ed windows and doors to tell there was no
one at home. And yet, to Lite its very silence seemed sinister.

Wolves were many, down in the breaks along the river that spring; and
the coyotes were an ever-present evil among the calves, so that Lite
never rode abroad without his six-shooter. He reached back and
loosened it in the holster before he started up the sandy path to the
house; and if you knew the Lazy A ranch as well as Lite knew it, from
six years of calling it home, you would wonder at that action of his,
which was instinctive and wholly unconscious.

So he went up through the sunshine of late afternoon that sent his
shadow a full rod before him, and he stepped upon the narrow platform
before the kitchen door, and stood there a minute listening. He heard
the mantel clock in the living-room ticking with the resonance given by
a room empty of all other sound. Because his ears were keen, he heard
also the little alarm clock in the kitchen tick-tick-tick on the shelf
behind the stove where Jean kept it daytimes.

Peaceful enough, for all the silence; yet Lite reached back and laid
his fingers upon the smooth butt of his six-shooter and opened the door
with his left hand, which was more or less awkward. He pushed the door
open and stepped inside. Then for a full minute he did not move.

On the floor that Jean had scrubbed till it was so white, a man lay
dead, stretched upon his back. His eyes stared vacantly straight up at
the ceiling, where a single cobweb which Jean had not noticed swayed in
the air-current Lite set in motion with the opening of the door. On
the floor, where it had dropped from his hand perhaps when he fell, a
small square piece of gingerbread lay, crumbled around the edges.
Tragic halo around his head, a pool of blood was turning brown and
clotted. Lite shivered a little while he stared down at him.

In a minute he lifted his eyes from the figure and looked around the
small room. The stove shone black in the sunlight which the open door
let in. On the table, covered with white oilcloth, the loaf of
gingerbread lay uncovered, and beside it lay a knife used to cut off
the piece which the man on the floor had not eaten before he died.
Nothing else was disturbed. Nothing else seemed in the least to bear
any evidence of what had taken place.

Lite's thoughts turned in spite of him to the man who had ridden from
the coulee as though fiends had pursued. The conclusion was obvious,
yet Li