing he had to be grateful for, "But I got to keep testing, see? I run into someone like you or that redheaded broad, I test 'em. And you know why I do it?"

"To keep them worried?"

"Well, shut up and I'll tell you, then!" Lord said. "Here's my ass, see?" He slapped his rump. "And here's the whole goddamned world"-he held up the stiffened forefinger of his right hand. "That's the world, just waitin' the chance to jab poor ol' Winnie Lord in the t-tail.." His voice broke, and he sobbed. Then, getting control of himself, he glowered ferociously at his upheld finger. "So what do I do about it? What does Winnie Lord do when the whole world's a big screwin' finger? Huh? Hah? Well, I'll tell you what! He bites the goddamned thing off!"

Mitch grabbed him. Frantically, he tried to force Lord's mouth open, to pull the finger out of his mouth. But Lord was slippery and strong. They struggled about the room, stumbling over furniture, almost going through a window. At last Lord opened his mouth, and burst into jeering laughter.

"Jesus Christ!" he said. "Are you ever a jerk!"

The finger had been doubled over. There wasn't a mark on it. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Mitch was almost grateful to him.

That took care of any twinge of conscience he had felt at beating Lord for thirty-three thousand dollars. His feeling now was that he had earned the money, and then some.

The feeling increased as Lord suddenly remembered "Helen and Alice." Mitch suggested that he go to his own suite, so that they could be dressing simultaneously. But Lord wouldn't have it that way. No, sir! No, by God! Mitch should get dressed, and then accompany him, while he was dressing.

"Gonna keep an eye on you, get me? Y'aren't gettin' away from me for a mother-lovin' minute!"

"Suit yourself," Mitch shrugged. "You can have another drink while I'm changing."

"Stop ordering me around," Lord said. "Who the hell you think you are, anyway?"

At last they were on their way, Lord holding himself very erect, looking like a matinee idol as they descended in the elevator. Mitch guided him to his own suite, sat him down inside, and wheeled the portable bar close to him. He sat down across from him, and Lord resumed his drinking and his endless and pointless obscenities. And Mitch could not feel sorry for him-how could you feel sorry for someone who had everything and flatly refused to do anything with it? But still he was subtly perturbed; naggingly puzzled by the riddle, this particularization of the universal, which Lord represented.

You could say he was a bastard by choice. And that was true. You could say that he could hardly be anything else, in view of his heritage. And that was true. But still there had to be more to it than that; some hideous note that only he could hear in the Leitmotif to which he marched through life.

Why did he choose to be as he was? Why had his ancestors chosen to be as they were? Why did a person-a people- who were fortunate beyond their wildest dreams use their all to crap up the only world they had to live in?

Where was the answer? Did it exist in them, or in oneself? Once, finding himself on the campus of a large university, Mitch had chosen to stroll through the main engineering building. A building whose main corridor was a hundred yards long. At its beginning, the beginning of the corridor, that is, the mathematical equivalent of pi was engraved upon the wall-3.14159. But that, the accepted workaday definition, was not true pi, of course. So there had been more decimals behind the customarily final one; on and on and still on, until the end of the corridor was reached. But that still was not the end of pi, as was indicated by the plus sign behind the final decimal.

Somewhere, possibly, within the limitless infinity of mathematics, a period could be correctly put to the equation. Or, possibly, it could never be. Perhaps what was missing was not intrinsic to the formula itself, but in the eye that beheld it. Some new dimension which would illuminate the darkest corners of human knowledge, including the perverse minds of men like Winnie Lord.

However it was, Mitch decided, as he waited wearily for Lord to pass out, the answer to such imponderables as true pi and man's meanness was not his to provide.

However it was, he decided, he was damned glad that he was Mitch Corley, with all of Mitch Corley's problems, instead of Winfield Lord, Jr.

Lord at last drew a blank. Mitch felt his pulse, making sure that he was suffering from nothing worse than he ever suffered from. Then, having checked the apartment for any burning cigarettes, he covered Lord with a blanket and returned to the penthouse.

14

Turkelson and Red were seated cozily on the lounge, sipping tall drinks and nibbling from a huge tray of hot hors d'oeuvres. Mitch saw that Red was just a little bit high, and he looked at them with mock severity.

"Curse this bitter day!" he said, flinging a hand to his forehead. "So this is what goes on while I'm out sweating over a hot pair of dice!"

"It's all Turk's fault," Red declared. "He's simply been pouring the drinks down me, Mitch!"

"Mmm-hmm. And I suppose he put you in that negligee and robe, too, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did," Red said. "That's exactly what he did. I

don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come in." Turkelson chucked and chortled, his belly quivering with delight. Mitch sat down, counted off three thousand, three hundred dollars, and handed it to him.

"Ten per cent of thirty-three. Okay, Turk?"

"My God, yes!" the manager breathed. "It's really too much, Mitch. I didn't do anything to deserve a cut like this."

"You did plenty. How did the paper look, anyway? No illegible signatures or funny stuff?"

"See for yourself," Turkelson said, and he handed Mitch the checks which Lord had written that night. They were all made out to the hotel company, rather than to cash or an individual. Thus, they became a legitimate obligation for value received. It would be obvious, of course, that Lord's bill could not have amounted to so much. But that changed nothing. As a means of building good will, a large hotel may cash checks for a person who is not even a patron.

Mitch handed the checks back, began to relax for the first time in days. He could pay off Agate now, and still have more than enough left to take care of his other immediate needs. After that…

Well, after that was after that. For the present he was sitting sweet.

Red brought him a drink and a few delicacies from the tray. He frowned slightly as she fixed herself another drink, then grinned and winked at her. She had been a little awkward with him since she had forced him to take her to the bank. It was good to see her loosened up and having fun again.

Red would never be a drunk. She enjoyed life too much. She was too honest with herself, too clear of conscience.

"All worn out, honey?" She looked at him archly over the rim of her glass. "Completely worn out?"

Mitch laughed and shook his head. "How about you? Winnie was giving you a pretty hard time."

"Him? Oh, pooh! You know, he's such a complete stinker that I almost felt sorry for him."

"Don't!" Mitch said firmly. "The last woman who felt sorry for Winnie Lord almost got her nose bitten off. I'm not kidding"-he glanced at Turkelson. "You remember it, don't you, Turk? Some poor damned waitress in a Galveston beer joint."

"I remember," the manager nodded. "The Lords fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court. She didn't even get her doctor bills out of it."

Red said that that might be all well and good, but Lord had really paid her quite a compliment. "You heard him yourself, Mitch. He said I was the prettiest little package of you-know he'd ever seen."

"He was probably exaggerating," Mitch told her. "You know how these Texans are."

"Well, what about you? Do you think I am or not?"

"How would I know?" Mitch spread his hands helplessly. "You're the only woman I've ever known."

"Mmm," Red said. "Mmmm-mmm-mmm! Am I going to kiss you for that when I get you alone!" Then she turned and gave Turkelson a speculative look. "Now, I just wonder," she said. "I wonder if you'd know."

"What about?" Turkelson grinned expectantly. "Why not ask me?"

"Well, okay, but you've got to promise to tell the truth." She cocked her head to one side. "You promise, you big fat man?"

"Promise." He held up a hand, chuckling.

Red turned on the lounge on her knees and whispered in his ear. The ear suddenly turned sunset red, as did his face and neck.

"Well?" she demanded pertly. "What do you think?"

"Uh, I, uh, think I'd better go," Turkelson said desperately, running a plump finger around his collar. "I-I-"

He struggled to his feet. Red grabbed him by the coattail and dragged him down again.

"Now, you've got to tell the truth," she insisted. "If you don't tell the truth, you'll have to pay the penalty. You know what the penalty is?"

She whispered to him again, leaned back with a solemn nod. Turkelson appeared to be on the point of strangling.

"That's it," she declared. "If you don't tell the truth right this minute, I'm going to make you-Mitch! Mitch, you let me go, darn you!"

Mitch held her sackwise, tucked under one arm. As she kicked and squealed, he shook hands with Turkelson.

"Good going, my friend. We'll see you tomorrow, huh?"

"Uh, yes. You bet, Mitch." The manager edged nervously toward the door.

"And we've checked out as far as Lord is concerned, understand? No telephone calls. He doesn't get up here on the elevator."

"Right! Oh, absolutely!" Turkelson bobbed his head. "I- I'll let myself out, Mitch!"

He did so, just as Red tugged herself free, pirouetted, and paused with an arm theatrically upflung. "A little music, Professor."

"Now, honey. It's getting pretty late…"

"Hush!" she said. "Music!"

"Well, okay then. Just a little."

He had never had music lessons. But he had an excellent memory and, naturally, a sensitive touch. Sitting down at the Piano, he pressed the soft pedal, considered the keyboard for a moment and brought his hands down on it. Very softly, he swung out with a swaggering barrel-house version of "It Must Be Jelly, 'Cause Jam Don't Shake Like That."

Red did a low-down grind, turning completely around. She kicked backwards, and one of her houseslippers sailed into the air. Turning and grinding, she kicked again and the other slipper sailed free.

Mitch moved both hands down to the bass. The piano became a tom-tom, and Red's face took on an ecstatic look. Head flung back, leaning backward from her knees, she writhed out of her robe.

The lacy negligee went next. And that was all for a minute or two.

Mitch moved up the keyboard, his fingers insistent, demanding. Red's hands went to her bra, seeming to struggle with themselves, to fight against the action. Then, as the piano sobbed and pleaded, she suddenly ripped it off.

The panties went next. Then…

Then there was nothing more. Only Red.

Ripe, full-bodied, a living dream of pulsing pastel.

They looked at each other silently. Then, she turned slightly, pointing to an almost invisible bruise on her flank.

"See?" she said. "That's what you did when you spanked my bottom."

"Into each life," Mitch said, "some rain must fall."

"Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"Well, I might," Mitch said, "if I was sure you weren't one of those phony redheads."

Red said he could surely see for himself that she wasn't, but Mitch said it was not something that could be determined with the naked eye.

"Why, I knew a blonde one time who passed herself off as a brunette. Her boy friend was a coal miner, you see, and he was allergic to soap and water."

Red made her eyes very large. "My goodness gracious," she said. "Not to mention heavens-to-Betsy. So there's no way of knowing whether I'm a phony or not?"

"Well, yes there is," Mitch said. "It's a method I've developed over the years, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. How are you fixed for time?"

"Well, I don't have anything on tonight…"

"So you don't," Mitch said. "But I'm afraid tonight wouldn't be nearly enough. How about the next forty or fifty years?"

Red said oh, sure, she could manage that all right. What were forty or fifty years when the interests of science were at stake?

Mitch stood up and pointed firmly to the bedroom. "Just step into my laboratory, madam. The tests will begin immediately, and I don't mean perhaps."

15

Winfield Lord's reservation at the hotel had been for three days, including the day of his arrival. But perversely and for no apparent reason he remained for six. He made no attempt to reach Mitch. Quite possibly, with his long training in blanking-out, he did not remember being with Mitch. But that was only a possibility, not a certainty. It was also possible, where anyone as tricky as he was concerned, that he was merely biding his time, waiting for the proper moment to Spring one of the near-riots for which he was famous, or rather, infamous. Some brannigan that would attract the attention of the police and newspapers.

Mitch couldn't risk that, naturally. Neither could he risk the demand from Lord for another game. Even the thirty-three thousand was an uncomfortably large amount to take from such a character. Turkelson would have his neck out to there if he continued to play cashier for Mitch. You could always get bit by riding a good thing too far.

Lord kept pretty much to his suite, consuming great quantities of liquor, eating sparsely, receiving occasional visits from call girls and the house physician (in that order). Of necessity, then, Mitch and Red remained in their suite. Lord would forget them in time, if he hadn't already. For the present, they could not take the chance of encountering him.

This cooling out on a chump, of course, is routine in any hustle. Ordinarily, it would have been accomplished by jumping town. Since that was impractical here, they could only remain in hiding. Which, Mitch reflected, wouldn't have been at all hard to take normally. What was so tough about being holed up in a fancy penthouse with a beautiful doll and a big bundle of the green? Red thought it was just fine and dandy- and proved it by hardly letting him out of her sight. Mitch- well, Mitch would have thought it was fine too, if he could ever have stopped thinking for a moment about Agate. He had already broken one promise to the banker. Now, since more than two days had gone by, he had broken another. And Agate

knew things about him, things which could be very dangerous if he chose to reveal them.

Mitch doubted that Agate would be appeased by anything less than cash. But on the third afternoon, while Red was showering, he managed a quick call to him.

"All right," the banker snapped, as Mitch began a hasty explanation. "You couldn't get in. When can you?"

"Well, I'm not sure, Lee. I hope I can make it tomorrow, but-"

"Forget tomorrow, then. What about the next day?"

"Well, I-I-"

"Or the day after that?"

"Well-Lee, I just can't say for sure. But-"

"I know. You've got something big on the fire, and you want to keep me quiet until you can pull it off."

"Aah, no, Lee! It isn't like that at all. I-"

Agate slammed up the phone. Mitch didn't bother to call him back. Nor would it have done any good if he had.

There was nothing to do but wait and worry.

The end of Lord's stay coincided with the weekend. Thus, it was Monday before Mitch could notify Agate that the fifteen thousand was waiting for him.

Agate seemed stunned to hear his voice on the phone. "But-but I thought that-"

"Well, now you know you were wrong," Mitch said. "Same place, same time, okay? We'll have lunch."

"Well, uh, I'm not sure that-uh-"

"You can have a drink with me if you're tied up for lunch. Or I can drop the dough off at the bank for you."

"No. No, don't do that," Agate said, and he seemed to sigh. "We'll make it for drinks."

They met at the same quietly luxurious restaurant they had lunched in the previous week. Mitch handed him an envelope, and he looked at it almost blankly for a moment. Then, he opened the flap, thumbed through the contents, and slowly raised his eyes again.

"Well?" Mitch said. "It's all there, isn't it?"

"What?" Agate blinked. "Oh, yes. Yes, it's all here." He tapped thoughtfully on the table with the envelope. Then, his lips tightening peevishly, he added that Mitch was very late. "Inexcusably late. You couldn't blame me at all if I'd blown the whistle on you."

"Well, as long as you didn't," Mitch shrugged.

"You just can't do things like this, Mitch." Agate shook his head fretfully. "You of all people should know that you Can't. You break one promise to me. Then, you come right back and break another one. You just let everything slide, and then you show up when you're damned good and ready and expect everything to be all right."

"Isn't it, Lee?" Mitch said. "Isn't it all right? If it isn't you'd better tell me right now."

But Agate continued his nagging. He had to. It was a mask for the confusion, the uncertainty, the fear which teemed through his mind. It was a rationalization-an attempt to blame Mitch for his own betrayal. And how could he possibly tell the truth, anyway? He needed this fifteen thousand. He was terrified of what Mitch might do if he knew the truth.

"Well, Lee," Mitch was saying. "Isn't it all right? Does this square us up, or doesn't it?"

"Now, that's not the point," Agate said doggedly. "You've got to admit that-"

"Never mind." Mitch gestured curtly. "I can't sit here all day while you scold me. How much more do you want- two-fifty, five? I thought the fifteen was damned plenty, but I'll sweeten it if you say so."

"Now, I said nothing about sweetening it," Agate muttered. "I didn't say a thing about wanting more money."

"But you do want it, don't you?" Mitch studied him carefully. "If you don't, what the hell is this all about?"

He took a sip of his vermouth cassis, keeping his eyes on the banker. Agate gulped down the last of his double Scotch, sat twirling the glass nervously. God, why couldn't he have waited? Why had he had to be in such a hell of a hurry? Why-how-

Suddenly, he saw a way out, or thought he saw one. It was a stupid way, actually no way at all. But desperation and the abrupt infusion of whiskey made it seem brilliant. Smiling, he tucked the money envelope into his pocket, and held out a hand.

"The fifteen is plenty," he said, "and excuse me if I've given you a hard time. I had a rough morning at the bank."

Mitch hesitated, studying him a moment longer. But the explanation sounded reasonable, and he could think of no other. Blue Monday-a hard morning after a hard weekend. It figured, didn't it?

"It happens to the best of us" he said. "Then we're all set? Still friends?"

"Of course we are. Certainly we are, Mitch. Just give me a holler the next time you need help. I'm afraid I can't do anything for you in that Zearsdale matter, but anything else…"

Mitch nodded, not particularly disappointed. The Zearsdale option had been a longshot, something he had had to try for without really expecting to hit. It was enough that he had been able to square himself with the banker, and he was very relieved to have done it.

A dress-suited waiter approached, looked expectantly from one to the other of them. Mitch suggested lunch, but Agate shook his head.

"I think I'll just settle for another drink, another double, please," he said. "And don't let me keep you, Mitch. I've got some things to think out, and I'd just as soon be alone for a while."

Mitch took the hint and excused himself. As he departed, the waiter brought Agate's second drink, and the banker took a grateful gulp from the brimming glass. With a sigh, he settled back in the upholstered booth. For the moment, at least, he could almost see himself as the suave man of large affairs, the shrewd and imposing executive, which only drink or dreams had ever permitted him to be.

