“Hell, no. Rabbit Holman was working on it, and he told me Trask called them all in and fired them. Told them not to come back.”

“They say Trask has got a pot of money.”

“I guess he’s well fixed, all right,” said Julius. “Sam Hamilton is sinking four wells—if he didn’t get fired too.”

“How is Mr. Hamilton? I ought to go up to see him.”

“He’s fine. Full of hell as ever.”

“I’ll have to go up and pay him a visit,” said Horace.

Lee came out on the stoop to meet them.

Horace said, “Hello, Ching Chong. Bossy man here?”

“He sick,” said Lee.

“I’d like to see him.”

“No see. He sick.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Horace. “Tell him Deputy Sheriff Quinn wants to see him.”

Lee disappeared, and in a moment he was back. “You come,” he said, “I take horsy.”

Adam lay in the four-poster bed where the twins had been born. He was propped high with pillows, and a mound of home-devised bandages covered his left breast and shoulder. The room reeked of Hall’s Cream Salve.

Horace said later to his wife, “And if you ever saw death still breathing, there it was.”

Adam’s cheeks hugged the bone and pulled the skin of his nose tight and slimy. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his head and to take up the whole upper part of his face, and they were shiny with sickness, intense and myopic. His bony right hand kneaded a fistful of coverlet.

Horace said, “Howdy, Mr. Trask. Heard you got hurt.” He paused, waiting for an answer. He went on, “Just thought I’d drop around and see how you were doing. How’d it happen?”

A look of transparent eagerness came over Adam’s face. He shifted slightly in the bed.

“If it hurts to talk you can whisper,” Horace added helpfully.

“Only when I breathe deep,” Adam said softly. “I was cleaning my gun and it went off.”

Horace glanced at Julius and then back. Adam saw the look and a little color of embarrassment rose in his cheeks.

“Happens all the time,” said Horace. “Got the gun around?”

“I think Lee put it away.”

Horace stepped to the door. “Hey there, Ching Chong, bring the pistol.”

In a moment Lee poked the gun butt-first through the door. Horace looked at it, swung the cylinder out, poked the cartridges out, and smelled the empty brass cylinder of the one empty shell. “There’s better shooting cleaning the damn things than pointing them. I’ll have to make a report to the county, Mr. Trask. I won’t take up much of your time. You were cleaning the barrel, maybe with a rod, and the gun went off and hit you in the shoulder?”

“That’s right, sir,” Adam said quickly.

“And cleaning it, you hadn’t swung out the cylinder?”

“That’s right.”

“And you were poking the rod in and out with the barrel pointed toward you with the hammer cocked?”

Adam’s breath rasped in a quick intake.