Never Start a Rumor

by DILLON ANDERSON

IT WAS on the Widow Wiley’s farm north of Dallas that I and Claudio found ourselves about daylight one May morning in sure enough need of hospitality. Personally, I think real well of faith, hope, and charity, all three, but I believe I like hospitality better; it is more apt to stick to your ribs. The Widow Wiley had not asked us there; she didn’t know us; she didn’t even know we were there. I explained to Claudio that this was one of the small drawbacks of life in a trailer house if you don’t have a car to pull it :you might be left stranded on strange premises any time. We had lost our free tow the night before when our right tire went flat and the truck from Galveston quit us.

“Also,” Claudie said, “we’re low on food, we’re ’bout out of money, and we haven’t got a spare tire.”

“Claudie,” I said, “you only see the dark side of things. Suppose I hadn’t arranged to have us pulled in here last night? Suppose I hadn’t found out that this place belongs to the Widow Wiley? Suppose I hadn’t learned that she has a tender heart?”

By this time it was broad daylight, and we could see that our trailer was parked in the middle of a willow grove a hundred steps or so from the house. A well of cool, sweet water wasn’t more than ten steps away on one side, and there was a nice, quiet, new windmill to lift it for us. About the same distance in the other direction was the prettiest garden this side of Eden — mustard greens, tomatoes, onions, radishes, collards, turnips, and several other kinds of growing garden sass. Beyond the garden, a red barn was joined onto the cow lot by a bois d’are hedge, and between the barn and the house there was a big apple and peach orchard. The air was full of all the green, growing smells of good rich land in the spring.

“Here,” I remarked to Claudie, “are the makings of real hospitaliy.”

Claudie said, “Guess we’re going to like it here if the chiggers don’t eat us up.”

“Claudie,” I said, “that’s the trouble with you. All a big red apple means to you is that there might be a worm in it. Go get me a big spoonful of that sulphur in the green alum can and then take one yourself. A chigger won’t eat on a man that’s got a little sulphur in his system.”

The sun hadn’t been up but a few minutes when we heard the screen door slam at the house. Then we saw her; not the Widow Wiley—she couldn’t have been — but the girl who was to change the whole course of our lives for the next day or so anyway; and, since a man can live only one day of his life at a time, the next day or so was what counted.

I could tell that she had not seen us as she sauntered our way through the orchard, carrying two milk pails and whistling a song by the name of “Can’t You Hear Me Callin’, Caroline?” When she wasn’t more than ten steps away, she looked up and saw us for the first time. She slopped in her tracks, dropped the milk pails, and broke off in the middle of a long high note from “Caroline.” I could see a lot of white around the blue in her wide-open eyes, and she looked so sweet and pure and scared that I felt like a cocklebur growing in a bed of roses. She couldn’t have been over nineteen, and as she stood there in her plain , short-sleeved, yellow dress, I thought that if the good Lord did this much for all the women in Texas it would close all the beauty parlors in the state and drive the Neiman-Marcus store to the wall. Her black hair looked as soft and smooth as a kitten’s.

“Be quiet, Claudie,” I whispered. “It will be all I can do to handle this myself.”

As I took off my hat I said, “Good morning, Miss,” and I was polite. “We are looking for the Widow Wiley.”

Then I saw an older woman coming down the path behind Miss Peaches and Cream. She was shaped a good deal like the Younger one, only in an older way. She came up and looked at us. There was no hospitality in her eyes.

“Who are you men?” she wanted to know. “And what is that thing down there in the grove?”

“Are you the Widow Wiley?” I asked.

“I am,” she said, as if she was proud of it.

“My name is Clint Hightower, and this is Claudie Hughes,” I explained. “He works for me. We live in that trailer down there in the grove, and we hope You will let us stay here until we can get a lift into Dallas. You must need some help on a big place like this. There’s hardly anything we can’t do.”

“But I don’t know what kind of people you are. You might be escaped convicts,” she answered.

She went too far here; it was the opening I’d been sparring for. “Madam, you have hurt me, and you have hurt my friend Claudie. He is more sensitive than I am,” I told her. “They shave convicts’ heads, you know. Can’t you see that we have plenty of hair?” I turned to Claudie and told him to take off his hat. Neither one of us had had a haircut in some weeks.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “I just want you to leave. My daughter Emma and I live here alone, and we are afraid of prowlers.”