His wife and children had no use for him. His employers and co-executives gave him neither liking nor respect. Fortuitously, he had been available at a time when death and war had vacated increasingly desirable positions, and thinned the ranks of those aspiring to them. He had been there-when no one else was there-so now he was here. And no one knew better than he that he had no right to be here, the assistant vice-president of a large bank. Mere chance was responsible; chance and a lack of imagination were responsible, a mental laziness which had kept him in the same rut it had led him to-a normally dead-end rut-for more than thirty years.

He had come straight from high school to the bank. Now nearing fifty, he was increasingly conscious of his inadequacies and decreasingly able to repair or conceal them. Time had shrunk him even as it had expanded the responsibilities of his job. The noise of his rattling around in it was drawing frequent and frightening looks from his superiors.

It would be extremely awkward, of course, almost impractical, to dispose of a thirty-year man who was an upper echelon executive. And Agate's appearance was a constant contradiction of the errors which could only occasionally be traced to him. How could one believe that there was virtual emptiness behind the impressive, banker-like exterior with which he daily faced the world? With so much on display, then, logically, there had to be a great deal more underneath; as with an iceberg, whose greatest mass is below the surface.

Logic and had-to-be's to the contrary, however, there was daily evidence that his employers were at last seeing him for what he was. As literally nothing compared to what he should have been. As a very vulnerable link in a chain which needed to be strong. Now, if somewhat belatedly, they were discovering the real man… a discovery which the first of a long series of hustlers had made almost fifteen years before.

Those were the facts on Lee Jackson Agate.

In the bemusing glow of alcohol he ignored them, becoming one of the highest and mightiest among the high and the mighty. He argued pleasantly with a readily acquiescent self, pointing out that he was a success, wasn't he? However it had come about, he was a success.

He had a fine home, two fine cars, a comfortable quantity of stocks and bonds. He was quite a little in debt, having unwisely followed the same market advice he had given various customers of the bank. But why niggle over trifles? What was debt to a man with such an impeccable credit rating that he had been able to acquire liabilities which were more than double his assets?

His house was in his wife's name, darn her, as were his blue chip stocks. But the nagging and henpecking which had brought about this arrangement could not change Texas law. In effect, a married woman in Texas could not own property, her assets being under the legal control of her husband. He could do just about as he pleased with what she had hoped to do as she pleased-darn her!-so he would just go into this Zearsdale stock-option deal, and he would split a fast one hundred and fifty thousand with Mitch. And then afterwards, when his wife saw how truly brilliant he was.

Well, things had been quite good with them at one time. Back in the beginning they had been good. Then, his parents had come to live with them, having no other way of living, and the good had rapidly become bad. His wife had resented them. She had resented him for being too namby-pamby to let them starve. They were well-meaning-what parents are not?-but they were also woefully ignorant, and in their anxiety to be amiable, good comp'ny, they provided their daughter-in-law with the means of wreaking vengeance on Agate for the rest of his life.

"Pa"-his mother would say. "Do you remember the time when you sneaked up on Lee when he was out in the privy, an'…"

Or, "Ma"-his father would say. "You remember the time when Lee got sent home from school f'r havin' lice in his pants? 'Pears like someone told him if he set on a hen's nest long enough he could lay aigs, an'…"

Or, "Yessir, that Lee was really a case. Fell t'sleep in church with his mouth open, an' a big ol' Juney-bug flew down his throat. Had to knock him out with a prayer book before we could get him calmed down…"

That was the way it went. That was the way, with Lee Agate trying to smile, unable to chide his own parents; his wife listening, eyes sparkling maliciously. And later, when passion or tenderness mounted in him, when his being cried out for the understanding he had so freely given himself, then, then a chilling snigger, a gesture of simulated disgust, a suggestion that he go on out to the privy, the repeated implication that he was stupid or perverted or clumsy or nasty or vicious, any and all of the unpleasant things which the senile anecdotes of his parents had painted him as being.

Naturally, his wife's attitude carried over to his children. He had never been able to correct them or even to suggest a course of conduct to them without arousing their derision. It had been a very long time since he had tried to, just as it had been a very long time since he had made any gesture of love to his wife; anything more than the merest peck on the cheek. She resented this, of course, and his children resented his abandonment of his proper role in the family. Perhaps, in the final analysis, he was at fault rather than they.

It is an unquestioned tradition in the lore of the American family that the adult male would go the way of the buffalo except for the protection and guidance of his wife and children. He may be trusted to perform brain surgery, but never to sharpen a pencil. He may be a chef, but in his own home he cannot boil water. He may be a writer, but his help on a freshman theme is a virtual guarantee of a failing grade.

Possibly there is an inverse relationship between the low rating of the American male in his own home and the alarming increase in impotence, insanity, alcoholism, homosexuality, suicides, divorces, abortions, murders, censorship and educated illiterates. Still, the male is holding out rather well against the loved ones who want only to tear him apart and gobble him up. He makes his office his home, his work his pride. Undistracted, he proves his worthwhileness over and over, eventually garnering so much moral muscle that even his kiddies are impressed and refrain from cursing him in front of strangers, and his little woman gives him a little of what little women have to give without first making him confess that he is a walleyed son-of-a-bitch and that she is the nicest, sweetest, darlingest, generousest, beautifulest, unselfishest, perfectest, ad infinitum, ad nauseum something-oranother that ever dwelt south of heaven.

Unfortunately for Lee Agate (and his family) he had no job. Not in the true sense of the word. A creature who looks like a duck, makes noises like a duck and is generally ducklike in its behavior, may safely be presumed to be a duck. But Agate, who bore all the outward aspects of a bank executive, was no more than an implausible facsimile of one. He found fear and not satisfaction in his position. His crisp mannerisms, his sternness, were only an aggressive cover-up for that fear, a growing conviction of inferiority which the job nurtured in him.

So…

So he'd just take the afternoon off, goddamn 'em! That'd show 'em, right? Right?

Right!

Thirty-year man, wasn't he? 'Zecutive. Apisstant ricevedizent. Hee, hee, hee-hee-hee. Uh, uh, heee-hahaha…

Agate suddenly sat erect and made his face stern. He looked around the now sparsely-occupied room, lips thinned severely, eyes flashing sharply behind his glasses. But no one had been watching him apparently… unless perhaps they had looked away very quickly. Or if they had, it was certainly understandable. Ob'sly big man. Capt'n of Commerce. 'D' realize big man had to relax a little, an' get away from his cares.

The waiter brought him a fourth drink, set it down in front of him with a very deliberate gesture. Agate stared at him coldly, and the waiter asked him if he would like to see a menu.

Agate said that he wouldn't. What he wanted was a telephone, and he wanted one now. "Right now, understand. Let's see a little service around here!"

His eyes glittered triumphantly as the waiter scampered away. He took two long gulps of his drink. He waited in aloof silence while a phone was plugged in at the booth.

In his many years with the bank, he had had frequent contacts with prominent and powerful Houstonites, Zearsdale among them. He was invariably in the role of a glorified messenger boy on these occasions, but he did not remember them that way now. Rather, in the roseate present, he saw himself moving among these people as a friend rather than a flunky. They were his pals and he was their pal, and naturally Jake Zearsdale would want to give his pal Lee Agate an option to buy stock at two-fifths of its market value.

Perf'ly understan'ble, right? Right? Ri- Nope, wasn't right. Not now, maybe later. But Jake Zearsdale had to be called, all ri', al ri-ut! Had to be called about ol' pal Mitch Corley.

Agate straightened himself again. The importance of what he was about to do impressed itself on his sodden brain, demanding all the effort of which he was capable. And getting an outside line, he dialed and spoke into the phone very carefully.

A secretary answered him, passed him on to an executive secretary, and thence, to an executive secretary of an executive assistant. Finally, almost ten minutes after he had placed the call, he was connected with Zearsdale.

He was beginning to fog-up again by then, and he virtually guffawed into the phone. He choked it off, mumbled a blurry, "'Scuse me, Mr. Zearsdale."

The line was silent for a moment. Then, his voice harshly musical, Zearsdale said, "Certainly. Who is this please?"

"Dis is dub guy dat called you las' week," Agate said. "About Mitch Corley, r'member. Called you last week 'bout Mitch-hic-Corley, I'm duh-"

"Would you mind speaking a little louder, please?" Zearsdale said. "We seem to have a bad connection."

"Cert'nly"-Agate raised his voice. "Said I was dub guy dat called you las' week about Mish-M itch-"

"Louder, please. And just a little slower."

"I said," said Agate, enunciating as clearly as he could, "that I was the guy who called you last week about Mitch Corley. 'Juh get me that time?"

"Mmm, yes, I believe I did," Zearsdale murmured. "Do you have some more information on him?"

Agate shook his head firmly. Then laughed in self-depreciation as he realized that the negative could not be seen. "Little joke on me," he explained to the phone, and explained the jest in detail. Zearsdale laughed politely.

"I'm a little crowded for time," he added. "Perhaps you'd better tell me why you are calling."

"Wha'? Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure," Agate mumbled. "Jus' Wanted to say I was all wrong 'bout Mitch. Checked into it m'self an' found I'd made a terrible mistake. Hesitated- hic-'bout callin' yuh, but figgered man makes mistake Oughta be big 'nough to admit it."

"I see," Zearsdale said thoughtfully. "I see."

"'Mean it," Agate insisted." 'S'all wrong. Based on unr'li ble information. Checked it out m'self an'-"

"Possibly. Just possibly." Zearsdale's tone was judicious. "But I'm inclined to think that you're not telling the truth. I'm quite a student of voices and you don't sound at all sincere."

"Oh, yeah?" Agate glared belligerently into the mouthpiece. "Now, you lissen t'me, buddy-"

"Shut up," Zearsdale said.

"Huh? What'd'ya mean shut-"

"I mean to shut up, and you'd better do it," Zearsdale said. "You'd also better stop drinking. You can't handle it. You're a big enough damned fool when you're sober."

Agate's mouth was suddenly very dry. His lips moved in a silently futile attempt at speech.

"Now I'm going to give you some advice," Zearsdale continued. "I wouldn't take your word for anything, so I'll find out the truth about Corley myself. Meanwhile, he is not to know that you have spoken to me. You will make no attempt to warn him. If you do, I'll make you the sorriest man in Texas, and that's a promise, Mr. L. J. Agate."

The mention of his name was like a purgative to Agate. He was abruptly very sober, more frightened than he had ever been in all his fear-filled life.

"W-What," he croaked. "What are you going to do?"

"Do?" said Zearsdale, and his voice was almost lilting. "Why I'm going to invite Mr. Corley to have dinner with me."

He hung up.

Agate hung up. He looked at his drink, started to reach for it, then jerked his hand back as though it had touched a flame.

He had better go back to the bank, he guessed. No, he had better go home. No, he had better go-go-?

The waiter approached, still deferential from the last time Agate had barked at him. Agate straightened himself, patted the thin hair on his scalp, assumed an impressive frown, opened his mouth to speak, and vomited all to hell over everything.

16

The day had been hot and humid; a muggy, sweltering day; and one seemed on the point of boiling in his own perspiration. The kind of day that is not quite so "unusual" as the city's civic organizations would have one believe. Those organizations may admit that Houston's weather occasionally leaves something to be desired. But they hasten to point out, and with some truth, that however unpleasant the day, the nights are delightfully cool. To someone unaccustomed to the climate, the delightful coolness may bear a striking resemblance to frigidity. And as Mitch had pre-prandial drinks with Zearsdale, he was grateful for the low blaze in the fieldstone fireplace.

The fireplace was in the kitchen of the Zearsdale home. Zearsdale, in shirt sleeves and a butcher's apron, had led him back to the kitchen immediately upon his arrival, and they were now seated at a large wooden table-one of those sturdy Utility tables such as one sees in restaurant kitchens-and drinking a very authoritative ale from pewter mugs.

The oil man sighed on a subtly happy note, brushing alefoam from his mouth as he looked around the huge beamed room. "I think I'd live in here if I could move a bed in," he said. "There's something about it that makes me feel relaxed and at peace with myself."

"It's a lot of kitchen," Mitch smiled. "I know I've never seen anything like it outside of a big hotel."

"And you never will," Zearsdale said, nodding toward the range which ran practically the width of the room. "Three cooks can work at that at the same time. You could run five thousand meals off of it in a day if you had to."

"I can believe it. You do a lot of entertaining out here, I suppose?"

"Practically none." Zearsdale shook his head. "I just happen to like a big, well-equipped kitchen. I like to see it and be in it. I'm not married, and any entertaining I do is usually done at the club. But still… well, I suppose it goes back a long way. How about you, Corley? What kind of home life did you have as a boy?"

Mitch said that he hadn't had much in the accepted sense of the word. "We always lived in hotels. My father sold various kinds of intangibles, and my mother worked with him."

"They must have hit it lucky somewhere along the line."

"Pure luck, I'm afraid, Mitch said deprecatingly. "I don't know too much about it, since I was just a kid at the time. But I know they sunk a lot of money in things that never panned out."

Zearsdale poured more ale for him, remarking that their backgrounds were not dissimilar. "We ran the cookshack for drilling crews. My mother and I did, rather; my dad usually got some kind of little job flunkying around the rig. A drilling rig runs twenty-four hours a day, of course, which meant that we had to serve meals around the clock. I don't think my mother and I ever got to sleep more than two hours in a row."

He shook his head, remembering, his eyes wandering over the room's extravagantly elaborate equipment. "We did all the cooking on a four-burner oil-stove, and we lived and slept in the same room we cooked in. We… well, never mind. There's nothing very interesting about drudgery."

"It's a good story," Mitch said. "I'd like to hear it."

"Well," Zearsdale shrugged. "I'll keep it short then…"

The owner of a wildcat lease on which they were working (he continued) had become deeply in debt to them. So deeply that by the time the well was drilled in-a gusher-they owned a large share of the property. Borrowing money from friends, he tried to pay them off for the actual cash amount of his debt. When they refused, he wangled a secret agreement with the pipeline company.

The company contracted to take the oil, being legally bound to. But payment was to be upon delivery; at such time, that is, as the pipeline was connected with the well. It soon became apparent that that time was not going to come as long as the Zearsdales retained their share. There was one delay after another. Delays that were an obvious ploy in a game of freeze-out. But there was no money to go into court and prove it.

"My dad was all for settling-he wasn't a very strong man, I'm afraid…" A contemptuous note crept into Zearsdale's voice. "But my mother had other ideas. He wouldn't go along with them, so she and I handled it ourselves. We had to, you know, Corley? Here a great wrong was being done, and the law couldn't touch the people who were doing it. So we had to. I was fourteen years old at the time, but it's a lesson I've never forgotten: That the strong people of the world have an obligation to that world. That's why they have been made strong, you understand. To crack down hard when they see someone getting out of line…"

"Mmm, yes. Very interesting," Mitch said. "But just what did you and your mother do?"

"Well…" Zearsdale chuckled. "No one could prove that we did anything, Corley. They didn't even suggest that we did. It was put down as an accident, and it really raised holy hell. You see, that was ranching country out there. Rolling grasslands with cattle grazing as far as the eye could see. When the fire broke out-and my mother and I were a long way off, naturally-"

"Fire?" Mitch stared at him. "Do you mean you-… you-"

"Fire. From the seepage around the well. It wouldn't have happened if the pipeline had been connected as it should have been, so they were held liable for the damages. Ten million dollars, plus another hundred thousand to have the fire put out. On top of that, we collected our pro rata share of the cost of every barrel of oil that had burned." Zearsdale chuckled again. Grimly. "There was no more stalling after that. No more trouble. From them or anyone else."

He had Mitch accompany him into a large walk-in refrigerator to help select their dinner steaks. He cooked and served them expertly, and fortunately Mitch was very hungry. Otherwise, he might not have been able to ignore the picture which their odor aroused in his mind: a picture of charred grasslands, littered as far as the eye could see with the smoking carcasses of cattle that had been roasted alive.

After dinner, Zearsdale washed and dried the dishes, politely but firmly declining Mitch's offer to help. "I'm an old pro at this, Corley, and I kind of like to keep my hand in. God knows I've got plenty of hired help if I didn't choose to do it."

Mitch assumed that the servants had been let off for the evening. But Zearsdale said they had never been on.

"They need time of their own as well as I do. Aside from that, most of them are getting along in years-they've been with me since my mother's time-and I wouldn't want to keep them up late."

He stripped out of his apron and dried his hands on it, shaking his head to Mitch's remark that he was very generous with his servants.

"No. No, I'm afraid I'm not, Corley. It isn't possible for a man to be generous when he has a half-billion dollars, which is my estimated net worth. He's lost his capacity to be touched by what he does, you know. He has no personal identification with it. There's neither a sacrifice in giving away a million nor a gain in making one. Now, I do try very hard to be fair, and I think I succeed most of the time. But you'll find a lot of people who would disagree. Such as," he grimaced distastefully, "our cheating friend, Birdwell."

The memory of the prematurely gray man, his easy laughter, the obvious liking of the people around him, moved Mitch uneasily. "I can't help feeling sorry for him," he said. "I almost wish I'd kept my mouth shut about his cheating."

