She offered hurriedly, “The girls is mighty big to be sleeping in the bed with a man—but the little bed is awful small.”

The girl Gracie carried the child toward them. She looked questioningly from the man to the woman.

Emma said, moistening her lips, “You’ll have to let your father say, about the sleeping.”

He said dully, “You and the two girls keep the big bed.”

The girl went into the smaller room with the child; fumbled with its garments and left it and went away. The door of the large bedroom closed behind her.

The man felt chilled. He undressed by the kitchen range, hanging his clothes on wooden pegs on the wall. He turned out the kerosene lamp. Darkness closed in on him. Where he had been cold, he was suffocated. He shuffled across the boards in his bare feet, careless of splinters, and threw open the front door. The wind bit like cold teeth into his body. He shivered and closed the door, standing uncertainly with his hands against it.

It seemed to him that he had forgotten something. He rubbed his forehead. He had forgotten the pardon. He had left it lying on the table, where something might happen to it in the night. A gust of wind might blow it near the stove and a spark ignite it. He groped his way across the kitchen and laid his hands on the parchment. An ember glowed in the range and the seal shone briefly in the blackness. He rolled up the paper and went to his bedroom.

The boy lay sleeping. Adams could not bring himself to lie down beside him. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed, warming his feet one with the other. He twisted the roll of parchment in his hands. The room was a black box over him. He crossed his arms over his stomach, bending his upper body, swaying.

He pictured the penitentiary at this moment. It would be not quite dark, for a light would be glinting at the far end of the corridor. It would be not quite silent, for the guard would walk along the cement floor. It would be not quite lonely, for every man had a cell-mate. A wave of desolation washed over him, so that he thought he should never swim to the top of it.

Beside him, the child mumbled. Adams drew a deep breath. He reached out his hand and touched the fine hair of the head. He trembled. He moved his hand slowly over the small hump of body under the quilt.

“Pore little bastard,” he said, “I reckon you wasn’t much wanted.”

The boy cried out sharply in a nightmare. His legs convulsed. Adams drew the quilt closer about the thin neck.

“Running from the booger-man, sonny?” he asked. “Don’t you fret—I’ve got a-holt of you.”

He slipped under the covers and pushed the pardon carefully beneath his pillow.

Varmints