Say, is he married?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

She saw the ash-tray then and looked away from me. I watched her as she kept glancing nervously around and it was obvious she didn’t like the idea of our being in here. We went back outside. I walked out to the car and hit the horn-button three or four long blasts. Sound rolled out across the timber and then died away while we listened. There was no answer.

A small shed stood beside the derrick platform, over across the clearing, but from here we could see that the door was locked and he wasn’t anywhere around it. At the side of the shack a trail led down into a wooded ravine, and when she saw me looking down that way she said, “He might be down at the spring where he gets his water. I’ll walk down and see.”

“All right,” I said, starting to go with her.

“It’s all right,” she protested. “I’ll go. Why don’t you just wait by the car?”

I started to say something, and then shut up. For some reason she didn’t want me to go. Maybe she was afraid of me. I’ve got a homely, beat-up face, and I’m pretty big.

“O.K.,” I said. I sat down on the side of the porch and lighted a cigarette. She went down the trail. I could catch only glimpses now and then of the blonde head and the crisp blue of her dress, and then she went out of sight around a turn. I waited, smoking, and wondering what she was nervous about. When I looked again she was halfway up the trail, coming back. I watched her, thinking how it would be, the way you always do, and how pretty she was. She was a little over average height and had a lovely walk, even in the flat sandals, and there was something oddly serious about her face, more so than you’d expect in a girl who couldn’t be over twenty-one. She looked like someone who could get hurt, and it was strange I thought about it that way because it had been a long time since I’d known anyone who was vulnerable to much of anything. Her legs were long and very nice, and she wore rather dark nylons.

I stood up. “We might as well go,” I said. “He may not be back all day.”

“Oh,” she said. “I found him. He was down at the spring.”

I probably stared at her. She hadn’t been out of sight more than two or three minutes. And why hadn’t he come back with her?

“Did you get the car keys?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me. “No.