"I feel sorry for him, too," Zearsdale said gravely. "He's thrown away a fine career. He's dragged his family down with him. But he did it, not I nor you. We can't ignore wrong, 'Corley, and we can't reward people for doing it."

"But he had a good record with you, didn't he? He'd been with you for a long time."

"He had a very good record," Zearsdale nodded, "and he'd been very well rewarded for it. Now, if I reward a man for being good, and believe me I do-I've given anonymous help to many people who have no connection with my company-then I must punish him for being bad. Or don't you agree with me?"

Mitch hesitated, looking into the thick-lipped face with its sharp, cold eyes-utterly sincere eyes. Looking away again.

"Well," he said, "I should think that would be a very Uncomfortable responsibility for you. Like being God, you know."

"Yes," Zearsdale agreed gravely, "that's exactly what it is. Like being God."

The intent eyes remained on Mitch for a moment, and Mitch fought down an almost irresistible impulse to laugh. He was half-inclined to believe, for that matter, that he was expected to laugh-that the oil man had been giving him a dead-pan ribbing.

Take that bit about setting an oil well on fire. Now, that didn't ring true, did it?

Zearsdale suddenly grinned, remarking that they didn't have to solve all the world's problems tonight, now did they? "Thought any more about that stock option?" he added. "Think you're going to be able to pick it up?"

"It doesn't look that way at the moment." Mitch shook his head regretfully. "I don't fully understand the picture, but I seem to be involved in a long-term investment program. I couldn't pull out at this point without losing practically everything that's been put into it."

"I see. I think I know what you mean," Zearsdale said casually. "Well, do you feel up to a little fun?" He simulated a man shooting dice. "Like to roll the bones a little?'

"Whatever you say," Mitch smiled.

He followed Zearsdale to a sunken recreation room, and the oil man got brandy for them from a long saloon-type bar. Then, as Zearsdale excused himself ("to go after ammunition"), he wandered over to the dice table. It was a regulation, gambling-house crap table, marked off for field, pass, come, craps and so on. In the ceiling above it, and approximately the same dimensions, was a mirror. Mitch was idly puzzled by it-why a mirror over a crap table? He picked up the dice from the green felt, and made a few throws with them. Zearsdale returned, slapping two thick sheafs of bills together- new one-hundred-dollar bills with the bank's band still around them.

"Warming up on me, huh?" He laughed roguishly. "Well, we'll see about that. Want to tee-lee for firsts?" Each of them rolled one of the dice. Mitch got a six. Zearsdale matched it.

Mitch threw a five next time, not wanting to look too good. Zearsdale came back with a six. He picked up both dice and shook them.

"Put a name to it, Corley. A buck-two bucks?"

"A couple of bucks will be fine," Mitch said, and he dropped two hundred dollars on the table.

"Two into that," Zearsdale said, and he laid down a packet of the hundreds.

He rolled the dice. They came up craps-snake-eyes. Since he had had no point, he lost the bet but kept the dice. "Shoot the four bucks," he said, and came out with a big seven.

Again picking up the transparent cubes, he glanced at Mitch. "Eight or any part, Corley."

"Eight," Mitch nodded, and he dropped more money on the table.

Zearsdale sixed on the next roll, and fell off a few rolls later with a seven. He chuckled, good-humoredly, tapping the sheaf of bills.

"Sixteen into me, my friend. Want to shoot it?"

"Sure," Mitch agreed. "Shoot it all."

He was still intent on making it look good, so he rolled a point rather than passing. The point was ten, and he came right back with a- -seven!

He could hardly believe it for a moment. How in the hell could it have happened? He could think of only one reason, and that reason was not nearly so far-fetched as it seemed.

The rich do get richer, the majority do, often with no apparent effort on their part. Them that has gets. The same quality which led them to their original getting continues to prevail in their favor. Perhaps there is a better name for that quality than luck, but no one has ever heard it.

Of course, Mitch could admit the possibility that he might have goofed; he had done it before to the tune of much bigger losses. But always before he had sensed the slipping of his control, the momentary short-circuit between his brain and his fingers. This time, however, he had had no such feelings.

He had called for a ten, certain of its arrival. And the devil had jumped up at him.

Still, he hadn't lost anything yet. He had been shooting with Zearsdale's money. So despite a certain uneasiness, his gambler's conviction that skill can never beat luck, he agreed to another doubling of the bet.

"Sure," he said, piling bills onto the green felt. "Thirtytwo's a nice round number."

"Here we go," Zearsdale said, and away he went.

With a six-five, a six-ace, a five-two, a four-trey, an eight, another eight, and another eleven…

And then Mitch was glancing into his wallet, grinning ruefully, as casual as though he had dropped a book of matches instead of what was practically the last cent he had in the world.

"I guess that's going to have to be the end of our game," he said pleasantly. "Next time I'll come a little better prepared."

"Now, you don't need cash with me," Zearsdale said. "Just write a check for whatever you like."

"No, that's not fair to you." Mitch shook his head "I think it jinxes a man to bet paper against cash."

"Well, borrow some cash from me then. Come on now," Zearsdale urged jovially. "The game's just getting interesting."

Mitch strongly demurred, but not nearly so strongly as he had in the matter of the check. At last, at the oil man's insistence, he accepted a loan of ten thousand dollars. With it, his confidence surged back into him.

He firmly believed, as any gambler would have, that Zearsdale had given away his luck with the loan. He would now be betting against his own money, and the good fortune it bad brought him.

Just as he shook the dice, there was a sudden clatter from the room above them. Mitch started, surprised at the noise in what must be a well-built house, and Zearsdale looked upward with dark disgust. He muttered something to the effect that if the help wanted to romp around all night, they could stay up and work.

"Let's see," he said. "Coming out for thirty-two hundred, right?"

"You're covered," Mitch nodded.

Zearsdale rolled. The dice bounced and spun, and laughed at him with a little three. He passed them back to Mitch, and Mitch settled down to work.

He was confident, but very careful. The goof-of-the-year was out of his system now, and the magic was back in his hands. But he was taking no chances. He could only control the dice while he had them, and he could not hold onto them indefinitely.

His first move was to lower the bet to five hundred dollars-after all, why make work out of fun? Thus buiwarked against a lucky run by Zearsdale, he won thirty-five hundred dollars before deliberately crapping out.

The oil man passed, pointed and fell off.

Mitch went to work again, allowing himself only two passes, beating all around a point before he made it; finally going "unlucky" after another thirty-five-hundred-dollar run.

He kept it looking good all the way-something much harder to do than winning.

It was drudgery but it paid off. Some ninety minutes after he had landed in the swamp he was up on the mountain top. He was square on the loan and his original stake was back in his pocket, and with it was eighteen thousand of Zearsdale's money.

He lost the dice at this point. The oil man let them lay, politely stifling a yawn.

"Getting a little tired, aren't you? What do you say we have a drink?"

"Maybe I'd just better run along," Mitch said. "Unless you'd rather keep the game going. I don't want to quit winner on you if you do."

Zearsdale said, oh, what the hell? There'd be another night. "We'll be seeing each other again. You can depend on it, Corley. Now, if you're sure you won't have a drink..

He saw Mitch to the door. They shook hands and said good night, and Zearsdale gently closed the door behind him. Then, he went up the stairs, his square, heavy-set body moving as lightly as a cat's, and opened the door of a small room.

It was directly above the recreation room. Part of its flooring had been taken up, creating a gape in its approximate center. Poised to look down through this-and through the two-way mirror above the crap table-was a motion picture camera.

As Zearsdale entered the room, a thin middle-aged Negro was closing the lid on a round film can. He began an immediate apology, fear shining out of his liquid eyes.

"Mr. Zearsdale, I'm sure sorry, sir. Terribly, terribly sorry, sir. I just happened to step backwards, an' I kicked that can-"

"It could have spoiled everything," Zearsdale said mildly. "Might have tipped him off, and left me looking like a fool. Do you think I'm a fool, Albert?"

"M-Mister Zearsdale,"-the Negro paled under his yellowish skin. "Please, sir, M-Mister Zearsdale…"

"I've never let you down, have I, Albert?" Zearsdale went on, his voice harshly musical. "Treat you like a white man, don't I, instead of a jig? Treat you a lot better than a lot of white men. You live just as good as I do, and you get a thousand a month for screwing around. That's all it amounts to, you know. You aren't worth a thousand cents a month. I just give it to you so that you can send your kids to school."

The Negro's head bowed on his thin neck. He stood trembling and helpless, biting his lip. Blinking back the tears of fear and shame.

"Well, all right, then," Zearsdale said in a gentler tone. "I don't let my people down. I don't let my people let me down. Is that the film there?"

"Yessir, yessir, that's it." The Negro snatched up the can and humbly tendered it to his employer. "Think you got him, Mr. Zearsdale, sir. Can't be sure, but I thinks so."

Zearsdale said that he would make sure; he never guessed about anything. "How are your children getting along, Albert? Not quite ready to graduate, are they?"

"Jacob is, sir. Only got one more year of law school. Amanda, she still got two years lef' in teachers' college."

"Amanda," Zearsdale murmured. "My mother would have appreciated having a child named after her."

"Yessir, an' Jacob, he named after you, Mr. Zearsdale. Real proud of it, too, Mr. Zearsdale. Yessir, real proud."

"I'm glad to hear it, very glad," the oil man nodded. "I'd hate to think that anyone with my name didn't have pride. A man without pride is no good, did you know that, Albert? If he doesn't have pride he doesn't have anything, not a damned thing to build on. I don't like a man like that. I may put up with him, but I don't like him. If he won't stand up for himself, if he'd rather have a brown nose than a bruised One, I don't and can't like him. How long have you been kissing my ass, Albert?"

"M-Mister-Mister Z-Zearsdale…"

"Twenty-three years, right? Well, that's long enough. You're fired."

17

The bedroom shades were drawn, and the dimness of night still prevailed. Mitch rolled over in the bed, his eyes closed in sleep, his hands automatically seeking Red. It had been a very big night. A very big, very wonderful, very wild-wild night, and even in sleep the wonder and the wildness of it remained with him. He relived it, again smelling the faint perfume of her flesh, again hearing the passionate struggling of her breath, again feeling the savage sweetness of her body as it fitted itself to his.

"Red…" he mumbled, his hands probing the bedclothes. "Let's… let's… Red?" A frown spread over his face, and the movements of his hands quickened, became desperate. "Red?… Red! Where are-" And then his eyes flew open and he sat up with a yell.

"RED!"

There was a clatter from the bathroom. The door banged open and Red ran out. She had her shoes and stockings on, her skimpy panties and her equally skimpy bra. The way Red was built, small but richly full, her bras and panties had to be skimpy.

She had her arms around him in a split second, cradling his head against her breast, whispering endearments as she begged him to tell her what was wrong. Mitch explained sheepishly that he had been having a bad dream. Red kissed him again, murmuring an apology for not having been there.

She started to stand up. Mitch caught a hand in the waistband of her panties.

"You're here now," he said. "That's even better."

"But-but I-" She broke off, forcing a bright smile. "Okay, honey. Just let me get a hair net on, will you?"

"No. No, wait," he said quickly. "You were going out this morning, weren't you?"

"Well, I was but it can wait. After all-"

Mitch said firmly that it shouldn't and wouldn't wait. She was all fixed up to go out, and he wasn't going to muss her up at the last minute. "I was just teasing you," he lied. "Now, you run on and I'll go back to sleep."

She did so, but he didn't. He lay with his eyes closed, a little restless perhaps, but glad that he had done as he had. He thought back to the beginning of their intimacy, and the viewpoint she had revealed to him.

She was a woman, she pointed out (quite unnecessarily) and he was a man. And a man and a woman needed something from each other that they could get from no other source. She had known that long ago, having grown up with a large family in a one-room shack. There would be times when she would be angry, and then he had better keep away from her. But otherwise he had only to ask or hint, and what he wanted would be freely given.

Why, my goodness, how else could it be? What if she didn't feel like it just then?

Most of the time she probably would, because she had never had anyone but him and there was a lot of catching up to do. But even if she didn't, there would be no problem. Why should there be, for pity's sake? It only took a few minutes-not nearly long enough, sometimes!– and if a woman couldn't give herself to a man for a few minutes, she just didn't love him!

The bed sank gently. Mitch started, and turned. And Red's' arms went around him.

"Ah, Mitch. Darling, darling, darling! I couldn't leave with my darling needing me…!"

"But baby-Your clothes…"

"Tear 'em off of me! Tear 'em off and muss me up! I can dress again, and I can get unmussed and… and… and… Mitch!"

An hour later she left on her delayed shopping trip-a peculiar kind of shopping trip, or one that would have been peculiar for anyone but Red. Every now and then, when they had some free time, she would go on such an excursion. Spending the day at it, limiting herself to a total expenditure of five dollars, and shopping only in dime stores.

It was a thing she had always dreamed about doing as a child, and unlike any adult Mitch had ever known, she seemed to be able to satisfactorily fulfill her child's dream: Moving cautiously from counter to counter; spending a dime at one and fifteen cents at another and a quarter at another; pausing to refresh herself with a frozen lollipop on a stick. She would even eat lunch in a dime store-a prospect which made Mitch's stomach turn! Then, having gorged on some hideous concoction such as wilted lettuce and creamed frankfurters (served by a pimply-faced girl with red fingernails) she would return to the attack, so timing herself as to have the expenditure of her last dime coincide with the closing of the store.

She would be very touchy about the armload of "bargains" she brought home (they would disappear in a day or so, just where he never knew). Once he had teased her, asking if she had left anything in the store, and the color had risen in her cheeks and she had called him a mean stupid darned old fool. And then, heart-brokenly, she had begun to cry. He had held her, cuddled her small body in his arms, rocked gently to and fro with her as the great sobs tore through her breast. And there were tears in his own eyes, as at last he understood the cause of her sorrow; for it was his also, and perhaps everyone's. The loss of innocence before it had ever endured. The cruel shearing away of all but the utterly practical, as pastoral man was caught up in an industrial society.

She was an extreme case, yes, as was he. But the tenant farmer's shack and the hotel room were merely the outer limits of a world which inevitably shaped everyone. He did not need to wonder about her thoughts when her schoolbooks had related the adventures of Mary Jane and her Magic Pony. He suspected that in a different way they had been akin to his as he had read of the joyous conspiracy between Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Stork (while the couple overhead were damned near pounding the bed apart).

So she wept, and he wept a little with her. Not for the idealized dream of things past, but for the immutable realities of the present. Not for what had been lost but for what had never been. Not for what might have been but for what could never be.

Then, having wept, she sniffed, straightened and smiled. And she declared that she was going right out dime store shopping again. For everything else might be gone, but hope was not. And everywhere there was evidence that what could be dreamed could be realized.

This morning, as she always did, she had planned an early start. And despite the delay on his account, it was only a little after nine when she departed.

Some thirty minutes later, bathed, shaved, and dressed, Mitch was seated on the terrace, reading the morning paper while he ate a leisurely breakfast.

He could not remember when he had felt so content with himself, so sure that the world was an oyster on which he had an irrefutable claim. Houston was a hell of a town-hadn't he always said so? He had known it was going to be a good trip, and it was proving better than good. Thirty-three big ones from Stinker Lord, and another eighteen from Zearsdale. Fifty-one grand in the kitty and the month was still young!

Of course, the outgo had been terrific, too. But-

Turkelson stepped out on the terrace.

He hadn't knocked or rung the buzzer. He had simply opened the door with his pass key, and walked in, and taking one look at his face, Mitch could only thank God that Red was absent. For the manager was clutching something in his hand, a something that could only be one thing.

Mitch got up quickly, guided him back into the living room. He pushed him down on the lounge, and poured a stiff drink for him.

"It's all right, Turk." It goddamned well wasn't all right! "Just get that inside of you, and calm down."

Turkelson grasped the drink greedily. Mitch gently relieved his other hand of its burden.

Checks. Thirty-three thousand dollars worth. All red-ink stamped with the words, PAYMENT REFUSED.

He had known what they were, but seeing them was another matter. He suddenly felt very empty; yet there was a cold and growing lump in his stomach. He could have yelled with the frustration of it, the damnable jinx that seemed determined to turn his best efforts against him.

And instead he laughed easily, and gave Turkelson a reassuring wink.

"Some fun, hey, keed? Is that all they kicked back on you?"

"All!" the manager said. "My God, isn't that enough?"

"I mean, his legitimate expenses. His hotel bill. He paid that by check too, didn't he?"

"Oh, yeah. Well, that one cleared, Mitch. Twelve hundred dollars and something."

"And of course you gave him an itemized bill for it," Mitch 0odded. "Well…"

So there it was. The Lords might not be able to prove the thirty-three grand had gone for gambling-they could not prove that Winnie hadn't simply kept the money. But proof was not an issue here.

They should have paid the checks. It had been unthinkable that they wouldn't pay them. But since they hadn't-

Turkelson dumped more whiskey into his glass, took a face-reddening swig of it and ripped out a curse. "Goddammit, Mitch, they can't get away with that! They can't now, can they?"

"We'll have to see. Or rather I will. For the present, it looks like they have done it."

"But-but it's not legal! They haven't got a leg to stand on!"

