`` I don't have many strays coming to my front door '', he said.

`` I mean, we don't have any way to get there and we can't expect you to quit work just to take us to town ''.

There's someone there I have to see.

I have to think about it.

We'll still have the rifle, and I might be able to round up some more.

As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.

I have it with me, right here.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

Don't like to bother no one unless we have to, which I figger we do, in your case.

`` I have a little job for you, Charlie.

`` You and I have a little talking to do, Jess.

I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and -- Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

I wouldn't have known the difference.

under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.

I went to the hall in the afternoons only, on these preliminary matters.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.

I let up on the accelerator, only to gradually reach again the 60 m.p.h. which would, I hoped, overhaul Herry and the blonde, and as there were cars whose drivers apparently had something more important to catch than had I, Mrs. Major Roebuck settled down to practicing on Corporal Johnson the kittenish wiles she would need when making her duty call on Colonel and Mrs. Somebody in Sante Fe.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously.

Maybe Lou was only unconscious, but right then I thought he must be dead.

But I promised Joyce I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.

I said, `` O.K., so now only Blake knows.

True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.

`` Nope, just you, all the time -- sometimes I think it's the only way I'll ever get a decent partner ''.

`` I only said I was hungry.

His London contract was rescinded, and now, he explains cheerfully, as a bright smile lightens his intense, mobile face, `` I conduct only one hundred and twenty concerts ''!!

`` Now that Bruno Walter is virtually in retirement and my dear friend Dimitri Mitropoulos is no longer with us, I am probably the only one -- with the possible exception of Leonard Bernstein -- who has this special affinity for and champions the works of Bruckner and Mahler ''.

I was chairman, the only not youthful participant.

The latter in turn assured him that `` were I arraigned at the bar, and you my judge, I should expect to stand or fall only by the merits of my cause ''.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

When one of the men in the hall behind us spat on the floor and scraped his boot over the gob of spittle I noticed how the clerk winced.

In the mornings, I was informed, fluorescent tubes, similar to the one above the counter, illuminated the entire hall.

By counting the number of stalls and urinals I attempted to form a loose estimate of how many men the hall would hold at one time.

I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

But there's one thing I never seen or heard of, one thing I just don't think there is, and that's a sportin' way o' killin' a man ''!!

Adios '', I said, exhausting my Spanish vocabulary on my host and exchanging one of a scarcely-tapped store of smiles with my host's daughters.

I seized the rack and made a western-style flying-mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag -- and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later -- my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and -- but this is no medical report.

Seeming much relieved, she smiled one of those worth-waiting-for smiles, and I smiled all the way into the bedroom.

I worked for my Uncle ( an Uncle by marriage so you will not think this has a mild undercurrent of incest ) who ran one of those antique shops in New Orleans' Vieux Carre, the old French Quarter.

I dismissed these feelings as wishful thinking but I could not get it out of my head that we had a strong physical attraction for one another and we both feared to dwell on it because of our relationship.

I don't even remember who wrote it but it was one of those 15th or 16th century poets.

I felt that he looked at me coldly and appraisingly and seemed to be uncertain what his attitude towards me should be, but he did not say one word which might indicate that he had been told of advances to his wife.

Of course, males play a role there, but believe me when I say you wouldn't enjoy yourself one bit on Eromonga.

I clapped the big man with the bleached hair on his shoulder and said heartily, hoping it would make an impression on the women: `` This one is the maku Frayne.