I turned and spoke to Claudie: “We have asked for bread, and she has given us a stone.” Then I looked at the Widow Wiley and said, “We do not have a car to pull our trailer, but our hearts are pure.”

Emma whispered something to the Widow Wiley, and when I looked back at the Widow she was shaking her head.

“Madam,” I said, “would you ladies like some help with the milking?” In all my life I’d never seen anybody turn down help when it came to breaking a mule or milking a cow. “In fact,” I went on, “we’ll be glad to take over the milking this morning, and we hope you’ll give us a bite of breakfast.”

“All right,” the Widow Wiley answered, as I took both milk pails from Emma and gave them to Claudie, “but be careful with the little Jersey; her left front teat is a mite sore.”

The Widow Wiley walked and Emma floated along beside her toward the house. As Claudie milked the cows, I cautioned him about Emma.

“Claudie,” I said, “kindly do not get any ideas about that Emma. Be careful how you look at her.” Then I went down to the trailer to shave and to change my shirt before breakfast.

2

WHEN I and Claudie carried the milk up to the house, the cats met us at the back porch — four or five big yellow ones and a litter of mottled kittens. I gave them some milk in a pie pan that was close by, just so the Widow and Emma could see how kind we were to animals.

The Widow Wiley came out on the porch and strained the milk. Then they gave us breakfast at a table in the kitchen — big stacks of flapjacks, sausages, and hot coffee. As I ate I bragged on the Widow’s cows, her orchard, her cats, her cooking, and her hospitality; and after Emma went in to the front of the house to clean things up, the Widowgot into a real talking mood herself. She was like a lot of people in Texas; when they begin to like you, they’ll share their food and their story with you right off. She told us about herself and about her folks, and I and Claudie listened as we ate. A lot of hospitality works out about like that.

The Widow Wiley’s people were among the earliest settlers in the county, she said. Her grandfather Elisha Corn had been a famous Indian fighter, and this was the place he had settled on. Her father, Elijah Corn, had put the whole farm into cultivation and it was from him that she inherited it before she married Clem Wiley from White Elephant. They had no children for several years after they were married; then their only daughter, Emma, had come along, and Clem died when Emma was a little thing in pigtails.

In the fifteen years since her husband’s death, the Widow Wiley had gone into debt nearly every year, she said. First it was the tombstone for Clem’s grave. The next year the barn had burned yyith less than half as much insurance on it as the new one had cost. Then there had been a crop failure the year Emma finished high school, and things had gone from bad to worse ever since.

“If this place hadn’t been a homestead, they’d have taken it long ago,” the Widow Wiley said, and the tears were right on the brim of her eyes. Claudie was so touched that he nearly stopped eating.

“Who do you owe all this money to?” I asked.

“ I don’t know what his name is; he calls himself George Texas. He came to McKinney about ten years ago from somewhere in Southern Europe. He bought bones and rags around here for years, but he’s a big man now.”

“How much do you owe him?” Claudie asked. Claudie has no sense at all about what questions not to ask. But this didn’t seem to bother the W idow Wiley.

“Fifteen hundred dollars,” she said.

“And interest?” I asked her.

“No, that includes the interest,” she stated, as she got up and started clearing the dishes away.

After breakfast I told the Widow that I could see a number of things around the place that needed a man’s touch. I explained that I would be glad to have Claudie fix these things up under my supervision. While I sat in the rocking chair on the front porch, Claudie got busy. He knocked some dents out of the Widow’s coal scuttle, fixed a broken hinge on the storm cellar door, nailed up some loose planks in the smokehouse, and doctored a Dominecker rooster that had the limber-neck.

Along about eleven o’clock Emma came out on the front porch with a little kitten in her arms. I got up and offered her my chair, but she blushed and said no, she would sit on the step. I noticed she had changed dresses. She sat there stroking the kitten and looking out toward the front gate where Claudie was working on the latch. When he saw her, he started hammering away twice as fast.

“Does Claudie have to do all the work?” she asked, without smiling.

“He works with his hands,” I told her. ” I do the thinking.”

“Do you just think up things for him to do?”

“Emma,” I said, “you don’t do me justice,” but I was afraid, as I said it, that she did.

3

WHEN the Widow Wiley came out around noontime with some ham sandwiches, green apple pie, and clabber, I told her I believed her problem was right in my line.

