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own choice. He wouldn’t have been an employee until he reached camp.”
    Higby stared at him wonderingly. “Why, you silly son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “You stupid snotnosed bastard!” His voice was soft but it cut like a whip. “Do you know what the temperature was today? Do you know how far it is to the nearest undertaker? To the nearest public cemetery? To the nearest place where anyone gives a good goddam what happens to the body of a poor devil like this? DO YOU? WELL DO YOU, YOU STINKING LITTLE SHITBIRD?”
    He yelled out the last part, almost blasting the timekeeper from his feet. Depew turned white and put a trembling hand to his mouth. He could hardly believe what was happening, I imagine. After all, he was an important man—not just a timekeeper but the timekeeper—the chief representative of the banks.
    “N-now…now, really, Higby,” he stammered. “I resent.…”
    “Screw your resentment!” Higby snapped. “And put a mister in front of my name, hereafter! Make it loud and clear, get me?” He turned away from Depew, glanced around the circle of men until his eyes fell on us. “Four Trey, I can’t order you to, but.…”
    “You don’t have to,” Four Trey said. “Just give us an hour and some mucksticks, and Tommy and I’ll bury him.”
    “Good”—Higby’s smile warmed us. “I’ll remember it. But won’t you need some dyna?”
    Four Trey said we wouldn’t; we’d just look around until we found soft dirt. Higby nodded approvingly, and we got picks and shovels from the pickup. Then everyone loaded up again and drove away, leaving Four Trey and me with the body.
    We poked around with the picks for a few minutes until we found a patch of rock-free prairie. Inside of a half hour we had buried Bones or whatever his name was, mounding over the grave with rock to keep out the varmints.
    Four Trey leaned on his pick, resting, looking down thoughtfully at the grave, then raising his eyes to me.
    “Well, Tommy. Can you think of anything appropriate to the occasion? A few nice words for a guy who probably never heard any?”
    “I guess not,” I said. “I heard some words said over a guy out in the Panhandle, but I can’t say they were real nice.”
    “Let’s see.”
    “Well, all right,” I said. “Here it is:”
    Save your breath, and hold your water.
    He’s only gone where all of us gotter.
    Four Trey raised his brows at me. He said that he could see what I meant—whatever that meant.
    We moved away from the grave, lighting up cigarettes. The soughing wind turned cool, and the moon climbed up out of a distant hedge of Spanish bayonets, the giant cacti, and down in the Pecos bottoms a bobcat screamed in pointless fury. Far far away, yet clearly visible in the silvery moonlight, two wolves trotted up over a rise in the prairie, haunched down side by side and howled tragic complaints to the heavens.
    A little shiver ran up my spine. Four Trey stomped out his cigarette butt, idly asking me how many boes I’d run into out here that I knew.
    I said I thought I knew most of the six hundred. “I don’t mean I know them well, but I’ve probably run into them on other jobs.”
    “Just probably, right? You’d have to talk to them a while, get close to them, before you were sure.”
    “Well, yeah, sure,” I said. “Boes look a lot alike after they’ve jungled up for a while. When they get bearded out, and their clothes get ragged and dirty, it’s pretty hard to tell one from another.”
    “Yes,” Four Trey said, “yes, it is, Tommy. In other words, you might not recognize a man until you sat down next to him—on a flatbed truck, shall we say?”
    “Huh?” I said. “Are you saying that…that…?”
    “Mmm, no,” Four Trey hesitated. “I don’t think I’d go so far as to say it. Merely to point out the possibility that what appeared to be an accident wasn’t. Because those flatbeds were designed to carry men, and I just don’t see how a man could catch his foot in the