Coroner Creek by Luke; Short Page A

the letter H inside, and with only a little imagination it could seem like a square-fronted shed with the door in the middle. It was plain enough why it had come to be called Henhouse.
    He unsaddled his own travel-leaned sorrel gelding and his pack horse, and turned them in the corral and then paused a moment to look at the layout around him.
    One thing was answered for him immediately. The crew wasn’t slipshod. The place was in repair, the fences good, the corrals clean, the gear stowed out of the weather and everything under roof that should be. He wondered idly what these three men he would boss were like. He tramped over to his bedroll and hoisted it to his shoulder, and went on toward the bunkhouse.
    It was built of small logs, and was the least weathered of the ranch buildings. He stepped into the open door, and then came to a halt and looked about him. Here, he saw in an instant, was his answer to the kind of crew Box H employed.
    For the room was neat as a military barracks. Three of the six bunks against the back wall held blankets, and these blankets were made up. Clothes hung neatly from nails in the wall, and the board floor was swept and had lately been scrubbed. The tattered magazines on the big table in the center of the room were stacked in trim piles, and the barrel stove in the front corner was polished blackly. He crossed the room and dumped his bedroll and warbag in one of the top bunks and then went over to the overhead kerosene lamp above the table. He pulled it down and looked, and then hoisted it back in place again. Yes, even the lamp chimney was clean.
    He stood motionless a moment, measuring this evidence and not liking it. He hadn’t seen these men yet, but he knew them already, for this bunkhouse, home to three men, was clean, neat, swept up, picked up; it argued that its tenants were settled and satisfied and comfortable—and soft. He could guess their ages at between thirty and fifty-five, three men who had found haven in this quiet job where they were fed and paid well by two women, and where they paid back these kindnesses by painting buggies or building cupboards or transplanting flowers. He thought meagerly, I won’t get help here. I’d better kill him and then get out , and for a moment he stood hesitant.
    The clang of the dinner iron moved him at last. He washed at the bench and bucket outside the door and tramped across to the lean-to, entered, and seated himself at the big table there. After the custom of the country, he turned over his plate, helped himself to the food and began eating. The clean, flowered oilcloth and the matched china plates and cups he noted, and he felt an indefinable irritation at sight of them.
    Presently Mrs. Harms came out, took the seat next him nearest the kitchen and Della sat down across from him. He ate steadily and silently, taking no part in their conversation, not even hearing it, and when he was finished he excused himself, about to rise, when Mrs. Harms said, “Smoke here, Chris. All the boys do.”
    Chris patiently rolled and lighted a slim cigarette, knowing Mrs. Harms wanted to quiz him and knowing, too, that this was the price he must pay for a kind of security. He could tell that Della was worried about her mother approving him, but that it wasn’t going to change her plans.
    Mrs. Harms started it by saying, “Have you worked around this country, Chris?”
    He moved his dark head in negation. “No, Ma’m. I put in six years as trail boss for a drovers’ outfit in Texas. Three years at Hashknife—Texas, too. I worked around before that, mostly in dry country.”
    â€œHave you ever run an outfit before as big as this?”
    â€œIf you run more than three thousand head, I haven’t, Ma’m.”
    A faint smile touched Della’s lips, but she did not look up.
    Mrs. Harms persisted. “I’d think with your experience, you’d own your own place.”
    A wicked flicker of