d
pepper and the steak sauce and the sugar and the extra butter if you
ask for it, just don't forget the tip.

Clarence Hogan, the fry-cook, came around the counter and leaned on
the booth table beside Gloria. "You don't like succotash? How about
some nice peas, Erd?"

Clarence was Gloria's husband.

Pimp!

"Put some ice-cream on my pie," Neff said. He looked up at Clarence.
"No, I don't want any goddamned peas!"

They brought his pie and left him alone. He finished it and felt in
his pocket for the tip. He changed his mind. To hell with Gloria and
her fat leg! The steak was tough.

He paid the check and went out. The sky was pink yet. Later in the
week the sunsets would be blood-red, as the great combines increased
in number and cruised the rippling ocean of wheat, leaving bristly
wakes and a sky-clogging spray of dust.

Neff's busiest season. Damn that dog! Damn Collin Burns!

His hand brushed his leg where the leather holster should be. Damned
laws that men made. Laws that acquitted him of homicide and then
snatched away his only weapon of self-defense because he shot a
yapping dog.

As he got in his car Collin Burns came out of the station. He tossed
Neff's gun through the open window onto the seat. "Here's your
property. The Marshal came in, and he changed everybody's mind. It's
going to cost you a hundred dollars and a new pup for the little girl,
probably. Here's the subpoena. Tuesday at ten."

"I don't get it."

"The Marshal said to let you fight your own battles."

* * * * *

Neff started the car and let the clutch out. The Marshal knew his way
around. The transient harvesting crews were a wild bunch. If word got
out that Neff was unarmed, packing thousands of dollars the length of
the county, the enforcement people would have a lot of extra work on
their hands.

He parked behind the warehouse, next to the railroad tracks.

He came around front, unlocked the big door, pulled it shut behind him
and bolted it. The warehouse was jet black now, but he knew every inch
of the place. He could fire his pistol almost as accurately at a sound
as at a visible target.

He practiced on rats.

Holding a pocket flash, he worked the combination. As the final
tumbler fell silently, a faint, raspy screech came to his ears, like a
board tearing its rusty nails loose under the persuasion of a wrecking
bar. He listened a minute, then he levered the bolts back, stepped
into the