building was space, suggestive of the unending plains that surrounded
the town. Willets sat, serene in its space and solitude, unhurried,
uncramped, sprawling over a stretch of grass level--a dingy, dirty,
inglorious Willets, shamed by its fringe of tin cans, empty bottles, and
other refuse--and by the clean sweep of sand and sage and grass that
stretched to its very doors. For Willets was man-made.

From the second story of a brick building that stood on the southern
side of the street, facing the station, Gary Warden could look past the
red station into the empty corrals beside the railroad track. Jim
Lefingwell, Warden's predecessor, had usually smiled when he saw the
corral comfortably filled with steers. But Gary Warden smiled because
the corral was empty.

Warden was standing beside a flat-topped desk at one of his office
windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame
of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried
his flesh gracefully. But Warden had lived well, denying himself
nothing, and the flesh which had been added had formed in flabby
bunches, drooping his shoulders, sagging his jaws, swelling the back of
his neck.

And yet Warden was not old; he had told some new-made friends in Willets
that he was thirty-five. But he looked older, for a certain blasé
sophistication that shone from his eyes and sat on the curves of his
lips, did much to create the impression of past maturity.

Warden dressed well. He was coatless, but he wore a shirt of some soft,
striped material, with a loose, comfortable-looking collar and a neat
bow tie. His hair was short, with bristles in the roll of fat at the