e shack. It was a man's
leave-taking, short to abruptness, so badly stereotyped that it denied
utterly any consciousness of threatened, reckless tragedy and cordially
intimate only because in all man-to-man speech there is less and less
of actual sincerity in a multiplicity of words. But he might have
talked till daylight and still have failed to register the binding
acceptance of Garry's promise, which his silence, unaided, achieved.

Soundlessly, unemotionally, Steve closed the door on that figure on the
bunk edge which, suddenly slack of limb and shoulder, had averted its
face. But then, there in the darkness, with the gun swinging heavily
between loose fingers, he hesitated in his very first step back from
the threshold. And twice, head bowed in indecision, he halted in his
slow progress from that door to the lighted one of his own cabin which
framed Fat Joe's immobile form--halted each time as though he would
return--and each time went slowly forward again. Fat Joe's eyes barely
flitted over Steve's face that night; they clung in a fixed, pale blue
stare of fear to the weapon in his hand. And long after Steve had
drawn up a chair next the one which Garry had vacated and fallen to
filling his pipe, he stood, shifting from foot to foot in awkward,
uncomfortable silence. He crossed after a time and slipped into the
empty seat. His tongue was as haltingly guilty as his face was pink
with shame when he began to speak.

"Steve," he stammered, "Say, Steve, I--I didn't know I was going to
start anything like that when I begun talking my ideas of art and
literature and such like. I didn't see where it was leading us to--not
for a minute. Why, Steve, every blessed hour of the days and nights
since you've been away, I've been dodgin' every topic of conversation I
thought might hit him hard. I'm just several assorted kinds of
fool--and you followed him that quick and quiet!" The apology was
tinged with pride. "I just didn't think---- But ain't he got a poor
opinion of women folks, though? Was it--a close decision?"

Steve shook his head; he smiled and the returning surety in his face
did much to clear Joe's features.

"No," Steve answered, "not very. Somehow I know already that I needn't
have followed at all, so far as that contingency was concerned. And it
was my fault, Joe, not yours. I should have told you exactly how such
things stood in Garry's mind--would have, if I had had the time. His
opinion of