“He must have stolen that,” Coffin Ed said. “Nobody living in here has thrown that much good meat away.”

“Let’s go easy now,” Grave Digger lisped.

When they came to the door, both took out their pistols and spun the cylinders. Brass bullets showed faintly against the gleaming nickel plate. Their shadowy figures had the silence of ghosts. They were mouth-breathing now, giving off soft puffs of vapor in the frigid air.

Grave Digger switched his pistol to his left hand and fished key from his right overcoat pocket. As he fitted the key into the lock, Coffin Ed pulled hard on the knob. The Yale lock opened without a sound. Coffin Ed pushed the door in three inches, and Grave Digger withdrew the key.

Both flattened against the outside wall and listened. From above came sounds like two people sawing wood; a man sawing dry pine boards with a bucksaw and a boy sawing shingles with a toy.

Coffin Ed reached out and slowly pushed the door open with his pistol barrel. The two kept on sawing. He put his head around the doorframe and looked.

There was no door at the head of the stairs. The opening was lit by a soft pink light, revealing the naked beams of a ceiling.

Coffin Ed went up first, stepping on the outside edge of the stairs, testing each before putting down his weight. Grave Digger let him get five steps ahead and followed in his footsteps.

At the top, Coffin Ed stepped quickly into the pink light, his gun barrel moving from left to right.

Then without turning, he beckoned to Grave Digger.

They stood side by side looking at the sleeping figures on the bed.

The man wore a plaid woolen shirt, open all the way down and the shirttail out, a heavy-ribbed T-shirt, army pants and stained white woolen socks. A leather jacket was piled on top of a pair of paratrooper boots on the floor beside the bed. He lay doubled up on one side, facing the woman, with an arm flung out across her stomach.

The woman wore a red knitted dress and black lace stockings. That seemed to be all. She lay half on her side, half on her back, with her legs outspread. Velvet black skin showed all the way up to her waist

A single dim pink-shaded lamp hanging from a nail above the head of the bed made the scene look cozy.

Their gazes roved over the room, lingered on the big rusty .45 lying on the coonskin cap, went on and came back.

Coffin Ed tiptoed over and picked it up. He sniffed at the muzzle, shook his head and slipped it into his pocket.

Grave Digger tiptoed over to the bed and poked the sleeping man in the ribs with the muzzle of his own pistol.

Afterwards he admitted he shouldn’t have done it.

Roman erupted from the bed like a scalded wildcat.

He came up all at once, all of him, as though released from a catapult. He struck a backhanded blow with his left hand while he was in the air, caught Grave Digger straight across his belly and knocked him on his rump.