“What is your line, Mr. Hightower?” the Widow asked. Emma was standing in the front door listening.

“There is hardly anything that is not in my line,” I told her. “Hardly anything, that is, except I have always steered strictly clear of politics, smuggling, and all kinds of manual labor. A man can usually avoid these things, madam, and still find plenty of leeway for his natural gifts. It is only when he does the same thing over and over that his talents begin to wither and his spirits to fester.”

“The Lord would bless you if you helped me get out of debt,” she said. It sounded genuine, like the Beatitudes my grandmother used to read me from the Bible when I was a little feller.

“Madam,” I went on, “how much land do you have here?”

“A hundred and sixty acres,” she answered.

“Have you ever leased it for oil?” As I asked her this question, I glanced at Claudie and saw he was hard hit with the size of my idea; he was batting his eyes like a bullfrog in a hailstorm.

“Never did,” the Widow said. “Twelve or fifteen years ago they drilled a well a mile or so south of here and got everybody all excited — but they only struck granite. They said then that the whole west part of the county was condemned for oil.”

“Mrs. Wiley,” I said, “excuse me, but how long ago did you say George Texas came to McKinney?”

“About ten years ago,” she said. “Why?”

“I just wondered,” I told her; then I turned to Claudie and said, “ Run down to the trailer, Claudie, and get me the blank oil and gas lease we found in that filling station in Fort Worth. It’s in my raincoat pocket.” While he was gone, I sat there alone on the porch and thought a lot more. When Claudie came back with the paper, I went in the kitchen where the Widow Wiley was churning while Emma put the dishes away. I asked the Widow how much she wanted for an oil and gas lease on her place.

“I can’t take any money,” she said. “We don’t have oil and gas. I tell you, it’s granite underneath.” This made me real proud of the Widow; she would not take advantage of us.

“Honesty is the best policy,” I told her and nodded at Emma. “ But look, Mrs. Wiley, you don’t have to take any money from us. If you’ll sign the lease, I’ll try to sell it for you. Then you wouldn’t be doing anything wrong.”

“Would that be fair?” Emma asked me, but I could see that the Widow Wiley had a tempted look in her eyes.

“It would be fair if somebody didn’t believe what they said about the granite,” I argued. “Did anybody see the granite? Another thing: they didn’t strike granite on this place, did they?”

“No, you’re right there,” the Widow said and paused; then, “I’ll have to think it over. It seems almost deceitful.”

“Madam,” I said, “my time is pretty valuable. We may have to leave any day. Sign this here lease, and we’ll split with you whatever we sell it for.”

You don’t often get a woman convinced with pure reason, but the Widow Wiley was no ordinary woman, and this last point shook her. She took Emma into the next room for a few minutes, and when they came back they had on their bonnets.

I and Claudie and the Widow Wiley and Emma drove down the road in the Widow’s old Dodge sedan to the office of the Justice of the Peace. I made the lease out to me, and when the Widow had signed it, the Justice put his acknowledgment on it for free and served us all cool drinks of sarsaparilla.

The next day Claudie had milked the cows and gathered enough vegetables before breakfast to fill the back end of the Wiley sedan. Emma and the Widow agreed for us to take them to the market in McKinney and I explained that we would look into the oil business some more while we were in town.

Just as we were driving out the front gate, I stopped and said, “Claudie, you had better run back to the trailer and get our cash— I mean the money you’ve got in your overcoat lining.”

“Ain’t but four dollars and a half left, and you always said it was for a rainy day,” Claudie argued.

“It is for a rainy day,” I told him. “A lot of people have the wrong idea about rainy days. Did you never hear of the manna it rained on the Israelites, Claudie? Now hurry along.” He went.

As we drove across the Wilson Creek bridge on the McKinney road, Claudie spoke up. I knew it was going to be about the money, since Claudie had been quiet for twenty minutes, trying to think of how to bring up such a delicate subject. “What are we going to do with the money, Clint?”

“Well,” I explained, “we’ve got to put that oil and gas lease on the County Records, for one thing. That will cost us about a dollar, I expect.”

Claudie dug out a dollar and handed it to me. I didn’t much mind his being so close about the money because it was his part of what he had made on our last job in Fort Worth, anyhow. “Then,” I went on, “there is the matter of revenue stamps. You probably never heard of them, did you?”

