I listened, tryin’ to hear Myra out in the kitchen. I started puzzlin’ over where Lennie might be, and thinking maybe I ought to go out and look for him before he got into trouble. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t take a run out to see Rose, and pleasure her up a little if Tom wasn’t to home.

It seemed like a good idea, the more I thought about it. And I was clean out into the living room before I suddenly remembered; and I dropped down hard into a chair, and buried my face in my hands. Trying to sort things out. Trying to fit them back together in the only way they made sense.

Buck came in—Ken Lacey’s deputy, you know. I was kind of befuddled for a minute, so absorbed with fittin’ things together that I couldn’t quite place him. But there was the gun hangin’ from his hip and his deputy sheriff’s badge and his long leathery face, so of course I remembered pretty fast.

We shook hands and I told him to set down. “I bet you prob’ly run into my wife downtown,” I said. “I bet she told you just to come right on up here and walk in without knockin’, because I wouldn’t mind a bit, didn’t she?”

“Nope,” said Buck.

“You mean it didn’t happen that way?”

“Yep,” said Buck.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Buck. “What happened was I was huntin’ me a skunk, and when I’m a-huntin’ skunk I don’t stand none on ceremony, I just bust right in wherever I smell him.”

“Well,” I said. “Well, now. How you standin’ all this weather?”

“Tol’able. Just tol’able.”

“You reckon it’s goin’ to get any hotter?”

“Yep,” said Buck. “Yes, sir, it’s goin’ to get a lot hotter. Wouldn’t suprise me none if it got so hot for a certain fella that didn’t keep his bounden bargain with me that he just naturally won’t be able to stand it.”

I got a bottle out of the sideboard and filled a couple of glasses. He took the one I handed him, and threw it against the wall.

“Like to keep my hands free,” he explained. “Kind of a habit with me when I’m around a fella that don’t keep his bounden agreements.”

“Buck,” I said. “I just couldn’t do it! I was willin’ to but it was just plumb impossible!”

“No, it wasn’t,” Buck said. “Moresomeover, it ain’t.”

“But you don’t understand, god-dang it! I possolutely couldn’t do it because—”

“Ain’t interested in no becauses or whys or whichfors,” Buck said. “You ‘n’ me had a bargain, and I done my part in gettin’ Ken down here. Now you do your part an’ drop that rope over his neck, or I’m goin’ to put it around yours.”

I told him that would be a pretty trick to see, but maybe he’d better not attempt it. “Might be you’d get it around your own neck.”

“Maybe,” Buck said. “But then I reckon not. I reckon I could go right on a-playin’ a part, like I got so much practice doin’ around Ken Lacey.”