of a day. Nothing short of committing suicide could lend it that final little brush-stroke it needed to make it complete. A truly formidable day. I thought, trying to keep my mind and attention off those pails; the great whore of all days. Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, and smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.

The pails clinked companionably.

They contained one-hundred-and-one thousand dollars, and there were only two people on earth who knew it.

I wrenched my eyes away from the pails, feeling sick and very cold in my stomach. Still pools of shadow clotted and thickened under the trees as the sun went down.

Nobody knew I was out here, or that I had even been here.

That was irrelevant. That wasn’t the question at all.

The proposition as stated is that everything you buy in this antic bazaar has its individual price tag. Look at it first; don’t be a fool and cry about the bill afterward. You know what it is now; and understand that it won’t be any different after it’s too late to return the merchandise.

He backed me into this corner. . . .

No, he didn’t. You backed yourself into it. Don’t wait and make that great discovery after it’s too late. Accept it now. You can buy your way out in something less than a minute, but it’s not going to be on a pass.

The pails swung gently behind his shoulder, three feet away. I was becoming hypnotized. I kept seeing them as they had looked when they were open on the ground. I could put out my hand and touch them. Godwin’s Law of Character Erosion states that the attrition of honesty. . . . Never mind that bright and sophomoric bit of wisdom. This is something else. Well, isn’t murder the ultimate dishonesty?

The thing that was so terrible about it was its simplicity. I could go on and go to prison, for nothing. Or I could merely walk out of here with a fortune, and not go to prison at all.

It was twilight. I saw the edge of the clearing and the darkening bulk of the cabin ahead of us.

All right, I thought. But when you start, do it fast and very coldly, and don’t think at all.

* * *

Now we were inside the cabin, from which the light was almost gone. I felt very tight, and far away, and was concentrating on details like remembering to limp as I walked. I had picked up my jacket and the paper bag that contained the $3,800. He had already put the three pails in the boat and had come back after the clothes he was going to take. He placed them in a cheap little imitation leather bag he took from under the bed.

“I reckon I can phone Mrs. Nunn to pick up the rest of my stuff,” he said. “Mebbe sell it for me.”

“Yes,” I said.

I picked up the gun-belt from the floor. The loops were filled with cartridges and it was heavy. I held it out to him.

“I reckon I better leave that here,” he said.

“You can take it,” I told him. I’ll turn in the gun, and maybe you can sell it to one of the deputies.”

He had to have it on, but I wished we could stop talking. My voice sounded squeezed and breathless, as if it were coming off the top of my throat.

He buckled on the belt. He looked once around the cabin and went on through the door without saying anything. I was glad; that was past now. The encircling wall of trees was dark. Far overhead in the fading sky a few splashes of orange and pink were left over from the silent explosion of sunset. He looked up at them and then around at the clearing’s thickening dusk.

“I . . .” he said.

Don’t look at him. Don’t listen.

“I liked it here,” he said simply. “It was a nice place.”

I clamped my jaws shut against the cold and terrible up-welling of pressure inside me and turned away. I gestured with my hand. We went down the trail toward the boat.

An old log running out into the water served as a pier. We got in. He handed me the valise, which I put forward with the pails. I shoved the folded paper bag into one of the pockets of my jacket, and dropped the jacket across the valise. He turned the boat outward and gave it a shove with an oar against