“Not except on store-bought whiskey.”

“Well,” I explained, “for every thousand dollars that you pay for land, the law says you’ve got to put at least a dollar’s worth of revenue stamps on the deed.”

“Who told you that?” Claudie wanted to know.

“Claudie,” I answered, “you have to depend on me for a number of things. It just happens that one of the contacts I made in Fort Worth last year was a notary public. He was a very smart man. He told me about stamps for a part of what you pay for deeds. It’s the same for oil and gas leases.”

“Well,” said Claudie, “we didn’t pay nothing for the lease, so we don’t have to buy no stamps.”

“That’s where you are wrong, Claudie. It says that you have to put on at least a dollar’s worth for each thousand dollars you pay. The law don’t limit a man on how many stamps he can buy. You can put on as many more as you want to. Also, it helps support the government. I think I’ll buy about two dollars’ worth.”

Claudie handed me the two dollars. Then I asked him for another dollar to take care of miscellaneous expenses. This was the hardest part to explain, as it often is with miscellaneous expenses.

1

4

IN McKinney I went to the Post Office and bought two dollars’ worth of stamps. I put them on the lease and canceled them with my initials just like the man said at the revenue window. Then I went over to the County Clerk’s office on the second floor of the Court House, where they record papers. All this time Claudie was down at the wagon yard selling the vegetables.

The girl on duty in the Clerk’s office was standing over by a window at the far end of the counter. She was laughing and rolling her big brown eyes at three overgrown young fellows who were standing around smoking cigarettes and shoving each other every time anything was said — the same way boys of that age always act around a girl in the spring of the year if they don’t have any work to do. I waited a few minutes, trying to catch the brunette’s eye, and finally I said in a loud voice: “I want to record an oil and gas lease on the Widow Wiley’s farm over in the west side of the county. Who tends to that?”

The girl looked up and said, “I do.” Then I went over and handed her the lease, holding it topside up where the signature, the acknowledgment, and the revenue stamps would all show. Her friends at first pretended not to be looking over my shoulder, but this did not last, and after a few minutes we were all looking at the lease together. After they had plenty of time to look it over, I paid a dollar to the girl and went out. The boys left too, talking together a lot faster than they had talked to the girl.

When I left ihe Court House, I walked over to the barbershop on the south side of the square to get me a shave. There were several customers there, but the last chair in the back was open. A barber with a long, keen nose and glassy eyes look me. When he had a hot towel all over my face, except for a little island around my nose, he said in a half-whisper: “You’re the fellow who recorded the lease, ain’t you?”

“ Ummhumm,” I told him through the towel.

“ Which one of the oil companies are you leasing for?” he asked me after a few minutes.

I didn’t answer him right off, since the razor was working very close between my lips and my nose by this time, and he asked me again.

“ I didn’t even say I was leasing for a company,” I told him.

“You don’t have to,” the barber said. “Nobody but the major companies pay prices like that.” “You must know,” I said.

Then he asked me again, “Which major is it?” “I don’t think it is standard practice to tell, is it?” I didn’t ask it in a way that called for an answer. I just let it soak in. When it did, he dropped his razor to the floor; then, after he picked it up, he put the towel back over my face. But I could see out, and I watched him go up and start whispering to the barber on the front chair.

I paid for my shave, and while the porter was brushing me off, the glassy-eyed barber came over to me. I tipped him a dime and he said, “I hope you all strike a gusher.”

“Well,” I told him, “sometimes it’s a gusher, sometimes a dry hole. It’s all in the day’s work.”

As I stepped out to the street, feeling with my hand how smooth a barbershop shave makes a man’s chin feel, I met Claudie, and he was really in a dither. “Oil,” he said, between deep breaths, “Standard Oil — Standard Oil Company on the Widow Wiley’s place. Everybody is talking oil. Have you heard anything about it, Clint?”

“That’s a hell of a question to be asking a man as he comes out of a barbershop,” I said. “Gather yourself together, Claudie; you’re pretty excited. Go on back to the car and wait for me there. Just act serious and mysterious if you can; don’t say nothing to nobody.”

