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The man stood for a time where he had halted — just within the door to one side — a grotesque statue modelled of mud. Short, sturdy-bodied, with massive sagging shoulders. Nothing of clothing or hair showed through his husk of clay, and little of face and hands. The marshal’s revolver in his hand, clean and dry, took on by virtue of that discordant immaculateness an exaggerated deadliness.

His eyes swept the room: two cots against the undressed board side walls, a plain deal table in the centre, rickety kitchen chairs here and there, a battered and scratched bureau, a trunk, a row of hooks holding an indiscriminate assembly of masculine and feminine clothing, a pile of shoes in a corner, an open door giving access to a lean-to kitchen.

He crossed to the kitchen door, the woman’s face turning to follow.

The lean-to was empty. He confronted the woman.

“Where’s your man?”

“Gone.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“Ain’t coming back.”

The flat, expressionless voice of the woman seemed to puzzle the fugitive, as had her lack of emotion at his entrance. He scowled, and turned his eyes — now redder than ever with flecks of blood — from her face to the boy’s and back to hers.

“Meaning what?” he demanded.

“Meaning he got tired of homesteading.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then he went to the corner where the shoes were piled. Two pairs of men’s worn shoes were there — dry and without fresh mud.

He straightened, slipped the revolver back into its holster, and awkwardly took off the slicker. “Get me some grub.”

The woman left the cot without a word and went into the kitchen. The fugitive pushed the boy after her, and stood in the doorway while she cooked coffee, flapjacks, and bacon. Then they returned to the living-room. She put the food on the table and with the boy beside her resumed her seat on the cot.

The man wolfed the meal without looking at it — his eyes busy upon door, window, woman, and boy, his revolver beside his plate. Blood still dripped from his left hand, staining table and floor. Bits of earth were dislodged from his hair and face and hands and fell into his plate, but he did not notice them.

His hunger appeased, he rolled and lit a cigarette, his left hand fumbling stiffly through its part.

For the first time the woman seemed to notice the blood. She came around to his side. “You’re bleeding. Let me fix it.”

His eyes — heavy now with the weights of fatigue and satisfied hunger — studied her face suspiciously. Then he leaned back in his chair and loosened his clothes, exposing the week-old bullet-hole.

She brought water and cloths, and bathed and bandaged the wound. Neither of them spoke again until she had returned to the cot.

Then: “Had any visitors lately?”

“Ain’t seen nobody for six or seven weeks.”

“How far’s the nearest phone?”

“Nobel’s — eight miles up the coulee.”

“Got any horses besides the one in the shed?”

“No.”

He got up wearily and went to the bureau, pulling the drawers out and plunging his hands into them. In the top one he found a revolver, and pocketed it. In the trunk he found nothing. Behind the clothes on the wall he found a rifle. The cots concealed no weapons.

He took two blankets from one of the cots, the rifle, and his slicker. He staggered as he walked to the door.

“I’m going to sleep a while,” he said thickly, “out in the shed where the horse is at. I’ll be turning out every now and then for a look around, and I don’t want to find nobody missing. Understand?”

She nodded, and made a suggestion.