"Turk"-Mitch gestured with a trace of impatience. "What would you like to do? Turn it over to the hotel's attorneys? Have it dragged through every court in the country and us along with it? The Lords would do it you know. They've got lawyers up to the ying-yang, and they like to keep 'em busy."

"B-But Mitch… if you knew it was that way…"

Mitch snapped that they had both known it was that way. What they hadn't known was that it was going to be this way. "So all right, it is this way, and let's stop kidding ourselves that it isn't and that they can't do it to us. That's like telling a cop that he can't arrest you. Maybe he's got no right to, but he can sure as hell do it!"

Turkelson gave him a stricken look. Mitch immediately softened his voice.

"Now, it's going to be all right," he said. "I'll guarantee that it will. As things stand now, you're thirty-three grand short in your cash. How soon do you have to cover it?"

"Right away. The tariff and cash transcripts go to the home office every day. Of course, I could put the checks through for payment again, and still show 'em as a credit. But…"

Mitch told him he had better not. The checks were certain to bounce again, and an amount that large might arouse inquiries.

"We've crapped out, Turk. There's nothing to do now but pay off."

He took out his wallet and counted thirty-three thousand dollars onto the table, his mouth tightening unconsciously as he saw how little was left.

Turkelson looked embarrassed. "Mitch-I, uh, I'm afraid I don't have-"

"Forget it," Mitch said. "Just endorse the checks over to me." He hadn't expected Turkelson to return his ten percent cut of the deal. Turkelson had a mother whom he doted on; a hypochondriacal old battle-axe who had been wasting hospital space and her son's money as far back as Mitch could remember.

Troubled, but obviously relieved, the manager exchanged the checks for the cash. "This is a hell of a lick for you, Mitch. I know you pull down heavy, but are you sure you can take it?"

"I don't plan on taking it," Mitch said.

"Oh? What are-"

"See how fast you can get me a plane out to Dallas, will you? I've got to pack a bag."

He cut off any further questions by leaving the room. An hour later, having left a briefly explanatory note for Red, he was on his way.

18

Dallas.

Big D.

The New York of the Southwest.

This is where you find it, mister. Whatever you're looking for, it's right here.

Fashions? They come all the way from Paris to copy ours. Food? You've never lived until you've tried our restaurants. Financing? We'll take a flier on almost anything.

The world's prettiest, best-dressed women-that's Dallas. The world's smartest, most aggressive business men-that's Dallas.

This is where you find it, mister. Whatever you're looking for, it's right here.

Want to buy a million-dollar jet plane? The first aisle over- right next to those two-bit fishing poles. Want a thousand-dollar-a-night girl? Here you are, sir, and worth every penny of it. Want to jump a broad for a buck? Just look around and you'll find someone as hard up as you are. Want to hire a thousand men? You bet-and you won't find a single Red-Fascist Communistic-CIO labor agitator in the lot. Want to carry a gun? Well, now, that's all right. Want to give someone a schlamming? It can be arranged, sir, it can be arranged. Want to start a hate group? Welcome, friend.

Just don't do anything controversial.

It was around noon when Mitch stepped off the plane. He checked his bag at the airport, and rode the airline's limousine into downtown Dallas. Since the hour did not seem a good one for paying a call on Frank Downing, he stopped in at a bar and grille that he remembered from his last visit to the city. But he was not remembered by the personnel of the place.

"Sorry, sir." The bartender idly swabbed the counter with a damp towel. It's against the law to sell liquor by the drink in Texas."

"So what?" Mitch laughed, "You're a new man, aren't you? Where's Jiggs McDonald?"

"There's no one here by that name, sir. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Mitch said angrily that he didn't want any coffee. He was tired and worried and hot, and getting a drink was suddenly very important to him. "Now, come on and give me a bourbon and water!" he demanded. "What the hell? I've been buying drinks in here for years!"

"No, sir. We don't serve drinks here."

"The hell you don't!" Mitch jerked his head at a man a few stools away. "What's he drinking if it isn't booze?"

The man turned and looked at him, a man with a very broad face and a forehead that ended at his eyebrows. He rattled the ice cubes in his glass, then arose and moved down the counter to where Mitch was sitting.

"What do you want?" he said. "Coffee or trouble?"

"I think I'll settle for some air," Mitch said, and he left the place very quickly.

He felt like nine kinds of a damned fool. It was always stupid to start a beef, and he had done it without the slightest excuse. He was in the worst jam of his career, and he needed to be fast and smart. Smarter and faster than he had ever been before. Yet he had virtually stuck out his neck and asked to have his head kicked off!

The incident left him badly shaken up. He forced himself to calm down, taking a long second look at his mental makeup. As a result, he canceled an earlier plan to call on Teddy while he was in Dallas; to appeal to her to be reasonable in her demands. Teddy had never been reasonable. Only the wildest grasping-at-straws thinking had let him hope that she sight be reasonable now.

At any rate, his problem was an immediate one. Thirty-three thousand dollars or its approximate had to be had now. Without it, he had no future-none that Red would be a part of. Without it, he would be broke. And just how could a man be broke, Red would wonder, when he has a safe-deposit box full of money?

He hailed a cab. The driver looked back over his shoulder as Mitch gave him an address.

"Too early, mister. They won't be open this time of day."

"We'll see," Mitch said.

"I'm telling yuh. Why don't you let me take you to a real live place?"

"Why don't you," Mitch said, "for God's sake take me where I told you to? Are you going to do it or am I going to have to call Frank Downing and give him your name and license number, and tell him that I can't keep an appointment with him because-"

The cab started with a jerk. It moved swiftly, without further conversation from the driver, for the next thirty minutes until it reached the wrought-iron gateway to Downing's domain.

Mitch got out there and paid off the driver. At this innocuous hour, the gate was, of course, unlocked and he started up the long curving driveway to the house.

The neighborhood had been a very good one at one time. Even as it was crowded downhill by the expansion of the business and industrial districts, there had been a number of holdouts against the march of progress. People who had lived here almost as long as there was a city. People with four-story mansions (with two-story living rooms), and grounds that Occupied a square block.

Downing had picked up one of these magnificent old houses early in the area's transition period. He had restored and renovated it completely, and enclosed the grounds with a tasteful tapestry-brick wall. Aside from that, and certain essential modifications to the interior, the place was almost unchanged.

The front door stood wide open. The interior hummed with the activity of cleaning people-men and women with mops and brooms and vacuum cleaners. Beyond giving Mitch a polite glance or nod, they showed no interest in him. He was not their problem. He would be taken care of by someone whose problem he was.

Mitch met that someone very suddenly. He was starting down a small side corridor which led to Downing's office when a thin, tired- looking man lazed out of the shadows.

"Selling something, mist-" He broke off, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. "What d'you say, Mitch?"

"Who can kick?" Mitch said. They shook hands, Mitch with his right, the other man with his left, since his right was in his pocket. "Is the boss in, Ace?"

"You should know," Ace said. "He must have told you he would be or you wouldn't be here."

"Well, I'm afraid I don't have an appointment. I just happened to be in Dallas-"

"Tsk, tsk." Ace clucked his tongue reproachfully. "Be nice now."

Taking Mitch by the elbow, he guided him up the corridor to Downing's office. There he rapped on the door in a certain way, waited a moment and then moved inside with Mitch.

The gambler was seated at his desk; sharply dressed as always, except for his rolled-up shirt sleeves, slick-haired and freshly shaven. There was a pile of account books and ledger sheets in front of him, as well as a small adding machine. He was making a computation on it as Mitch and Ace entered, and he did not look up until he had completed it.

Then without a word of greeting or the smallest sign of surprise, he asked Mitch how he was on income taxes.

"You mean what do I know about them? Nothing," Mitch said. "I always hire an accountant."

"I hire three. You'd think that would be enough, wouldn't you?' Downing shook his head. "Three guys ought to be able to keep one set of tax records, and do it right."

"Well, those people have to be awfully careful, Frank. If they try to claim something you're not entitled to-"

Downing said that wasn't what he was kicking about. His trouble was that the accountants kept claiming too much. "I tell 'em not to, by God. I tell 'em to figure everything from the government's angle, and then tack on ten per cent. But will they do it? Hell, no! Okay, Ace."

Ace went out, giving Mitch an approving little pat on the back. Mitch accepted the offer to fix himself a drink, and Downing poured coffee for himself from a Thermos carafe. Taking a sip of it, he asked how Red was doing.

"I liked that kid. By God, I liked her! How come you didn't bring her with you?"

"I didn't know I was coming myself," Mitch said. "It was one of those spur of the moment things. You see…"

He explained about the checks. Downing listened expressionlessly. "And you want me to collect on them for you?"

"That's right. Or I'll discount them to you."

"Then go ahead and ask me. I'll smile when I tell you to go to hell."

"You're too good for your own good," Mitch sighed. "But what about the fifty grand you collected for yourself?"

"What about the sixty grand I spent collecting the fifty grand?" Downing shrugged. "I've got principles, pal, but they don't extend to your dough."

Mitch was disappointed, but not surprised. He said he guessed he'd better be running along; he had a date with a west-bound plane. "It'll get me in Big Spring tonight, and I can drive out to the ranch in the morning."

"Save yourself a trip," the gambler said. "I can get your head beat off here for free."

Mitch scoffed that the Lords couldn't be that bad. "Let's face it, Frank. This is still Texas and it's still the twentieth century."

"Why would I kid you?" Downing asked. "They'll push your tonsils right out your tail, Mitch. You'll have to take off your pants to brush your teeth."

"You're just saying that to cheer me up," Mitch said. "Well, thanks anyway, Frank. I-"

"Sit down."

"I wish I could, but-"

"Sit down," Downing said. "I've got some questions to ask you."

Mitch sat down, not liking it but accepting it; wondering at the change that had come over the gambler. Downing lighted a cigarette, studying him through the smoke.

"Now, lay it on the line for me. The Lords have let you know they don't want to pay those checks. Just how do you figure to make 'em? How do you figure to gain by walking right into their own private little kingdom?"

"I don't know," Mitch said. "It's simply something I've got to try."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Uh-huh, why? You're a gambler. You don't buck the odds. You've been pulling down heavy for years, and you've got a lot of years left to go on pulling it down. Yet here you are, pissing it all off on a long shot chance of collecting a few stinking bucks."

"Thirty-three grand stinks?"

"You know what I'm talking about," Downing said. "You've got a big kitty. You can afford to swallow a loss like this. Now, why don't you do it instead of jumping into a bear-trap?"

"Why, Frank," Mitch said lightly. "I didn't know you cared.

"I asked you a question. And about you I don't care. But I liked that redhead, and I know she's nuts about you. I figure it would just about break her heart if anything happened to you. So I want to know just why you're so damned anxious to get your head parted."

Mitch hesitated, seeking a way out, knowing that there was none. He said quietly, "I'm broke, Frank. There isn't any kitty."

"I figured," Downing nodded, "and Red doesn't know it. That's why you didn't bring her with you. If she knew the truth, she'd never let you do this."

"If she knew the truth," Mitch said, "she'd probably kill me."

Downing shook his head. "How could she do that when I'm going to? Or maybe you've got a real good reason for cheating the nicest kid I ever met."

"Ah, Frank, for God's sake…!"

"Let's have it!" Downing snapped. "Start talking and talk fast, or by Christ you won't be able to! You'll be at the bottom of the Trinity talking to the turtles!"

His saturnine face was white with anger. Mitch started talking and he talked fast.

He told the whole story, starting with his marriage to Teddy; then, going on to the birth of his son and the discovery that she was a whore. He told it all-his meeting with Red, his sincere belief that Teddy had died or divorced him, her unexpected reappearance and the years of blackmailing that had ensued.

"Well, that's it, Frank," he concluded. "That's the story. That's where the money went."

Downing looked at him, no longer angry so much as puzzled. "I guess I must have missed something," he said. "Like why do you let this half-baked whore clip you for practically everything but your bean money?"

"I told you. To keep her quiet."

"And this was the only way? You couldn't think of anything better than taking from the woman who loves you to give to the one who hates you?"

"Well, what else-?" Mitch broke off, looking into the dead flatness of Downing's eyes. "No, Frank," he said quietly. "I couldn't do anything like that."

"Who said you had to? You could have it done."

"It's the same difference. I don't play that way, Frank."

"And why the hell not? You don't have to have her killed, dammit. Just a little working-over would do the trick."

Mitch said again that he couldn't do it. He agreed that Teddy would never be satisfied, and that getting out of his present predicament would only postpone the inevitable showdown. He agreed that Teddy deserved anything that happened to her. But still.

It would be so simple, of course; so easy and swift and final. Just a few little words to the right people, and then no more trouble from Teddy. Yes, there was a chance that you might have trouble with those aforesaid right people. And there was every likelihood that solving your problems in this way would become a habit. You would become addicted to it, substituting it more and more often for talent and intelligence and all the other qualities which distinguished you from the animals you employed. Until, in the end, you were identical with them.

"I'm sorry, Frank," he said, and possibly he was sorry- the thing would have been so easy. "Maybe I'm a sap, but that's the way I am."

Downing scowled at him. Then, he laughed and spread his hands, seemingly accepting Mitch's perversity. "Well, skip it. It's your problem and I figure you can work it out. Need any scratch to travel on?"

"No, I'm not completely flat."

"Then, lots of luck with the Lords. You can use my name with 'em if you want to."

"Why, thanks," Mitch said. "That's nice of you, Frank."

They shook hands. Downing bent back over his ledgers, and the adding machine began to click and hum. Mitch went out the door, too relieved by the gambler's geniality to consider the reason behind it. Without knowing it, he saw the reason-a double one-coming toward him as he emerged from the side corridor and entered the main one.

They were very boyish and gay-looking young men; black-haired, olive-skinned, trim and slender of build. They wore crisp white linen jackets, perfectly creased dark trousers and two-tone black and white shoes. Their names, their actual names-probably the only thing they had ever received from best-forgotten parents-were Frankie and Johnnie, and they were fraternal twins.

They had begun to snicker and whisper to one another, at first sight of Mitch. Suddenly, when he was only a few feet away (and doing his best to ignore them) they came at him with a rush.

"Mitch, sweetheart! How are you, baby? Now, aren't you the big, beautiful chunk of man!"

They flung themselves on him, squeezing his arms, slapping his back, sniggering and giggling at his obvious discomfiture. Mitch drew his elbows in, then abruptly shot them backwards, throwing the brothers against the wall.

"Now, I'm telling you bastards!" he said angrily. "You ever lay a hand on me and you'll pull back a stump!"

"Aw, now baby! We just wanted to kiss you."

"Get out of my way!" he snapped, and he pushed past them savagely, and their taunting sniggers followed him until he had left the corridor.

Appearances to the contrary, he knew the fag bit of the two was strictly an act. Another way of adding to their general obnoxiousness. That was how they got their kicks, Frankie and Johnnie. By making themselves hateful to people. It was another facet of the sadism which made their work a pleasure for them.

Mitch knew quite a bit about them-all of it unpleasant. What he didn't know was how they had ever managed to live so long.

He took a taxi back through town and on to the airport. After lunch, and after wiring Red of his plans, he caught a plane for Big Spring in West Texas.

It would be a several hours' drive from there to the Lord ranch, but it was the only nearby town large enough to have a car rental service. Also he had a friend in Big Spring… a man who just might be of help to him.

19

Having passed her fortieth year, Teddy was just about out of the business of turning tricks. She didn't need the money- for all her wild spending she could not begin to get rid of her blackmail from Mitch. Moreover, she could seldom recapture the excitement which the excesses of her body had once given her. And never at all unless the buyer of her favors was very young and very handsome. Unfortunately, the young and handsome men who were in the market for prostituted flesh invariably chose to buy it from young and pretty women. Which- whatever else could be said for her-Teddy was not.

She still had a good figure; not as extravagantly exciting as it had been, but good. She still had a reasonably good face. But forty is forty, or, rather, it is much more than forty for a whore, and to the young it is ancient. To her own generation of males, or those preceding it, Teddy still appeared a highly desirable woman. But just as she was rejected by the young, she also rejected the old-and she looked upon any man as old who was not a great deal younger than she. Such "old" men had always been repugnant to her. But what had once been a strong distaste for them was now a phobia. They filled her with a sickish terror, a feeling of incestuous violation, and she would almost choke with revulsion if one even came near her.

Women normally reach their peak of sexual desire in their early forties, so Teddy still wanted and needed men. But they had to be young. That was all that she asked of them-youth, not money. She was ready to give them money along with herself, if they were young and handsome.

Her need had led her into some unusual experiences.

Once she had hustled a guy on the street, a prim-looking youngster who wore white socks with black shoes, and she had taken him home with her, and there-of all things!-he had begged her to go down on her knees with him and pray for her soul.

Another time she had picked up a prospect in a bar, and taken him back to the apartment, and for a while it looked like he was going to be all right. He talked the lingo like an old head, and talk could be pretty exciting in itself. He sent out for a couple of jugs of good booze, and that was all right, too; Teddy's appetite for the whiz had increased with her years. But the hours went by, and she began to itch with her craving, and still he didn't get down to business. And finally when she was on the point of taking it away from him, he gave her his card-even Teddy recognized the name of the psychiatric clinic-and he also gave her fifty dollars. And he told her there would be another fifty for her, twice each week, when she reported to the clinic.