5

I WALKED around the square and passed a lot of people on the sidewalk. They were gathering in little knots, and they talked and nodded at each other much faster than was natural. They’d be looking away from me as I walked toward them, but as soon as I passed, I’d turn and look and they’d all be staring at me. Some folks will tell you that nothing in the world ferments like hops and malt, but they don’t know a thing about an oil scare in Texas.

I kept on going until I reached the big store with the red front where a sign spread clear across the entrance read: “George Texas — Hardware, Notions, Stationery and Loans.”

I went in and saw that there were no other customers around. People were all out on the streets talking about oil. A tall, pale, stringy-haired fellow with a big Adam’s apple was clerking in the store. As I looked over the counters, he said, “Was there something for you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll just look around the stationery here until I find it.”

About this time I saw a big man get up from his desk in the rear and come forward. He walked like a man would walk in his own store. That would be George Texas, I said to myself as I studied his heavy face and buggy eyes. I noticed his hair grew down close to his eyebrows, and his chin was blue like a man’s chin is when he has just come from a barbershop.

“Otho,” the man with the blue chin said to the clerk, “you can go on back to your inventory; I’ll wait on Mr. Hightower.” Then he turned and said that he was George Texas, the proprietor of the store. I could tell from the hungry look on his well-fed face that there wasn’t anything the barber knew that George Texas didn’t know too. I nodded to him; then I kept on looking around until I came to a stop by the counter with pencils, erasers, and fountain pens on it. There wasn’t a thing in sight that sold for an even sum of money. Everything was nine cents, or ninety-eight cents, or a dollar nineteen, and so on.

“What is the price,” I asked George Texas, “of the best fountain pen in the house?”

“Here you are,” he answered, as he handed me one with a gold-looking point and smiled at me like you’ve seen people smile at well-heeled old relatives. “They are ninety-eight cents.”

I tried the fountain pen out on an envelope he handed me and it worked all right. While I was doing this I said out loud to myself, “In my business people have to sign their names in ink.” Then I turned to him and said, “I’ll take it,” and I handed him the last one of Claudie’s dollar bills — the one for miscellaneous expenses. “ Just keep the change, I told him.

When I took the fountain pen and started to walk out, George Texas followed me to the door. He wanted to give me a bottle of blue ink to go with it, and I let him. Just as I was pushing the store door open to leave, he said in a low, confidential tone of voice, “Can you step back to the rear of the store with me?”

“Sorry,” I told him, “but I’ve got a lot of things to do. Let’s have it right here.”

He looked toward Otho, who was going through some motions with his hands while his eyes were on us; then George Texas said in a hoarse whisper: “Will you take twenty-two hundred dollars for the Wiley lease?”

“That won’t touch it, Mr. Texas,” I said, but I stood right at the door and added: “Besides, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be right.”

“Course it would,” he argued. “It’s in your name, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s in my name all right.” “Twenty-three hundred?” He said it like an auctioneer says it just before he says “Gone.”

Then I let him have it. “ I said it wouldn’t be right if I sold it,” I told him, and I looked at him in the way I always felt Moses must have looked at Aaron when he came down from the mountain and caught him on his knees before the golden calf. But I didn’t quite get out of the door.

“Hokay,” George Texas said and started toward the rear of the store.

“Tell you what I’ll do,” I wheeled and said as I let the door close again. “I’ll take twentyfive hundred dollars in cash, but I can’t fool around about it. Time is important to me.”

“You’ve sold it,” George Texas almost snapped it out. He went on back to a big black safe by his desk and got out a brown envelope. He counted twenty-five hundred dollars in tens and twenties, and we went straight over to the Court House. We had to push our way through the crowd in front of the store. I put my name on an assignment and acknowledged it before the Clerk; then George Texas said he was going to record it. “Oh no,” I said, “not until you have put the revenue stamps on it. That will cost you two dollars and a half. I’ll go with you to the Post Office, where they sell them.”

We went over and got the stamps and I showed George Texas how to cancel them with his initials; then we went back and got the girl with big brown eyes to record the paper.

After George Texas paid his dollar for the registration, I turned to him and said, “Now let’s have the Widow Wiley’s note — it’s fifteen hundred dollars, I believe.” Back to the store we went and up to the big black safe, but right there George balked on me,

“Hold it,” he said. “Just a minute; this is too fast for me.”

“Fast, huh?” I answered. “Is there anything wrong with this money? If it ain’t legal tender, you’re in a hell of a pickle, George Texas.” I knew all aboul legal tender from that smart notary public in Fort Worth.

