g constantly and
staring out the door at the bright dawn glow as if he wanted to send
both of his fists crashing into the first suspicious guy to cross his
path.

"We can't have those footprints trampled," he muttered. "There are a lot
of dumb bastards here who don't know the first thing about keeping
pointers intact. Those prints may be the only thing we'll have to go
on."

"Just the three of us can handle it, Bill," I said. "When you decide
what should be done we can wake the others."

Bill nodded. "Keeping it quiet is the important thing. We'll carry him
back here. When we break the news I want that body out of sight."

Harry and Bill and I--we took another walk in the sun. I looked at
Harry, and the greenish tinge which had crept into his face gave me a
jolt. He's taking this pretty hard, I thought. If I hadn't known him so
well I might have jumped to an ugly conclusion. But I just couldn't
imagine Harry quarreling with Ned over Molly.

How was I taking it myself? I raised my hand and looked at it. There was
no tremor. Nerves steady, brain clear. No pleasure in enforcing the
law--pass that buck to Bill. But there was a gruesome job ahead, and I
was standing up to it as well as could be expected.

Ever try lifting a corpse? The corpse of a stranger is easier to lift
than the corpse of a man you've known and liked. Harry and I lifted him
together. Between us the dead weight didn't seem too intolerable--not at
first. But it quickly became a terrible, heavy limpness that dragged at
our arms like some soggy log dredged up from the dark waters of the
canal.

We carried him into the shack and eased him down on the floor. His head
fell back and his eyes lolled.

Death is always shameful. It strips away all human reticences and makes
a mockery of human dignity and man's rebellion against the cruelty of
fate.

For a moment we stood staring down at all that was left of Ned. I looked
at Bill. "How many men in the camp wear number-twelve shoes?"

"We'll find out soon enough."

All this time we hadn't mentioned Larsen. Not one word about Larsen, not
one spoken word. Cheating, yes. Lying, and treacherous disloyalty, and
viciousness, and spite. Fights around the campfires at midnight,
battered faces and broken wrists and a cursing that never ceased. All
that we could blame on Larsen. But a harmless little guy lying dead by a
well in a spreading pool of blood--that was an outrage that stopped us
dead in our legend-mak