Teddy was outraged. An amazing case-history, was she? An untapped treasure of sexual source material! Why- why-!

"This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Mrs. Corley. You're still an attractive woman, and you have many years to live. Just give me your cooperation, and those years can be very good ones."

"You sneaky son-of-a-bitch! Y-You-you-you-YOU SON-OF-A -BITCH!"

Teddy had stopped the outside hustling after that. There was just no telling what you might run into. She stayed in her apartment, and occasionally some former customer would drop by-someone who had been very young to begin with, and was still acceptably young. Occasionally, when the intervals between customers became too great, she would find surcease in a messenger or delivery boy, or a bill peddler or- or-or any youngster who chanced to stray near her door. Once she had tried to hook the fourteen-year-old kid who delivered the newspaper, and the little bastard had yelled and run home to his parents. There might have been plenty of trouble about it, but fortunately for her no one paid any attention to the complaints of niggers.

Today, she was standing nude in front of the living-room's full-length mirror, fresh from her bath and critically admiring her body as she patted it dry with a towel, when she heard the knock on the door. It was one of those tricky little wiseguy knocks, a knock that suggested all sorts of exciting things to Teddy. Hastily, she snatched up a robe, her flesh already prickling with anticipation. She cracked the door open an inch, and peered Out, and then she flung it open wide. And delight welled up in her until she almost laughed out loud.

Two of them! Not one but two! And what a two they were! Black-haired, olive-skinned, and oh so beautifully, wonderfully young! Why, they hardly looked to be twenty, and they were laughing and carrying on like schoolboys. Their white linen jackets crackled with freshness, their shoes gleamed with polish and their trousers were flawlessly cleaned and creased. They were fresh and gay and boyish-looking, and yet they were obviously very much men. They were just what Teddy would have ordered if masculinity had been on order.

She didn't know who had referred them to her. The word got around in time, and who the hell cared how they had got here? All that mattered was that they were here, and making the most of every delicious moment of their stay.

Frankie turned the latch on the door. He snickered, winking at Johnnie, and Johnnie snickered and winked at him. Then they greeted Teddy in unison.

"Hi," they said.

"Hi," Teddy said.

"Hi," they said again. And then the three of them laughed together at having such good clean fun.

Teddy let the robe slide from her. She cast a provocative glance at them, and asked who would like to come in the bedroom with her first. They said they usually did everything together, but Teddy put on a little pout at that. She said she thought it would be much nicer, if they were good little daddies and were nice for their nice little mama, and maybe they'd better match for turns.

"Sure, we'll flip for it," Johnnie said. "What'll you take, heads or tails?"

"Tails," Frankie said.

"I'll take tails too," Johnnie said.

"Now, wait a minute," Teddy laughed happily. "You both can't take tails."

They said of course they could; tail was what they had come for. And Teddy laughed again.

"I know, but-but you have to take different things, darlings. You see…"

They had been advancing casually, as the banter went on. Moving forward and sideways, so that they were now separated by several feet and she was forced to turn from one to the other. Thus, she was looking at Johnnie when Frankie spoke to her.

"How come," he asked, snickering, "you've got your asshole under your nose?"

"What?" Teddy gasped. "What did you-"

"He asked you if you were a stud with tits," Johnnie giggled, and she whirled in his direction.

"Now, look you two! Don't you-"

Frankie suddenly slugged her in the guts. She turned white, a greenish white. The air went out of her with a rushing sound, and she doubled slowly and sank down on the floor, on her face. She felt paralyzed, unable even to groan. She still made no sound when Johnnie gave her a vigorous kick in the butt.

"See?" he cackled. "It came up tails. We both won."

"She's all ass," Frankie said. "How can you tell the front from the back?"

He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upright. Thrusting his face close to hers, he ordered her to come clean with him. "You ain't really a dame, are you? Huh? You're one of those bitchy studs, ain't you?"

"Sure, she's a dame," Frankie said. "Look at them bubbies on her."

Johnnie said that that didn't mean anything; studs were always buying rubber bubs for themselves so that they could pass for dames. "Look," he said. "See what I mean?" He swung his hand viciously, whipping it back and forth against Teddy's breasts. She groaned at that- only breathlessness kept her from screaming-but Johnnie seemed not to hear her.

"She didn't feel a thing, see? Because they ain't the real thing. She's just a phonied-up stud."

"You think so, huh. Well, maybe…"

Frankie suddenly grabbed her by the breasts, and twisted. Again she tried to scream, and was stopped with another gutpunch. She fainted, and when she drifted back into consciousness, she was sitting on a burner of the kitchenette stove. They were holding hands with her- holding them with her fingers bent back toward her wrists. They spoke to her conspiratorially, as though letting her in on a delicious secret.

"Now, we're going to cook it a little, know what I mean, honey? So if you ain't a stud, you can holler and we'll know you're for real."

"Naw, she'd better not holler. You better not, get me, tutz? We'll just do our cooking, and she can tell us if it hurt afterwards."

There was a click as a burner was flicked on. It was not the burner under Teddy, but she was convinced that it was. It clicked on and off, and each time she could feel the flame lick up her loins. She could feel it reach up inside her, and she smelled the cooking flesh, heard the crackling and the sizzling as the flames consumed her. She could not scream- there were always those torturously bent-over fingers, the hands drawn back to slug her in the breasts. She could only endure, the silent tears flooding over her face, her flank muscles jerking convulsively, her very womanhood burning, burning, burning…

"Because you're not a dame, right? A dame don't louse up her husband, does she? She don't make things tough for her own kid."

"Oh, no, no no no no no no no no no nononono…"

"She's good to her husband, right? She gets herself a nice quiet divorce, and she never gives him no more trouble."

"Oh, yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yesyesyes…"

"You want to be a woman or a stud?"

"A woman, a woman woman woman woman woman woman…"

Just short of the ultimate answer there is another, one that embodies all the truth and the glory, which justifies the life that is about to trade itself for death. One may see it but once, as the curtain closes on the stage of immediate concern. One sees it immediately for what it is, though it appears in many guises. Neither life nor death but something between the two as they suddenly become one.

There it is, the truth and the glory: In the space which separates the down-rushing body and the up-hurtling pavement, in the bridge linking the last yellow capsule and the one next to last, in the trillionth-inch between bullet and brain, in all those dark byways where man lifts his foot from life and steps across to death.

It must be there. Where else would it be when one has found it nowhere else? Why else would so many see it there?

So Teddy having not-quite-died, knew a happiness and a peace she had never known before. It was as though she had been drained of her filth as fear drove the hot urine from her body. All the shoddiness, all the vicious and degenerate urges were gone, and she felt clean and reborn.

Lying in bed with the sheets tucked modestly around her, she looked up lovingly at Frankie and Johnnie, and they beamed down at her. They felt very good themselves, as comfortably satiated as though they had used her in a way she had so often been used. They were also pleased at having done their job so well.

"Now, about that divorce, honey…"

"Oh, I'm going to get it right away! Oh, I can hardly wait to do it. Oh, I-"

"Yeah, sure, sure you will, baby. But what about money? You got the dough to do it on?"

Teddy babbled happily that she had lots and lots of money, and she mentioned the amount. The smiles of Frankie and Johnnie faded, and they exchanged a look of bitterness. It was, of course, out of the question for them to take the dough. Downing would find out about it- he had an unbelievable talent for finding out the closest-kept secrets of his minions- and since he had not explicitly told them to rob Teddy, they would be charged with bad conduct. And how about that anyway?

Downing had instructed them only to scare the hell out of Teddy, to see to it that she never again made trouble for Mitch. That was all, so that was all they could do. But it was really a hell of a note, wasn't it? Here was this lousy pig with a mattress full of dough, and they-

Wait a minute. Wait just a peanut-pickin' minute!

They couldn't whip her for the loot, but did that mean they couldn't perform an act of simple justice? Did it mean that they had to leave the pig loaded, while they, fine young men that they were, were in relative want?

Frankie and Johnnie exchanged another glance, their eyes bright with malice. Then, they turned back to Teddy, and her smile abruptly faded and she began to tremble with terror.

"That's not your dough," Frankie said coldly. "You squeezed it out of Mitch."

"B-B-But-"

"You're a stud," Johnnie said. "A broad don't steal from her own husband."

"B-But-but-"

"You're goin' to give it back to him," Frankie said. "It's his and you're goin' to give it back."

"She better give it back," Johnnie said. "She better move real fast about it."

Teddy's mouth worked, her two minds, conscious and unconscious, shouting contradictory orders. She must make no further trouble for Mitch-that thought had been firmly implanted in her. Yet what they were demanding would most certainly make trouble.

Do it. Don't do it. Stay away from Mitch. Go near Mitch. What-what-

The boys loomed over her threateningly, classic examples of the danger of a little knowledge. She tried to explain, incoherent with fear, her two minds muddling one another. And Frankie and Johnnie were deaf to her words.

"What're you tryin' to pull, pig? Sure, you don't make no trouble for Mitch. What about it? What's givin' him back his dough got to do with making trouble?"

"I-I-I-"

It was wrong. It was right wrong. Whatever they said-

"She likes the flame," Frankie said. "All these studs like the flame."

He flicked on his cigarette lighter, darted it at her. She started to scream, and Johnnie slapped her in the breasts.

"How about it, pig?" he said. "How's it going to be? You going to take that dough back or not?"

Teddy said, "Oh, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes…"

She went to Houston that afternoon. Mitch was out of town, of course, so she gave the money to Red.

20

Big Spring.

The metropolis of nowhere. The beginning of Far West Texas.

Big Spring. Oil wells, refineries, tool and die works, machine shops, oil-well supply houses, big hotels, big banks, big stores, big people-in every sense of the word.

Walk softly here, stranger. Be nice. It takes time to get acquainted. What appears to be a hard-nosed attitude is simply frankness and economy of speech.

A merchant may tell you to go somewhere else if you don't like his prices. But it's a friendly suggestion, not an insult. A resident may stare at you a long time before answering a question-and he may simply shake his head and not answer at all. But he isn't being impolite. He wants only to think over his answer carefully-and naturally it would be rude to show no interest in you-and if he finally decides he has nothing to say, then how can he say anything?

It's an attitude born of the prairies, of the loneliness, of the infrequent necessities for speech since there were so few to speak to. It was born of the cattle industry, the distantly separated ranches, the need for deeds rather than words, the wisdom of carefully looking over all strangers.

You see, Big Spring was a cattle town not so many years ago. Just another wide place in a dusty road. A town like any other such town, built around the traditional courthouse square; its streets drifting with dust, its iron-awninged buildings baking under the incredible heat of summer, ice-painted with the North Pole blasts of winter.

That was how it looked when the two wildcatters first saw it-like the ass-end of Far Nowhere. The town, for its part, looked upon them with little more favor. The town had seen wildcatters-prospectors for oil-before, and this pair just didn't fit the picture.

There was first of all their drilling rig; a cable-tool rig, naturally, since the rotary had not then been perfected. It was one of those big Star-30 machines, a so-called "portable" rig which occupied two railroad flatcars with its accessory equipment. None of the harum-scarum wildcatter breed had ever owned such a rig-an outfit worth a not-so-small fortune. And these two were the last people in the world who should have owned it.

They were a middling-old man and his son. The father wore the unmistakable stamp of defeat, a man who had drilled one dry hole too many. The kid looked mean and snotty and very sick, and he was all three and then some.

Into the rig and the job it had to do, the old man had sunk his home, his furniture, his insurance policies; every nickel he could beg and borrow. That still left a hell of a hump to get over, for an outfit and a job like this, so the kid had kicked in for it. The kid was a loner, he'd been one almost since the time he was old enough to walk. Some things had begun to happen to him about then that shouldn't happen to kids, and maybe they could have been avoided and maybe they couldn't have. But it was all the same to him. He didn't ask for excuses, he didn't give any. As far as he was concerned, the world was a shit pot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it. As far as he was concerned, he had plenty owing to him. And he was hell on wheels at collecting.

He was now nineteen years old. He was suffering from tuberculosis, bleeding ulcers and chronic alcoholism.

Rig hands, drillers and tooldressers accompanied the old man and his son. Huge tractors were hitched onto the rig, and it was hauled eighteen miles out of town to the drill site. They had no road to haul it over, of course. A road had to be made, straight out across the tumbling prairie, up hills and over streams, through hub-high mud and sand.

It took a lot of money. They were in over their ears before they were ever rigged up. They started to drill, and the hole went down a hundred and twenty-five feet-and every inch of it was a high-priced waste of money. For the driller hadn't known his stuff, and he'd got a crooked hole. And you can't set casing in a crooked hole. You can't-when you're using cable tools-go down very far before your drill bit and stem drag on the side.

Wildcats are always Jonahs. You're in unexplored territory, and you never know what you're going to get into until you've already got into it and it's too damned late. This particular wildcatter had enough hard luck for a hundred wells.

The boiler blew up. The rig caught on fire. The mast snapped. The tools were lost in the hole a dozen times. The drill cable bucked and whipped, cleanly slicing off a tooldresser's head.

The kid announced that he had gone his limit; he had nothing left but his ass and his pants and they both had holes in them. His father said that they would manage some way, and he took over the financing from then on.

The well finally got drilled. It wasn't a gusher but it was a very respectable producer. Diffidently, the old man asked his son what plans he had for the future.

"You mean what do I want to be when I grow up?" the kid said sarcastically. "What's it to you, anyway? When were you ever interested in what I wanted to do?"

"Son, son…" the old man shook his head sadly. "Have I really been that bad?"

"Oh, hell, I guess not. But I'm just not much on talking about things. You talk about what you're going to do, you never get it done."

The father guessed that it was probably a slam at him. He had, possibly, always indulged too much in talk. "I suppose," he said timidly, "you've been counting on having a lot of money?"

The kid said, why not? They'd brought in a good well, and they had hundreds of offsetting acres under lease. Conservatively, they were worth several million dollars. "But I'll settle for a hundred and eighty-two thousand. I won't live long enough to spend any more than that."

"A hundred and eighty-two-Why that particular figure, son?"

"I've been keeping a little black book since I was seven years old. There are one hundred and eighty-two names in it, one for every rotten bastard who's given me a hard time. I've shopped around, and I can get them bumped off for an average price of one thousand dollars."

"Son-" The father shook his head, aghast. "What happened to you? How can you even think of such things?"

"Thinking about it is all that's kept me alive," the kid said. "I can die happy knowing that I'm taking all those bastards to hell with me."

The father decided that it was a good time to give his son the word. The kid listened with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, as one accustomed to seeing his dreams washed down the john.

"So we don't own anything, huh? You hocked it all to get the well drilled."

"I'm sorry, yes."

"What about the rig and the tools?"

"All gone. The trucks, our car, everything."

"Goddam," the kid said. "Those one hundred and eighty-two bastards could be dead right now for what this well cost!"

He had a right to be pretty damn sore about it, he felt, but somehow he couldn't be. Somehow, he wanted to howl with laughter, because when you thought about it, you know, it was really funny as hell.

He started to take a drink, and then decided that he didn't want any. He lighted a cigarette, noting wonderingly that he no longer had ulcer pains. He coughed and spat in his handkerchief, and there was no blood in the spit.

"My God," he told his father, and there was awe in his voice. "I'm afraid I'm going to live!"

He and the old man walked out of town together; they couldn't afford anything but the ankle express. With the discovery of oil, Big Spring was already burgeoning into a city. The old man turned and looked back at it from its outskirts, and there was pride in his defeated eyes.

"We did that, son," he said. "You and I. We caused a city to bloom in the wilderness. We've made history."

"We should have stood in bed," the kid said. But then he laughed and gave the old man an affectionate slap in the back. For his physical health was not all that had improved during the past two years.

Out there on the prairies where time had stood still for endless eons, out there where nature loomed large and man was small, he had gotten a new perspective on himself. And his once all-consuming problems had shrunk in size, and he had grown proportionately in the only way that growing matters. Out there he had discovered that a man could be much less and much more than the sum of his moments, and that what had been done could be undone by enduring.

Arm in arm, he and the old man went down the road together, not into the sunset, for that was behind them, but into the dawn or where the dawn would have been if it had been that time of day. They went down the road together, the old man and his kid, the kid became a man, and he got rid of the book with the one hundred and eighty-two names, getting rid of a lot else along with it. And it was the last book he ever compiled of that kind.

21

"That's quite a story, Art," Mitch laughed. "Is that really the way little Big Spring became big Big Spring?"

"You hintin' that I'm a liar?" his friend demanded crustily. And then he also laughed. "Well, that's pretty much the way it happened," he said. "It's a middlin' true story. No story can be gospel true unless you've got all the facts and the time to tell 'em, which is two gots I ain't got. You figure on savin' that bottle for yourself, or passing it like a gent?"

Mitch chuckled and passed the bottle of sour mash. His friend downed an enormous drink of it, without the slightest change of expression, and began rolling a brown-paper cigarette. He was eighty years old, Mitch knew, and he looked a healthy sixty. He was an ex- cowhand, ex-gambler, exrancher and ex-banker. He described his present vocation as gal-chasm' and booze-tastin'.

