g that stood on the southern
side of the street, facing the station, Gary Warden could look past the
red station into the empty corrals beside the railroad track. Jim
Lefingwell, Warden's predecessor, had usually smiled when he saw the
corral comfortably filled with steers. But Gary Warden smiled because
the corral was empty.

Warden was standing beside a flat-topped desk at one of his office
windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame
of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried
his flesh gracefully. But Warden had lived well, denying himself
nothing, and the flesh which had been added had formed in flabby
bunches, drooping his shoulders, sagging his jaws, swelling the back of
his neck.

And yet Warden was not old; he had told some new-made friends in Willets
that he was thirty-five. But he looked older, for a certain blase
sophistication that shone from his eyes and sat on the curves of his
lips, did much to create the impression of past maturity.

Warden dressed well. He was coatless, but he wore a shirt of some soft,
striped material, with a loose, comfortable-looking collar and a neat
bow tie. His hair was short, with bristles in the roll of fat at the
back of his neck; while at his forehead it was punctiliously parted, and
plastered down with precision.

Warden was not alone. At another window, her elbows on the sill, her
hands crossed, her chin resting on the knuckles of the upper one, sat a
woman.

She was young, slender, lissom. There was grace in every line of her,
and witchery in the eyes that watched Warden with a steady gaze. She
too, was hatless, seemingly conscious of the beauty of her hair, which
was looped and twisted into glistening strands that fell over her
temples and the back of her neck.

As she watched Warden, who was smiling at the empty corral, she withdrew
her elbows from the window-sill, twisted around, so that she faced
Warden, and idly twirled the felt hat that she took from her lap.

"Does something please you, Gary?" she asked with slight, bantering
emphasis.

Warden's smile broadened. "Well, I'm not exactly displeased."

"With Willets--and the rest of it?"

"With that corral--over there." He pointed.

"Why, it's empty!"

"That's why."

"Why you are pleased! That is odd. As a buyer, I should think you would
be more pleased if the corral were full--had cows in it. That is what
you are here for, isn't it?"

"Yes," g