Elbert heard the words from time to time through the first half of the night. Then for a while delirium was unmistakable: ‘_You didn’t have to go, Bart--_’ the voice once said in a wistful tone, and names were uttered with dread, yet a kind of life-long familiarity as well: ‘Welton--Letchie Welton.’ ... ‘Palto’ ... ‘Mort Cotton’ ... ‘Red Ante’ and in and out through sustained incoherencies, with dreadful impressiveness, references to a blacksmith shop: and once starting up, the old man found Elbert’s eyes and spoke slowly with intolerable contrition: ‘_There are times when you can’t wash your hands, I’m sayin’. It wasn’t what I did--but what I didn’t do!_’ Toward daylight he slept, but it was only for an hour or so. Elbert, drowsing in a chair, heard the call. ‘Start some coffee for yourself, and turn in a measure of grain for Mamie; then draw your chair close. You’ll be goin’ down trail for a doctor this morning--I know it’s bearin’ heavy on you, and maybe there won’t be much talkin’ after the doctor comes.’ Altogether quiet and hasteless--so different from the delirium of the night. It was dim and cool in the cabin; the sun not yet over the ridge; fragrant firelight, coffee on to boil. ‘You can telephone Mort, too, from the lower camp. He wouldn’t like it, if I didn’t let him know, and bring your coffee here.... Yep, sit in close.’ At times it seemed as if the old man were easing a burden from his heart, as gradually Elbert began to get it all straight: The mining town of Bismo, Arizona, one morning twelve years ago; an old storekeeper, murdered in the night--young Bart hanging around, though sent back--Bart following the posse and being permitted to stay by the marshal when they were ten miles out. Elbert had to be reminded of his coffee as the story of the three days’ chase carried on--hunger, thirst, fatigue: how one of the Mexicans split, breaking up the pursuing party also--Letchie Welton, Mort Cotton, Bob Leadley and his son Bart continuing straight south, four others turning east. Then it was that the telling took on an unprecedented intensity, though the voice was held low. ‘Over a hundred miles from Bismo, and just before dark, coming to water and an abandoned town called Red Ante. Bart ridin’ light and easy; the rest of us done for, my horse dyin’ under me, ears loppin’, the weight of his head hangin’ on my arm. I’d ridden him to death--that made me all the uglier.... Gettin’ dark, as I say, and we halted at the edge of that dusty hell-hole, everything saggin’ and sand-blown.... Palto--our work wasn’t over--’ * * * * * ‘But what did they do to him?’ Elbert burst out a moment later; yet he was afraid to hear. The cabin interior had taken on a startling unreality. He seemed to be back in Red Ante ... the lone sandy road that nightfall twelve years ago. Then the quiet words: ‘Recollect what I told you was in the blacksmith shop?’