They were sitting in Mitch's room in the town's leading hotel. The old man could have written a check for the full value of the hotel, and the block it stood in. Yet he pinched out the coal of his cigarette, and put the butt into the pocket of his threadbare shirt.

Mitch had seen many old men do the same thing in these far-out western cities. Men with permanently bowed legs and faces as brown as saddle leather, and fortunes so large they could not even spend the interest on them. They sat around the hotel lobbies in Big Spring and Midland and San Angelo, reading newspapers that other people left behind, squeezing two or three smokes out of the same brown-paper cigarette. But it was not because they were stingy. They had simply grown up in an era and an area where there was little to buy and few opportunities for buying. The same newspaper might be passed around a bunkhouse for months, because a newspaper was a rare thing and something to be treasured. Similarly, a man was careful with his tobacco, for it might be a very long time before he could replenish his supply.

That was why the old men were as they were-because of the way they had lived as younger men. Because they had reversed the usual order of things, learning the value of everything with suitably little regard for its ephemeral, meaningless price.

"Let's see now," said Art Savage, Mitch's friend. "What was we talkin' about before you hid the whiskey and got me all confused?"

"Mrs. Lord," Mitch grinned. "And since when could anyone hide whiskey from you?"

"Don't get smart with me, bub. But about Gidge Lord- Gidge Parton, I always think of her. Used to tomcat around with her a lot before she married Win Lord. A leetle bit younger'n I was but that didn't seem to make her no never mind. Don't know just what might have come of it if Win hadn't edged in on me, because that Gidge was really a lot of gal…"

Savage paused, his faded blue eyes contemplating the past and its might-have-beens. Mitch brought him out of it by passing the whiskey bottle.

"So you haven't seen her in recent years?" he suggested.

"Who the hell says I ain't?" Savage demanded. "Sure, I seen her. Two-three months after she was married, we started gettin' together again. Didn't feel quite right about it in a way; it's always kind of consciencesome triflin' with another man's wife, y'know, and it ain't ever been healthy in Texas. But Gidge wanted to, and with Win boozin' and whoring all the time, I didn't feel too bad about it. We finally broke it up when she got pregnant. Reckon I'd've broke it up before then, if I'd had my ruthers, because a lot of Win's nastiness had rubbed off on her, and she could run him a close second for low-down. What the hell are you grinnin' about, anyways?"

"Me?" Mitch said innocently. "Well, nothing really. It just occurred to me that perhaps you were-"

"Don't you say it!" Savage said grimly. "Don't you dast say it! Anytime I see a thing like Winnie Lord, Jr., coming out of a place I been in, I'll pinch its head off. He's Win's begettin' and don't you ever think he ain't. The spittin' image of him. You ever seen the two of them together at the same age you couldn't have told 'em apart."

Mitch murmured reassuringly. He declared that he had never seriously thought that a fine man like Savage could father such a skunk.

"About these checks, Art. What do you think would be a good approach on them?"

"Sue. Have to pay off in the long run on good paper."

Mitch explained that suing was out of the question. Savage scratched his ankle with the toe of his boot and reached for the whiskey again. It was just possible, he said, that suing wouldn't do any good anyway; fella sued he might find a long line ahead of him.

"Come t'think of it, that's probably why them checks wasn't paid, Mitch. The way Gidge is feelin' the squeeze, she ain't paying nothing she can possibly get out of."

"Yes?" Mitch said. "I'm not sure I follow you, Art."

"What's so hard to follow? The ranch is in trouble, money trouble, an' it couldn't happen to a nicer outfit."

"But how could it be, for God's sake? Over a million acres of land and two or three hundred producing oil wells, and-"

Savage told him how it could be. Because the ranch didn't end with its million acres. It stretched all the way to New York and on down to South America, and even over into Iran and the Far East. The ranch holdings included chain stores and apartment houses, and shipping and manufacturing companies, and so damned many other things that even Gidge Lord probably didn't know what they were.

"Oh, sure, she's got people runnin' the shebang for her. Whole office buildin' full of 'em in New York, I understand. But the best people in the world can't help you none if you don't listen to 'em, and they sure can't make a dollar be in more'n one place 't once." Savage paused, chuckling with grim satisfaction. "Told her a long time ago she was spreading herself too thin-just tryin' to be friendly, you know. And you know what she told me?"

"Something pretty unpleasant, I suppose."

"It was, oh, it was unpleasant, all right. Not to mention downright dirty-mouthed. Had a mind to repeat it to her last week when she paid me a call, but I just don't believe in talking that way in front of ladies even if they ain't."

Savage revealed that Gidge Lord had tried to borrow money from him (without success, naturally!). The banks were loaded with her paper, and would take no more, and she was now beating the bushes for private money. She needed twenty million-or so she had told Savage-and she was short more than half of it.

"I told her if she was so hard up she'd better clamp down on Winnie, but o'course she'd never do it. Prob'ly couldn't, short of killin' him, and anyways I guess what he blows in doesn't stack up to a lot when you need as much as she does."

"I suppose not," Mitch said. "Particularly when he can have so much fun without paying anything for it."

"Oh, sure. They're real fond of doing that."

They finished the bottle, the old man drinking most of it. Mitch saw him to the door, and they shook hands.

"Well, thanks for dropping in, Art. Let's get together again when I'm out this way."

"Anytime," Savage said. "You just whistle an' I'll come arunnin'. Did I tell you anything helpful?"

"Helpful?"

"Uh-uh. For when you go out to the ranch tomorrow."

"Well, I'm not sure. But-"

"Then I'll tell you somethin' now. Don't go."

He nodded firmly and went down the hall to the elevator, very erect, swaying with the teeter of his boots.

At eight o'clock the next morning, Mitch started for the ranch.

His first forty minutes or so were on the highway, and easy going. He turned off it onto a county road, which twisted sharply and constantly at its township lines and ended abruptly, after some twenty miles, at the side of a small mountain.

A three-strand barbed-wire fence ran along the base of the mountain. From the top wire, a rusted tin sign swung gently in the incessant West Texas wind:

LORD

Keep Out

The fence followed a rutted trail which led off across the rolling grasslands in a southwesterly direction. Mitch turned into the trail, wincing as the car's crankcase dragged dirt. He drove very carefully, running in low gear much of the time. The car bounced and pitched, and a ribbon of steam seeped out from under the hood.

The Lords had little interest in roads. They traveled by plane and helicopter. A spur railroad led into the ranch from its other side, bringing in what they wanted to buy and taking out what they wished to sell. Since they seldom used roads themselves, then, naturally, they would not contribute to their upkeep. County and district tax boards had long since given up trying to make them.

In less than an hour, Mitch was forced to stop to let the car cool off. With the hood raised, he leaned against a fender and mopped the dust from his eyes. He looked down the shambling line of the fence, the tin warning signs swinging from it at fifty-foot intervals, Lord-Keep Out, and he thought, Okay, so I believe you! On perhaps every fifth or sixth fence post was the bleached skull of a steer, grisly testimony to the truth that ranching is not a gravy train. One of these mementos grinned at Mitch from a few feet away. The horns were tilted at a rakish angle, and the fleshless jaws hung open as though speaking to him.

He turned away from it suddenly. He said aloud, "My God, what am I doing here?" And he had no sensible answer to the question. He had come here because he didn't know what else to do. Because there was always a chance in the seemingly most chanceless situation. Not much of a chance, maybe. A much better chance doubtless of getting your butt kicked off. But there was a chance, and if he could see it and act on it, he could still stay even with the game. He could still have Red. And if he missed it, that one-in-a-million chance-

Well, nothing would matter much, anyway.

He got back in the car and drove on. Rather grimly, his jaw set; fighting down the insistent queasiness of his stomach. This had to be done, the long shot risk had to be taken. But all his gambler's instincts cried out against it, and all his years of civilized living shrank from it. It had been a very long time since he had traveled in circles where clobbering was an accepted practice. He wondered if he was still up to it, and he guessed he would find out very soon.

The trail rose gently for a mile or more, then dropped into a softly swelling flatland. The brutal scrub-oaked cliffs and rocky hummocks were abruptly gone, and the emptiness around them was gone, and the land was filled with the evidence of life.

Pumping jacks and stub-derricks marched across the countryside. Telephone poles, heavy with cross-braces and cables, appeared out of nowhere. White-faced cattle moved over the grass like a slowly unrolling carpet, spread out in an endless array of thoughtfully munching jaws and lazily switching tails until they were lost in the horizon. Far off to the right were the glimmering white outlines of the ranch buildings. Behind them a plane arrowed up into the sky and disappeared in its brilliance.

The trail took another right-angle turn. A mile later it ended at a cattle-crossing and gate. Immediately inside the gate, blocking the graveled road which stretched up into the ranch, stood a jeep. It carried the thick aerial of a radio transmitter. A young cowhand sat in it, talking over the phone, his white teeth flashing occasionally as he laughed.

He gestured a greeting at Mitch with the barrel of his rifle, then pointed it, shaking his head as Mitch started to get out of the car. Mitch stayed where he was. A couple of minutes later, the cowhand hung up the phone and came over to him.

He wore a gunbelt and gun-the first cowhand Mitch had ever seen so equipped. He also kept his rifle with him. He thrust his tow- colored head through the window, his mouth parted in a wide grin, and said, "Uh-hah?"

Mitch explained that he wanted to see Mrs. Lord and her son, and the grin-it was meaningless, mirthless-widened.

"Winnie ain't here. What'd you want to see his maw about?"

"It's a personal matter."

"Too personal to tell me?"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

The cowhand moved his rifle, scratching it against the side of the car, and pointed with it. "That's the road back to town, mister. The same one you came in on."

Mitch told him about the checks. He told him in complete detail, for the man would be satisfied with nothing less.

Then, he sat back to wait, his heart thumping a little, as the cowhand telephoned from the jeep. The call lasted a long time, or so it seemed to Mitch, and the cowhand seemed to be laughing through most of it. At last he hung up, backed the jeep off the road, and motioned for Mitch to come ahead.

Mitch did so, bumping across the cattle guard. The man signaled to him again and he stopped abreast of the jeep.

White teeth flashed at him. "Straight ahead, mister. Can't miss it."

"Thanks," Mitch said. "Thanks very much."

"Don't turn off nowheres. Start strayin' you'll get shot."

Mitch nodded and drove on. The road peaked a long, almost indiscernible slope, and then he was looking down into the orderly chaos of the ranch buildings.

They were arranged in a series of ragged open-end squares, with the white adobe ranch residence in the center. It was two stories and roofed with heavy red tiles. A tile-roofed veranda or "gallery" extended across its length at the first floor level, shading the homey assortment of lounging chairs beneath it.

A hum of activity arose from the buildings; ambiguous, blending together. The roar of a jeep, the cracking of a radio, the clatter and click of machinery-voices in blurred conversation, an outburst of muted laughter, a loud shout of "What the goddam hell are you-?" ending with the sudden roar of a tractor.

Men moved in and out of the lanes between the buildings. A man carrying a saddle over his shoulder, two men driving a jeep, two others lugging some heavy metal object. A white-aproned old man flung dishwater from a distant window, and a man rose up from beneath the window and shook his fist angrily.

Mitch parked the car in the packed-down gravel of the courtyard. He got out, and started across the patchy grass lawn to the house, then turned as a voice hailed him.

"Corley!"

Off to the left, immediately beyond the inside square of buildings was a stub derrick, the site, apparently, of an abandoned or pumped- out well, since no jack or lines ran to it. Two ranch hands and a girl had emerged from its sheet-iron enclosure, the girl striding in the lead. She raised her hand as Mitch turned, indicating that it was she who had called. He waved back a little diffidently, and started toward her.

She must be a member of the family; no woman employee would be out consorting with cowhands. Yet he had heard of no female Lords, aside from Mrs. Lord, and he would have heard of this girl.

She was so tanned that he couldn't tell what her face looked like. In fact, he hardly gave her face a passing glance. He looked at her body and he could not look away, for the girl seemed naked. Naked, yes, despite the riding pants and the blouse, because that was the way she was built. You could have bundled her up in a dozen overcoats, and she still would have been wearing nothing, and she would have known it and liked it. Because she was built that way, too.

She was a bitch with her tail up. She came toward him bitchily, the svelte hips swaying with promise, the extravagant breasts bobbling and jiggling. And the heat welled out of her from fifty feet away.

He tore his gaze away from her, the thrusting lewdness of her body. He rubbed his eyes, as though rubbing the sun out of them, and then her boot heels clicked on the packed earth, and he at last looked into her face.

Looked and was almost sick.

For what he had thought was a girl was a woman. An old woman. Which meant that she had to be Gidge (Agatha) Lord.

Her hair was not blonde but a dirty gray. The face beneath it was burned to a deep brown; withered and shrunken as though by some savage headhunter's rite. Her eyes were so pale that they seemed colorless, all milky whites. He could hardly see her mouth until she opened it- -only a brown wrinkle in the deeper brownness of her flesh.

She held out her hand. Mitch started to extend his, and she viciously slapped it away.

"The checks, Corley! Let's have them!"

"I'll be glad to," Mitch said. "In exchange for thirty-three thousand dollars."

"Give! "

The cowhands had lounged up to her sides and a little past, forming the ends of a half-circle. They stood with their thumbs looped in their belts, their jaws chewing lazily as they held him in a cold, unwinking stare.

Mitch shrugged lightly, managing a surprisingly cheerful grin. "Well…" He passed over the checks. "As long as you insist…"

Taking out his cigarettes, he made a gesture of passing them around. He beamed confidence and good-nature at the two men, trying to bring them under the sway of his personality, fighting with the only weapons he had. The men remained exactly as they were, thumbs looped in their belts, eyes staring unblinkingly, acknowledging his existence only as something potentially interesting but thoroughly unimportant.

Mrs. Lord examined the checks, one by one.

Then she ripped them to pieces, and hurled the pieces into Mitch's face.

"You filthy prick! You know what we do to pricks around here?"

"I'll bet you're going to tell me," Mitch said.

"I'm going to show you! What do we do with pricks, Al?" There was a low chuckle from behind Mitch. "Put 'em in a hole, ma'am."

Mitch whirled, but he wasn't fast enough. Nothing would have been fast enough. There was no running from a spot like this. The rope sang and dropped over him. It jerked and he flew off his feet. His head banged down hard on the stony dirt, and a million skyrockets went off at once and he passed out.

When he came to, he was being hoisted up on the floor of the stub derrick. His feet were firmly tied now, although his hands and arms were free. He pushed himself up, rubbing the dirt out of his eyes.

A couple of men were prying up a square of planks in the middle of the floor. Two others were stringing a block and cable in the derrick. Another, a very young man, was standing with his arm around Mrs. Lord, his hand patting one of her flaring buttocks.

They saw Mitch looking at them, and laughed. But they moved a little apart.

Mitch massaged his aching head, and glanced up into the rig. As he did so, one of the men there swung out and down, riding a cable. He came down, and Mitch suddenly went up. Shot up feet first into the derrick.

He went up about thirty feet. Then he came gently down, until he hung poised over the gaping hole in the derrick floor.

Gidge grabbed him by the hair, thrust her hag's face close to his. "Want to guess what you're going to get now? Think you can guess, hmm?"

But Mitch didn't need to guess. He knew.

Practically all modern oil wells are sunk with rotary rigs, which drill with bits attached to pipe. As the well deepens, more lengths of pipe are added, thus making a hole-a relatively small one-which is the same size from top to bottom. Old oil wells, however, any well drilled, say, before 1930, were drilled with cable tools, which made a hole by dropping a bit from a string of cable. This method required the frequent setting of casing (pipe), to protect the drilling tools from caveins. Naturally, each string of casing had to be smaller than the preceding one. This also meant, of course, that where a deep well was contemplated, the hole at the top had to be very large.

The hole Mitch was dangling over was old and huge; the so-called "big hole" of a deep test. But no well had been drilled. Two hundred feet down the bit had struck an unexpected vein of granite, and there was nothing to do but pull out and try another location.

The Lords had left the hold unplugged, planning just such use for it as it was now being put to. Their reputation being what it was, however, they had not had an opportunity to use it for a long time.

Mitch went down through the hole in the floor, and into the hole in the ground. He did not struggle. It was useless. His one hope was to make it as simple and painless as possible.

He held out his hands in front of him, like a diver, keeping his body stiff and straight. Going down crooked or twisted could result in serious injury. He sank into the yawing darkness smoothly, brushing but not scraping the sides of the hole. The blood rushed to his head and his brain roared with it. But he kept a firm hold on his nerves.

This was going to be damned bad. But nothing more than that. He wasn't going to die. They weren't going to kill him.

He held onto that thought as he went deeper and deeper into the hole. Repeating it over and over, They won't kill me, they won't kill me…

And he was wrong.

They were going to kill him.

Unintentionally.

Water had seeped into the hole since its last usage. No one knew it, it couldn't be seen from the surface. But it now stood more than half full of water.

Mitch went into it headfirst, and it closed over him.

22

Frank Downing, the gambler, had never been a sound sleeper. Too many of his years, particularly the early ones, had been lived in a world where sound sleepers suffered fatal accidents. He was a considerable distance removed from that world now, of course, but habit was strong in him, and he still slept in starts and snatches; feeling no impelling urge to sleep until it was too late, and he had to get up.