George said that the money was good, all right, but he was not sure what all was happening to him.

“I’m paying off the Widow Wiley’s note,” I said, “and I want you to mark ‘ Paid in full ‘ on it— now. I am tendering you the money.”

That did it. As George Texas got the note out, he walled his eyes like a sucking calf does when he is pulled away from the cow by his ears. I held fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of the money in my hand until he wrote “Paid in full” on the back of the note and gave it to me. Then I went over to the car, where Claudie was waiting for me.

“Claudie,” I said, “I and you are about due for a nice cold drink. Let’s go into the drugstore across the street, and I’ll set ’em up to you.”

While I had an egg malted milk and Claudie had a banana split with cherries, I told him about our trade. I even told him how all the oil excitement got started, and he seemed to understand it pretty well. I showed him the Widow Wiley’s canceled note, and Claudie seemed so stunned by it all that he had very little to say as he gnawed away on the banana split.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Claudie?” I finally asked him. “Aren’t you glad for the Widow Wiley? Aren’t you glad about our thousand dollars? What do you think about it all?”

“I was just thinking,”Claudie said through a sliver of banana he was scooping in, “how silly we’d feel if they ever struck oil on the Widow Wiley’s place. George Texas would be the one to get rich.”

“ There you go again, Claudie,” I said. “Still looking for a worm in every apple.”

By this time a large number of other people had come to the soda fountain; they were gawking at us, ordering cold drinks and talking.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, Claudie,”I said. “ I’ll go back over to George Texas’s place and trade him this blue ink for some that’s green. You take this canceled note and hold on to it. I’ll see you at the car after a little bit.”

We were over halfway back to the Widow Wiley’s farm when Claudie spoke up. “Clint,”he said, “they ain’t anything we need worse than a car to pull our trailer, is they?”

“I don’t know, Claudie,” I said. “A car is a lot of expense and all. If we had a car, we’d have six tires to go flat instead of just the two that we’ve got on the trailer.”

“I’m the one that fixes the tires,” Claudie said. “ I wouldn’t mind.”

“Claudie,” I told him, “don’t it make you happy when you think of how relieved the Widow Wiley is going to be when we give back her note, marked ‘Paid in full’? She’s, out of debt.”

“Sure does,”Claudie answered, “but not as happy as a new car would make me.”

“Haven’t you got any sentiment at all, Claudie?” I said.

“Course I have, Clint,” Claudie told me. “But it’s pretty hard, and it’s gittin’ harder, to hitchhike with a trailer house.”

“You must not be thinking of how much it costs to get the valves ground on a car. That’s awful expensive,” I told him.

“I believe I could grind the valves if we had a car,” Claudie said. “Let’s take that thousand dollars and buy us a car tomorrow.”

“Claudie,” I said, “there is something I have to tell you about that thousand dollars. We don’t exactly have it any more.”

“We don’t what?" Claudie asked, and he looked a little chalky around the gills.

You see, it’s this way,” I explained. “We bought back a part interest in that lease from George Texas when I went back to swap him the blue ink for green.”

“How much did we pay him?”

“ Nine hundred and eighty-nine dollars,” I told him. “George Texas is a sucker for an uneven sum of money.”

After a bit Claudie said: “I can’t figure how we’ve got over eleven dollars left.” His jaw was sagging like a gate with a broken hinge.

“Right,”I told him, “and here it is. Put it back in your overcoat lining.” I handed him a ten and a one.

“ What part of the lease did you buy back?” Claudie wanted to know.

“Well,” I said, “George Texas is a hard trader. At first he didn’t want to give up any part of it. I finally got a one per cent interest — a full one per cent.”

Claudie looked all worn out. It was too much for him to try to understand percentages, so I said, “Buck up, Claudie. Try to look at the bright side of things. You’ve got more money for a rainy day. The Widow Wiley is not in debt any more, the government is over four dollars better off, and we are not in any trouble. Nobody is hurt; not even George Texas. We didn’t do anything to him that he didn’t do to us — and then some.”

“Looks like everybody got something out of that deal but you, Clint,” he said. “What do you want ?”

“Well,” I told him, “before we leave the Widow Wiley’s, I might want to show Emma the Widow’s note marked ‘Paid in full.’ ”