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choice; what he did was inevitable, a course that was thrust upon him. At the time he could think of only one thing: that he had made the biggest mistake of his life in coming here. That he should never have come here, regardless of his need to, or of his nagging anger with McBride.
    The facts were, of course, that he would not have done so if he had been aware of the severed cable and the drill tools lost down the hole. He would have realized that McBride would blame him for the disaster, that he would take this—a seeming attack on his, McBride’s, work and company responsibilities—every bit as hard as, or harder than, he had taken the beating.
    But Lord hadn’t known about the lost tools. And there was no way now to compensate for this vital bit of ignorance.
    He should have got away from the place faster. He simply shouldn’t have been there to begin with.
    “I want to tell you something,” Lord heard himself saying. “I didn’t cut your drill cable. I can prove that I was in town all last night.”
    McBride’s lips drew back from his teeth in a broad, humorless grin. He laughed a high-pitched cackling laugh.
    “Yes, you can,” he said. “I’m sure of it. You’d lie and the whole town would swear to it.”
    He had aged ten years since the beating, Lord saw. He had lost almost forty pounds. He was haggard and deathly sick-looking, a man disintegrating under the conflicts of his job and his conscience. Lord had made him see the basic wrong of his existence, the only one he had ever lived or was capable of living. And because Lord had done so, and because he himself could not accept the responsibility, it became Lord’s fault.
    Everything. All of it…That woman in the compensation court, where he had testified for the company. That Negro ’cropper, watching dully as the huge tractors rolled through the family burial plot. The way his men looked at him. The way his dead wife had treated him. The… the starved bodies hanging in the barbed wire, and the long trench with the bubbling quicklime and the smell of roasting flesh, and…
    “I had a broken spring on my car,” Lord said very slowly, letting each word sink in. “I had to come here for help. I was going to pay for everything I used or broke.”
    McBride let out another high-pitched cackle. He said that, of course, that was the way it was and that was what Lord had intended to do. It was a lie, but Red and Curly and the woman would swear to it.
    “You,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp, slanting a glance at the two workmen. “You’ve drawn your pay. Now I’ll give you ten minutes to get off this lease.”
    “We’re sticking with Tom,” Norton said. “We figure—”
    McBride swerved the gun abruptly and let loose a shot between them. Then, as they fell back, he swung the gun back on Lord.
    “You’re my prisoner,” he said. “I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”
    “You can do that,” Lord said. “Don’t make much sense, though.”
    “Trespassing!” said McBride. “Willful destruction of property!” His voice rose. “Breaking and entering!” Now yelling. “Larceny!”—screaming.
    The screaming continued through a jumbled, run-together, incoherent mass of accusations. And then, abruptly, he began to giggle. This went on for a full minute, then ended as suddenly as the screaming had.
    “You there,” he said, jerking his head at Joyce. “Get that piece of rope and tie your boy friend’s hands behind him.”
    Joyce smirked nervously, either unable or unwilling to follow the command. Lord caught her eye, silently indicated that she was to obey. But still she could not or would not.
    McBride eyed her terribly, the cords in his throat swelling. “Do you hear me, you whore? Do as I tell you!”
    “W-Whore?” Joyce suddenly came to life. “You calling me a whore, mister?”
    “Yes, whore!” McBride seemed to delight in the word. “The lowest kind of whore! A filthy, slimy whore! A cheap, stinking, rotten—”
    She was