He liked to have a minimum of six cups of coffee before breakfast. With and after the meal, he would have a minimum of six more cups, by which time he was prepared to be reasonably affable to people-in his own way, of course, providing he felt them deserving of affability.

He had never felt that Frankie and Johnnie were deserving of it. He had to use them, yes (or at least he thought he had to), but what they deserved, in his opinion, was what they were so fond of dishing out. And he had secretly yearned for an excuse to give it to them for a very long time.

Since his evenings and nights were extremely busy, they had not been able to report back to him on the day of their visit to Teddy. Oh, they could have, if they had tried. But they had wanted to make the job look harder and more time-consuming than it was, so they had delayed until the following morning.

It was the morning after one of Downing's most sleepless nights. Moreover, being anxious to make a good impression, they arrived early for their appointment, thus finding him several cups of coffee short of his absolutely essential dozen. Then, they told him what they had done, giggling and snickering, very pleased with themselves. And his hand jerked at the news, and he slopped an overflowing cup of coffee on himself.

He caught their smirks and winks, as he tried to mop up with a napkin. But no one would have guessed that he did. He seemed wonderfully good-humored, as though losing a night's sleep and having his sacred waking-up schedule disrupted and spilling coffee all over three hundred bucks worth of clothes and having his strict orders disastrously emended by a couple of punks-as though all these had been delightful and heart-warming experiences.

Goddammit, he thought. That blows it for Mitch! It could have been a cinch, and these stupes have to act smart!

He smiled genially at them, and complimented them on their astuteness.

"Smart," he said. "Yes, sir, that was plenty smart. Funny I didn't think of it myself."

"Oh well"-Johnnie excused him patronizingly. "A man can't think of everything."

"Mmm-hmm," Downing murmured. "A man can't think of everything. That's pretty shrewd, Johnnie, I'll have to remember it."

"Anyway," Frankie cut in, "you didn't know that she had all that loot. I guess you would have, if you'd stopped to think about it, but- "

But there you were, Downing said. A man couldn't think of everything. "Guess I'll have to hire you boys to help me do my thinking," he added. "Excuse me a minute, will you?"

He left them briefly. Returning, he sat down in front of them on the edge of his desk. His hands were thrust in the pockets of his coat. Each hand gripped a roll of quarters.

"By the way," he said. "How did you boys happen to know Mitch's address?"

"Oh, she knew. Teddy knew where to take the dough," Johnnie smirked. "Keeping tabs on Mitch was kind of her business."

"But she's in a new business from now on," Frankie snickered.

Downing jerked his head at them confidentially, drawing them in close. "Got something funny to tell you guys. You'll get a bang out of it…" He grinned widely, his hands tightening on the rolls of quarters. "Mitch is away from Houston for a couple of days. Anyone that called on him would see the gal he lives with, a real hot-tempered babe who doesn't know that he-"

Frankie and Johnnie didn't wait to have it spelled out for them. They flung themselves backward, trying to make a break for it. Downing's loaded fists lashed out.

He got them both in their pretty pans, with a lightning swift one-two. Then, as they spun, he swung with a double-armed backhand, again connecting with such force that they crashed against opposite walls of the room.

They were still out to the world some ten minutes later when Ace came in. He gave them a raised-brow look, shook his head deprecatingly at Downing.

"You shouldn't let guys sleep in here, boss. It don't look good."

"There's something in the atmosphere, I guess," Downing said. "They dozed off right while I was talking to 'em."

"Well, that was kind of rude," Ace said, frowning at the recumbent youths. "How's your hearing these days, boss?"

"Not so good. The last guys you bounced around in the alley, I couldn't hardly hear it at all."

Ace expressed alarm. After all, he pointed out, the alley was only a hundred yards away. "You suppose we ought to run another test?"

Downing thought that they should. Ace awakened Frankie and Johnnie.

He was very good at waking people. Even those who seemingly would never waken again. The boys were on their feet in a matter of seconds, howling and dodging and making many of the same kinds of noises that Teddy had made.

Ace took them out in the high-walled alley.

"Now that," said Downing, a hundred yards away, "is a test!"

23

Darkness…

Black wet no dark light and…

Smothering strangling and breath wind downup up up biting slicing legs burning yank high low…

Racing air and light light joggle run bump slam sound of slam mumbles and shouts voices light light breath and coughing strangling burning chest and…

Voices whiskey coughing brush knock away…

Mitch kept his head ducked, lips clenched against the pressing whiskey. He kept his eyes closed peevishly, mumbling with simulated incoherence. Fully conscious but wanting time to size things up.

He was soaked, dripping with the oily slime from the well. Several people were around him, cowhands seemingly; mumbling and fumbling as they tried to revive him. He was sitting slumped on a leather lounge. The room he was in was apparently a large one, for Gidge Lord's voice drifted to him from a considerable distance away.

"… Oh, no! Certainly not. There's nothing at all wrong. He just stepped outside for a… Just a moment, please. I believe he's coming in right now…"

She laid the phone down on the desk, as Mitch at last opened his eyes. Frantically, motioning for the cowhands to get out, she hastened across to him.

"I'm sorry as hell, Corley! I swear to God I didn't know that hole was-"

Mitch weaved to his feet-weaved deliberately. There was something that had to be figured out here: the reason for Mrs. Lord's alarm, her downright panic. The clue that might lead to that one-in-a-million chance.

"Please, Corley…" She was hanging onto his arm, her magnificent torso moving against his, as she guided him toward the desk. "Don't crumb me with him, please! Don't knock me, for God's sake! Tell him everything's okay, and I swear I'll…"

She smiled at him with her leathery face. The milky eyes pleading, beaming good will.

Mitch picked up the phone, and spoke into it. A harsh, strangely musical voice came over the wire. And immediately he had the clue to the riddle.

The banks were loaded with Gidge Lord's paper. They would lend no more, so she had been beating the state of Texas for big private money. And one of the most obvious prospects for a huge private loan, a man who would instantly know the worth of the Lord holdings and see the opportunity in their mismanagement, was-

"Mr. Zearsdale," Mitch said. "It's good to hear from you so soon."

"It's nice of you to say so," Zearsdale purred. "Your sister told me I might catch you there."

Mitch said that the call had come just in time. He might have been gone in another minute. Zearsdale said he was glad to hear it.

"As long as you're through there, you can come to a little party I'm giving tonight. Your sister wants to come, if it's agreeable with you."

"Well, thanks very much," Mitch said. "What-eight o'clock? Hang on for a moment, will you?'

He started to turn to Mrs. Lord. Zearsdale's suddenly sharp voice stopped him. "Is there some trouble there, Mr. Corley? Be frank with me, please. The ranch doesn't have a reputation for friendliness."

"Well-" Mitch hesitated.

"I suggest that you tell Mrs. Lord I've invited you to a party at my home tonight. Tell her I'll be very disappointed if you're not there."

"Well, the fact is," Mitch said, "we have a little business to wind up. It could be wrapped up in no time, if we could get right down to it. But-"

"Then tell her to-No, let me talk to her."

Mitch passed over the phone. As she took it, spoke into it almost cringingly, he added her attitude to Zearsdale's peremptory one and arrived at the only possible conclusion.

She already had her loan, or a big part of it. Made on demand notes, naturally, since Zearsdale would accept no term paper in a situation that might go sour overnight. So she was over a barrel, Gidge Lord was. She had to be nice, very very nice, or she would take a painful pecuniary paddling right on her astonishing ass.

She handed back the phone, smiling, grimacing rather; literally groveling in appeasement. Mitch winked at her, and she went to a wall safe, begun turning the combination.

"Mr. Corley…" Zearsdale said again. "I'm sure Mrs. Lord understands the situation now."

"I'm sure she does, too," Mitch said. "Thanks very much."

"Not at all. By the way, I've got a jet over in Midland. Give you a ride home, if you like."

"Thanks," Mitch said, "but I may as well use the other half of my round trip. I'll tell you what I might do, if it won't inconvenience you…"

"Yes?"

"It's a long, rough ride back to Big Spring. Why don't I check with you from there in two or three hours, so that you'll know I haven't, uh, haven't had any accidents."

"You do that." Zearsdale caught his meaning immediately. "You do that, Mr. Corley."

They hung up after a moment or two of polite nothings.

Mrs. Lord closed the safe and came back to the desk. She counted out thirty-three thousand dollars, and pushed it across to him.

"Would you like to clean up a little? I can give you some other clothes, too."

Mitch said that sounded good to him, but his immediate need was for a drink and a cigarette. She provided them quickly, also pouring a drink for herself. Then, spoke to him nervously as he settled back in his chair.

"Maybe you'd better sort of hurry, hmm? You've got to be back in town in a few hours."

"Oh?" Mitch took a deliberate taste of his drink. "You think I might have trouble getting there?"

"You'll get there, all right! You'll get there if I have to carry you on my back!"

Mitch chuckled wickedly.

He wasn't inclined to pour it on anyone when they were down, but Gidge Lord wasn't just anyone. She was damned near a murderer. His. He felt entitled to needle her a bit.

"I'm a professional gambler," he pointed out. "I come out here alone, and face up to an army of your thugs. And I make you pay off like a slot machine. I think the experience should prove very good for you, Mrs. Lord."

"So?" She left it at that, not saying any of the things that she might have said. That Zearsdale probably didn't know he was a gambler, that it was Zearsdale, and Zearsdale alone, who was making her behave.

She had had to take a beating. That was the fact, and to hell with the why.

"You're not even curious?" Mitch teased. "You don't wonder why a man like Zearsdale would go to so much trouble over me?"

"No," she said flatly, "I'm not curious, Corley. But maybe you should be."

24

Mitch got back into Big Spring early in the afternoon. After checking with Zearsdale, he shucked out of his borrowed duds, took a long, hot bath and re-dressed in some he had brought with him. Then he called Red, asking her to meet him when he arrived in Houston.

She sounded a little cool and strained. But that, he thought, was natural enough. He had left town without giving her a chance to object-and she would have objected to a trip as perilous as this one. Now that he was out of danger, she meant to punish him for the scare he had given her.

He would have some pretty tall explaining to do, he decided. Or maybe, since this had been such a foolishly dangerous thing to do, it was best not to try to explain. Just to say that he'd lost his temper when the checks bounced, so off he'd gone into the wild blue yonder, knowing it was crazy but doing it anyway.

Red could understand a loss of temper. Who could understand better than Red?

The fact was he was just feeling too damned good to be worried about anything.

He had dinner on the plane. The stewardess was a Dallas girl, immediately stamped as such by her smartness, her glossy sophistication. She bantered with the man seated next to Mitch, a resident of Fort Worth; no yokel by any means, but a little on the drawly side, hearty and easygoing of manner. Mitch listened to them… the voices, the attitudes, of east and west… and behind him he heard a South Texas cotton grower disputing with a North Texas wheat farmer. And he was struck as he always was (when he had time to think of such things) by the amazing amalgam, the populous paradox that was this, his native state.

Between areas, there were not only differences in accent but in language itself. A pond, for example, became a tank, biscuits were bread, cookies were cakes, afternoon was evening, carry meant escort (to carry a girl to a dance), dirty was nasty (a nasty shirt), and meat was automatically construed to mean pork, unless qualified as red meat.

There were differences in dress, too many to be noted, yet intermingling with one another in these days of rapid transportation. There were differences in outlook, from one area to another, and these positively did not intermingle. In Houston, no Negro was admitted to a white restaurant-not even if he was a foreign potentate. In Austin, there were Negroes on the faculty of the University of Texas. In one city, a minority group had absolutely no voice in municipal government. In another (El Paso, for example), the minority spoke loud, clear and effectively.

That was Texas. That was not Texas. Because it was a generalization, and you could seldom if ever generalize about Texas. In so doing, you were apt to be guilty of the very narrowness you deplored. You were in a boat not-too-distant from that of the foreign viewers of popular American films, people who knew us to be a nation of sexpots and gunslingers, stopping only long enough to get sloppy drunk as we went about the business of shooting and screwing one another.

You could still find Texans who made a brag of ignorance. They hadn't never read no book but the Bible. They hadn't never been out of the state in their lives. ("An' I ain't goin' to neither.") The fault was probably rooted far back in the history of the state, in an official attitude- -promulgated by backwoodsy legislators-which saw little reason to keep a child in school if his folks didn't, and who believed that eleven grades of school (instead of twelve) were quite enough for any youngster.

Texas had raised its educational standards a great deal in recent years. But some of the old ideas still lingered, and they were by no means all bad, although some people might dispute this. Newcomers often objected to the schools' seeming intrusion into the province of the parent. Their emphasis on manners and decorum. But their objections went unheeded, and after a time they were usually withdrawn.

Before he was ever taught his ABC's, the Texas schoolchild learned respect for his elders. He learned that men (gentlemen) were always addressed and replied to with sirs, and that ladies (all women were ladies) were always spoken to with ma'ams. Similarly he was taught to say please and thank you and excuse me-the rule being that you could never say them too often. He was taught courtesy and gallantry, and concern for the weak and elderly. And if he was slow in learning and remembering these teachings (no matter how brilliant he was academically) he would find himself in serious trouble very quickly.

So, after all, then, there was one generalization you could make about Texas. You could say flatly and positively that the wanton and open flouting of every principle of decency and fair play which was becoming commonplace in other states was wholly foreign to Texas. There had never been anything like that. There never would be. Hypocrisy?-Yes, you would find that. You would find approval for it. But if a man was a bum, he had better not demonstrate the fact in public.

In some cities of America, the streets were roamed by gangs of rowdies: overgrown louts who had been slobbered over far too long by professional do-gooders and who needed nothing quite so much as a goddamned good beating; sadistic thugs who were as whimperingly sensitive about their privileges as they were blind to their obligations, who showed no interest at all in the common privileges of soap, water and hard work; human offal who demanded everything of their nation, and who contributed nothing to it but their plethoric progeny which a responsible citizenry was forced to provide for.

And this scum, these outrageous brutes, prowled the streets of those American cities, knocking down wholly inoffensive citizens, publicly committing robbery, mayhem and murder. Doing it because they knew they could get away with it, that a hundred people might look on but not a one would interfere.

Well, so be it. But such shameful spectacles were not seen in Texas.

No Texan would have stood idly by while a dozen slobs stomped a decent man to death.

No Texan, regardless of whether he was nine, nineteen or ninety, whether he was rich or poor, whether he was bigot or liberal, whether he was outnumbered a hundred-to-one- no Texan, you could be sure, would look on unconcerned while a woman was being raped.

At Dallas, Mitch had a half-hour layover between planes. He entered a phone booth and placed a call to Red, intending to tell her that he was running a little late. But the apartment didn't answer, and the clerk cut in after a moment or two, advising him that Red had left for the airport a few minutes before.

That was reasonable enough, of course, traffic being what it was. Mitch started to leave the booth, then turned and put in a call to Downing.

It was a courtesy owing the gambler, he felt. He had taken his hard luck story to Downing. Downing was now entitled to hear the happy ending.

"Just off for Ghent," he said, as the gambler's voice came over the wire. "Thought I'd tell you the news from Aix is strictly copasetic."

There was a heavy silence. Then a very feeble chuckle from Downing.

"Poetry yet, huh? I think they had it the decade I missed class. Didn't the guy get a bottle of wine poured down his throat for bringing the good news?"

"I thought you'd never remember," Mitch laughed. "Thanks, Frank, but I can't make it tonight. Just here between planes."

Downing sighed. He said he had a little poem for Mitch. "It goes like this, pal. 'Here I sit all brokenhearted.'"

"Yeah?" Mitch smiled expectantly. "What do you mean, Frank?"

"I mean I reversed the habits of a lifetime and tried to do you a favor. And the way it turned out-well, you better brace yourself before I tell you…"

Mitch braced himself.

It didn't help a bit.

25

Mitch took the receiver from his ear. He stared at it, and then he put it back again; stood speechless, choked-up for a moment by the surging tide of his emotions, shaking his head over and over and over.

"Frank…" He found his voice at last. "You're supposed to rattle before you fang a guy."

"I'm sorry as hell, keed. I was just trying to help."

"Help?" Mitch could have slugged him. "Help how? By kicking a woman around? Doing something that the first hairy-assed caveman could have done ten times better? What the hell are you, a man or a mule, and don't tell me!"

"Gee," Downing said humbly. "A promotion already. I used to be a snake."

"Goddammit, Frank…!" Mitch was almost shouting. Where do you get off at pulling this on me? You knew I didn't want this muscle bit! You know I've always steered clear of it! I've got a head, by God, and I believe in using it, and if you'd just left me the hell alone, let me handle my own problems in my own way instead of acting like a goddam public nurse-!"

"Mitch," Downing pleaded, "come over and shoot me, huh? Anytime. You don't need an appointment."

"I think I'll wait for a spear," Mitch said bitterly. "With a guy like you around, we should be back using them in another week."

He slammed up the phone.

