that I'm saying I've been real thorough in the matter, because I
ain't had the time. But what I've done I accomplished because I just
naturally dote on that kind of thing." His eye flitted carelessly toward
a window. "I happened to run into Harrigan, too, this morning," he
murmured.

As disinterestedly as had Joe, Steve now drained his coffee cup and
waited.

"He was down to the cook shanty," Fat Joe rambled on. "It's an hour
since he'd ought to have been out there with the powder squad in the
north cut, and when I asks him if he was feelin' indisposed this morning
he says no, but the supply teams was going out and one of the drivers had
told him that I was sending him along to help with the loadin'. He had
such a nice, frank, open-faced way of lying that I couldn't bring myself
to correct him. I just let it stand that way and told him such was the
arrangement." Joe saw swift satisfaction play across Steve's face.
"And--and then, after that, him and me--why, we just drifted off into a
real interestin' and scientific discussion about them birds I been
mentionin' to you. We--somehow we got to discoursing about owls.

"I told him I'd never noticed 'em to hoot so close together and
persistent as they did last night, down along the trail, and wondered if
by any chance he'd heard 'em, too. And he said he had. He's a nice
smooth talker, Harrigan is, when he ain't too sober and not too drunk.
Oh, yes, he'd heard 'em, being wakeful, he explained, what with worrying
all night whether we'd ever get this line of steel laid before our
contract run out on us! Now wasn't that interestin'--wasn't it,
especially coming from him? Neatly put and self-possessed, I call it.
He was worried because he's dreadful superstitions. [Transcriber's note:
superstitious?] He claims when them birds gets to hedgin' in on each
other's solos like they did last night it's a sign of bad luck or an
accident for somebody, sure. That give me an opening to ask him if the
accident hadn't happened already, him having a bandage around his head
not much different from this one our friend here is wearing. But he
couldn't see it that way. A scratch he called it--just a scratch from a
twig."

The room was very quiet for a breath. That thin note had crept into Fat
Joe's tenor voice--thin and chill and menacing. And there as abruptly as
he had assumed it, he flung aside his mask of disingenuous irrelevance.
Fat Joe wheeled, put both elbows upon t