ernor, and the lawyers that
helped get it done were the Wallifarro crowd. You may not
remember much about Boone Wellver, because he was a kid when
you left, but he thinks Asa's a piece of the moon, and he's a
lawyer now hisself in Wallifarro's offices. Those men stand
close to the Governor, and this Boone Wellver has wore out the
carpet at Frankfort, tramping in to argue for Asa's pardon. But
that ain't all. He's talked hisself blue in the face trying to
have you brought back and hung. Back in Marlin he's aimin' to
go to the legislature and he's buildin' up influence. If he
wins out he's goin' to be a power there, and, if he gets to be,
you can't never come home."

At that point Saul lowered the pages of the letter and cursed again
under his breath. Then he read on again though by now he knew the
contents by heart.

"It was heedless for you to write to Jim Beverly. Wellver heard
of that through some tattle-talk and went to the Commonwealth
attorney and told where you was at. He'll hound you as long as
he lives, and if you come back here you'll walk into his
trap--unless you can contrive to get him out of the way. He
stands across your path, and you've got either to lay low or
get rid of him. If you came back here, one of you would have to
die as sure as God sits on high."

Saul thrust the letter back into his pocket. A string of pack llamas
swung grunting by under their loads, driven by ponchoed cholos. Overhead
a vulture lumbered by. From the stand of a street vendor drifted the
odours of skewered fowl-livers and black olives. Over the whole
Spanish-American panorama brooded the treeless foothills of the
Cordilleras that went back to the Andes. Everything that came to eye and
nostril of Saul Fulton carried the hateful aspect and savour of the
alien.

"I disgust the whole damn land," he declared as he rose, for though he
no longer felt in a mood of celebration it was time to meet the
"Dutchman" for dinner.

Reticence was second nature to the plotter who had just heard of the
growing power of a new enemy, but there was wine for dinner and a
sympathetic listener, and under the ache of nostalgia and the need of
outpouring, his discretion for once weakened.

It was late when over their coffee cups and cigarettes Saul realized
that he had been talking too freely, but the German leaned forward and
nodded a sympathetic head.