He banged out of the booth, took a few angry strides away from it, and then, of course, he went right back to it again, and got the gambler back on the wire. Because Downing had tried to help, he had apologized, and after that, well, what could you do but accept it? Then, too, there was just a chance that-

"Sorry I blew my top, Frank. Now about Frankie and Johnnie-do you suppose there's a chance that they didn't make the send stick with Teddy?"

"No," Downing said, regretfully but firmly. "Those kids do a job like di wah didy. She'd have sprouted a trolly and made like a streetcar if they'd told her to."

"Goddam," Mitch sighed. "Why couldn't they just have kept the dough for themselves?"

"Well, that would have been stealing," Downing pointed out reasonably. "Anyway, they knew I'd find out about it."

"Yeah. Yeah, sure."

"It ain't all bad, is it, keed? You'll get your divorce, and you'll never see that broad again. That's a little something, anyway."

Mitch admitted that it was, and it didn't make a damned bit of difference because he'd lost Red. He was as sure of that as he was that yesterday wasn't today. Downing said that maybe he was low-rating Red a little; she was yar about him, so maybe she'd forget and forgive like the sweet kid she was. Mitch said maybe, and maybe yesterday was today after all. And on that unhappy note the conversation ended.

The plane seemed hardly out of the Dallas airport before it was in the Houston landing pattern. Mitch fastened his seat belt, probing the hopeless darkness of his problem.

Red was apparently not quite through with him yet. Otherwise she would have told him off over the phone. She meant to get through with him in person, which meant that…?

Her voice came to him out of the past, back from the beginning and up through the years. "Don't you lie to me. Don't you ever, ever lie to me!" He remembered her attitude about the money, when she thought he had lied about the deposit-box cache; her dead coldness, her refusal to be swayed or persuaded. He remembered her fury over nominal trifles, because he had spoken to her sharply or thoughtlessly; frightening fits of anger which might hang on for a day or more and in which she was hardly responsible for what she did.

He had told her a thousand lies, one piling on top of the other as he sought to cover them up. He had made her a thousand promises, knowing quite well that there was hardly a chance in the world that he'd be able to keep them. He.

"Well, all right, then. As long as you're not married, why, then it's just the same as if we were. I don't need to feel ashamed and-But it better be the truth, you hear? If you lied to me-!"

He got off the plane and went up the ramp. As he came out into the waiting room, he heard himself being paged over the public address system. He stopped dead still, then moved toward the information desk, a sick dread welling in his heart.

The message was from Red. A perfectly innocent one. Miss Corley was waiting for him in the parking area.

Mitch collected his baggage and went out to her.

She was standing at the side of the car. She was wearing a black semi-formal gown, short and low cut. Her gloves were long and white, and a white mink stole draped her shoulders, and she carried a small mesh evening bag.

He stopped a couple of steps short of her. Not knowing quite what to say, noting her strained taut expression. Then, he made a tentative motion of taking her in his arms.

"Don't!" She stepped back quickly. "I-I mean you'll muss me up!"

"Red," he said. "Let me explain, will you? I-"

"No." Her head jerked nervously. "There's nothing to- We don't have time to talk now."

"Because of Zearsdale, you mean? But we can't go to a party with things like this!"

"Well, we are going! We promised to go, and we will. If a person doesn't keep his promises, he-he-" She broke off, turning away from him. "Let's get this over with, Mitch."

She opened the door of the car and climbed in, the dress riding high on her legs. Mitch put his baggage in the trunk, and slid behind the wheel. He didn't know what the right way of handling this was-if there was a right way-but he knew that what he was doing was all wrong. He should be leading, instead of following her lead. He should not, for God's sake, be taking her to a party at a time when she was about to cloud up and rain all over him.

He saw the small mesh bag in her lap, and started to reach for it. She snatched it away.

"Don't! Don't you touch that!"

"But-But I was just going to put it in my pocket for you."

"I don't want you to! I want to carry it myself!"

"I see," he said. And he did see. That much anyway.

He knew why she wanted to keep possession of the bag.

He started the car. He guided it out of the parking lot and drove swiftly toward Zearsdale's house. Neither of them spoke. Red seemed on the point of it, a time or two; he could sense the occasional glances which she stole in his direction, hear the hesitancy in breathing which precedes speech. But he couldn't and wouldn't help her out any, now that he knew what he did. So she also remained silent.

He turned into the driveway of the oil man's home, feeling very dead inside, and deeply puzzled, although he no longer gave a particular damn about anything.

Why was she doing this? What kind of sense did it make to go to a party when she was planning a thing like that?

He parked the car, and helped her out. They went up the steps together, Red keeping a little away from him. Her lips were set in a nervous little smile. The color was high in her cheeks.

Zearsdale himself answered the door, as he had the night of Mitch's visit. Chatting amiably, he guided them into a small reception room and offered drinks. Red shook her head, a slight frown on her face.

"Not now, thank you. Are we the first ones here?"

"First?" said Zearsdale.

"Your first guests," said Mitch, and he too was frowning a little. "There doesn't seem to be anyone else here."

Zearsdale said casually that there were others around. "It's a big house, you know. How about you? Drink?"

"No, thanks. We'll have one with the others, if you don't mind."

"Better have something," Zearsdale said, and then as Mitch again declined firmly, "Well, come along then. Got some pictures I want to show you."

Somehow, he got himself between them as they left the room. He was still between them when they entered another, somewhat larger than the first. A motion picture screen hung from a stand about halfway down the room. Near the door they had entered stood a heavy 16-mm projector.

"Now, you sit down there, Corley. That's right, over there!" Zearsdale pointed. "And you, miss-may I call you Red?-you sit over here, Miss Red. The others have already seen these pictures, so-Sit down, Corley!"

"No," said Mitch. "No, I am not sitting down, Zearsdale. I'm walking out of here, and Red is coming with me, and don't try to stop us."

The room went silent. Zearsdale's expression froze between joviality and anger, and for a moment he looked pudgily foolish as he tried to adjust to the situation. Mitch silently cursed himself.

The mirrored ceiling above the crap table-the sudden clatter from the room above as he and Zearsdale had gambled. And then today, the way Zearsdale had thrown his weight around with Gidge Lord. Using the muscle of all his millions to make sure that he, Mitch, attended this "party."

How could he have missed it, for God's sake? How could he have led Red into the trap?

Red. He looked at her, so small and helpless, almost lost in the huge lounging chair. He looked at her, and her unreasoning anger-the deadly evidence of her intentions-was wiped away. And nothing mattered but getting her out of here safely.

He smiled at her, spoke with firm reassurance. "Don't be afraid, honey. We'll leave now."

She smiled back at him tremulously. Started to rise. Zearsdale's heavy hand came down on her shoulder, shoving her back in the chair.

"She stays," he said. "You're both staying."

"Zearsdale"-Mitch moved toward him. "You are so wrong."

Zearsdale stood where he was. Red let out a little scream- a warning. Mitch started to wheel, and a fist exploded against the back of his neck and a kidney punch blazed fire through his body. And then he was yanked backwards, slammed down into a chair with spine-rattling force.

26

Three men stood over him. Young wiry types, preening in their toughness. Smelling faintly of pool-chalk and bowl-and-pitcher bathing. If you knew anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone, you could pick them up for a couple of bills each. But you had to catch them fast, for the man with the scythe was already reaching for them.

One of them, at least one out of three, was destined for the death cell. The lad with the tiny head and the close-set eyes was a likely candidate. The second youth? Well, to him who passeth it out, shall be returned a hundred fold. So beat his head in-he never used it, anyway- -and leave him in some dark alley with his brains spread out around him. As for the third young man (call him Pretty Boy), here surely is a victim of five-dollar sinning, for he will never spend five dollars to visit a doctor. So he also, in a different way, is a sure prospect for brain damage. Come in a little closer, look a brief distance into the future, and observe. Note the lowered trousers, the reddish stains on his shorts. Note the hard-rubber dosing gun, filled with that ol' reliable remedy. (See our ads in your neighborhood toilet.) Note the downward thrust of the plunger, the shrill suddenly stifled scream as the stuff hits his cerebrum. That liverish-looking object that plopped to the floor is his tongue. Must these kids always bite their tongues in two! Well, half a tongue is better than none, right? Ha, ha. Anyway, why does a guy need a tongue when he's drowning in his own blood?

Zearsdale gestured and the three fell back behind Mitch; poised, ready to pounce at another gesture. Red was recovering fast from her fear, and her eyes were icy as the oil man gave her a smile of apology.

"I'm sorry if I was a little rough a moment ago, Miss Red. These movies I was about to show, well, I thought you should see them. But if you'd really rather not-"

"She would rather not," Mitch said. "They're pictures of the dice game our host and I had the other night, Red. I think he feels there was something wrong with the game."

"Does he now?" Red said. "And just what does he think he's going to do about it?"

Zearsdale obviously didn't like her tone. But with what was patently an effort, he managed a fatherly smile. "I understand your feelings. You're far more a victim of this man than I am. I know, of course, that you're not his sister."

"So you know I'm not his sister," Red said. "What about it?"

"Child, child…" He shook his head gravely. "He's led you to believe that he's going to marry you, hasn't he? He's promised to marry you. But what you don't know is that he's already married. I've gone to a great deal of trouble to find out about this man, and-"

"Why?"

"Why? Well, I, uh-"

"Why?" Red repeated. "Who asked you to? What business is it of yours? Who do you think you are, anyway?"

"He thinks he's God," Mitch said. "He told me so himself."

Zearsdale flushed angrily. He said they would do well to shut up, and Red told him to shut up himself.

"I mean it, doggone you! I know Mitch is married and I know he's getting unmarried, and as soon as he does he's marrying me. Oh, yes, you are, darling!" She gave him a dazzling smile. "I was angry enough to kill you when I found out. I went out to the airport tonight, swearing that I was going to kill you. But your plane was late, and I began to get frightened and worried about you, and-and-"

She turned back to Zearsdale, eyes sparkling with tears.

"Don't you tell me anything about Mitch! He didn't know he was married when he met me. When he found out, he couldn't tell me, because I would have been hurt and he loved me and wanted to protect me, and-an'-Never mind. Never mind. It's n-none of your business, you big ape!"

She broke off sniffling. Mitch swallowed lumpily, and for a moment he would have given both of his arms just to have them around her. Now, everything fell into place, and he knew why she had been so strained and awkward with him, why she had wanted to be around others for a while before facing him alone. The crisis in their relationship had given her a new and mature insight, and she had needed time to adjust to the unexpected depths she had found within herself. Also, doubtless, she had wanted to dispose of-

"I'm afraid I was mistaken about you," Zearsdale frowned at her. "You seem to be just about as bad as Corley is."

"Oh, shut up! You just hush," said Red.

"Yes, just as bad," Zearsdale nodded grimly. "So you'll have to suffer as he-Stop that, Corley! Don't snap your fingers when I'm talking!"

"I need a light." Mitch held up a cigarette. "Tell one of your apostles to give me one."

Zearsdale motioned curtly, and one of the mugs thrust a light at Mitch.

Mitch grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward, then swung him backward, simultaneously kicking over his chair as he lunged to his feet.

The thrown guy and another went down in a tangle. The third came in swinging. Mitch ducked inside the flailing arms, brought his head up sharply. There was a messy crunching sound and the guy's chin almost met his nose, and he went down to the floor in a heap. But now the other two were up, were weaving in with blood in their eyes. Mitch sprang squarely between them, his arms outflung.

Their arms whipped around their necks. Locked. Contracted. Their heads smashed together and they wobbled dazedly, then suddenly sat down as he kicked their legs from under them.

"Mitch! Take it, honey…" Red was holding a small gun out to him, the gun she had thought she was going to shoot him with.

Mitch took it, and swung coldly on Zearsdale. "All right," he snapped. "You claim I cheated you. No ifs, ands and buts about it, I rooked you, so you get these punks out here to give Red and me a hard time. Now I want to know just why you think you were cheated."

The oil man was staring at the three beaten hoods. He turned to Mitch, a curious expression in his deep-set eyes.

"Where did you learn to fight like that, Corley? I thought I was the only person who knew how."

"In hotel locker-rooms mostly. I used to be a bellboy."

"That's very interesting. I'll bet you were a very good bellboy, weren't you?"

Mitch began to get angry all over again. Three minutes ago, this character was going to have him worked over and now he wanted to make conversation.

"Let's stick to the subject," he said, curtly. "You say I'm a cheat. I say I win because I'm good, because I go into a game with a big edge; an edge I've gotten through training and experience. Any man who wants to be in the big time has to have one. You have, obviously. When was the last time you went into a business deal without a better than even chance of winning?"

"What?" Zearsdale'e eyes had strayed to the hoodlums again. "Oh, come now, Corley. You're a professional gambler. You can make the dice do anything you want them to."

"Can I? Can I always do it? Then why is it that you broke me the night we played?"

"Well-But you came out winner."

"But you broke me," Mitch insisted. "You took me right down the line, and I was all ready to tell you good night and leave. That's what I meant to do, what I've done many times before when I went broke. But you wouldn't have it that way. You forced a loan on me to keep the game going. Well, isn't that right or not? You won and you have no one to blame but yourself for not staying winner."

"Well." Zearsdale wet his lips hesitantly. "That was purely a come-on. You lost deliberately."

"Oh, for God's sake! I was doing my damnedest to win, and those movies must have shown that I was! Why would I deliberately throw to you, anyway? To get you in another game? How do I know I can do it? What's the percentage in it? Why not take you in the game that I have?"

He waited, frowning. Zearsdale shrugged.

"Whatever you say. I'm hardly in a position to argue about it."

"Why not?" Mitch looked down at the gun. "You mean because of this? Well, we'll fix that right now." He walked over to the oil man, slapped the gun into his hand and stepped back. "Now, argue all you damned please. Or do you want these punks to sit on me before you begin?"

Zearsdale looked a little stunned. He hesitated, then nodded to the three. "All right, I won't need you anymore." They sidled out the door, keeping a wary eye on Mitch, and he shook his head bemusedly.

"Corley… Mr. Corley, I-I hardly know what to say. I seldom make a mistake about a man, but-"

"If you don't know what to say, maybe you'd better not say anything," Mitch told him. "Maybe if you just listen to me, you might learn something."

"Maybe I will," Zearsdale nodded. "Why don't we see?"

"All right," Mitch said. "You asked me if I was a good bellboy. The truth is that I was lousy. I was like a lot of young men you see, wanting a lot but not willing to do much to get it. That's why I took up dice, I suppose. Because it looked like an easy way of making out big. I kept on playing with them, always thinking it would suddenly get easy. And by the time I found out that there was no easy way of being good at anything, it was too late to stop."

But simply being good with the dice wasn't enough, of course. Not if you wanted to move into the upper brackets. You had to be well-informed, well-read, polished. You had to acquire an outlook on life, a certain way of dealing with people-an indefinable thing called class, which could never be imitated. So he had accomplished all that, and in accomplishing it, he had become far more than the very best man in the country with a pair of dice.

"The trouble with you, Zearsdale, is that you've forgotten how good a man can get through nothing but his own efforts. If he's good, as good as I am, then he can't be for real. If he beats you, he's got to be cheating. Well, I'm a ringer, yes, but I'm the straightest player you'll ever come up against. I'm no more a cheat than the baseball pitcher who throws nine strikes out of ten. Or the sharpshooter who keeps ringing up bullseyes. And I'm good at a lot of things besides dice. I'll take you on for a question-and-answers game on any subject you name. I'll take you on at poker-with you dealing all the cards. I'll take you on at golf-and let you pick my clubs. I'll take you on at anything from matches to marbles, Zearsdale, and I'll beat the ever-lovin' socks off of you, because it's been so damned long since you met a good man you're ready to lie down and holler foul before you ever begin!"

Red clapped her hands enthusiastically. Zearsdale sat scowling, squirming a little. He wasn't used to being talked to like that. He certainly didn't have to take it. He liked a man with pride, of course. God, how he loved a man with pride and the guts to stand up and speak his mind! But-

His broad mouth twisted into a reluctant grin. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and he laughed until the tears came to his eyes. At last, after a vigorous blowing of his nose, he got control of himself.

"Corley, I wouldn't have missed this for the world! I honestly wouldn't. I-" He suddenly became aware of the gun he was holding. "My God, what am I doing with this? Let me give it back to you."

"Keep it," Mitch said. "Red and I don't have any need for guns."

"Neither do I," Zearsdale said. "I'll get rid of it for us."

He excused himself and left the room. He returned without the gun, wheeling a small portable bar in front of him.

"I think we all need a drink," he declared roundly. "Or maybe two, who knows? What would you like, Miss, uh, Red?"

"Nothing," said Red, looking very stern. "Not until you say you're sorry."

"Of course. I'm sorry."

"With sugar on it," Red insisted. "That's what you have to say when you're really and truly sorry."

Zearsdale squirmed, glanced appealingly at Mitch. Mitch told him he might as well give in and say it. Red would persist until he did. So the oil man said very rapidly that he was sorry with sugar on it.

"Well, all right, then," Red said, and she gave him one of her very best smiles, a smile that reached right inside of him and patted him on the heart. "I guess you're really not so bad when a person gets to know you."

"Who is?" said Mitch.

"Hear, hear," said Zearsdale.

And then they all had a drink together.

Or maybe two, who knows…?