Lennie began to shoulder the door. Myra stood right behind him, urging him on, telling him what would happen if he didn’t mind her.

The lock gave. The door banged open, Lennie following it with his rush and Myra following him. And . . .

And so I reckon I never will know what was in Myra’s mind. Or what wasn’t in it. Whether she’d forgot about that pistol she’d helped Rose buy, or whether she thought that Rose wouldn’t dare use it. Or whether she was so danged mad and determined to put Rose in a fix that she just wasn’t thinking.

No, sir, I’ll never know what she thought or didn’t think. Because just about a second after the bedroom door busted open, she and Lennie were dead.

They came stumbling backward into the living room when Rose started shooting, falling over each other, going down to the floor together in a tangled heap. They were already dead then, I reckon, but Rose kept on firing—like she was shooting fish in a barrel—until the gun was empty.

I climbed in the buggy and started for town, ponderin’ over the strange workings of Providence. What I’d really sort of figured on was that Myra would kill Rose, and then Myra and Lennie would have to skip town, because I would be absolutely impartial even if they were sort of kinfolks and I’d do my dangdest to see that they were punished even if I had to shoot ‘em while they were trying to escape. Which would probably be the best way of winding things up.

But this would be all right, I reckoned. It would work out just as well with Rose killin’ Myra and Lennie.

I put the horse and buggy in the livery stable, listening to the hostler snore away in the hayloft. I went back across town to the courthouse, and everyone was long-gone in bed of course and it was like there wasn’t no one on the earth but me.

I went upstairs to the living quarters, and drew the shades down tight. Then, I lit a lamp and got myself a cup of cold coffee from the stove, and eased down on the lounge to drink it.

I finished it, and carried the cup back into the kitchen. I toed my boots off and stretched out on the lounge to rest. And the downstairs door slammed open and Rose came pounding up the steps and busted in on me.

She’d run all the way into town on foot, I reckon, and she was wild-eyed and crazy-lookin’. She sagged against the door, heaving for breath, pointing a shaking accusin’ finger at me. It was all she could do for a moment, just point.

I said howdy-do to her, and then I said it was all right, me and her bein’ friends, but it really wasn’t perlite to point at people.

“I thought you ought to know that,” I said. “It not only ain’t polite, but you might poke someone in the eye.”