Jurgen watched the Pontiac creep past the front of the house, a green four-door, out of his view for several moments, now it appeared on the far side of the house and the trees in the yard, turning onto the road Darcy had made coming through the field with his trailers of cows. Jurgen watched the Pontiac coming across the barn lot now to creep past the stock pen. Then stop and back up. So the ones in the car could look at the cows? He watched the window come down on the passenger side and saw a young woman’s face, quite a lovely face, smoking a cigarette. He couldn’t see the man who was driving. Only his hat.

He remembered a green four-door Pontiac at the camp in Oklahoma. Watching through the fence to see who was in it. As he was doing now, watching from the cattle entrance to the barn, the chute where the cows and heifer in the pen would be prodded inside later tonight to lose their hides, their heads, their hooves, and finally all their parts.

He watched the Pontiac make a wide turnabout and leave the yard in Darcy’s tracks across the field, turn on to the main road and come this way, again out of view on the front side of the house. Jurgen waited. The Pontiac didn’t come past the house. It must have turned into the driveway that circled and came out again. But the car didn’t appear. It told Jurgen they had looked over Walter’s cows and now they were going to drop in for a visit.

He didn’t think they were friends of Walter’s.

Walter had only three friends he ever talked about: Vera Mezwa, the Ukrainian countess, and her houseman Bohdan; Michael George Taylor, the doctor who supplied Vera with invisible ink; and Joe Aubrey, the official of the Ku Klux Klan who owned restaurants and a light plane. Months ago he had asked Walter, “You’ve told them about Otto and me?”

Walter said, “You know what happened to Max Stephan and the Luftwaffe pilot.”

Jurgen said, “‘Loose lips sink ships.’”

Walter said, “What?”

The girl in the car was too young to be Vera Mezwa. The guy driving, only his hat visible on the other side of the lovely girl, but something familiar about the way he wore it-of all the ways there were to shape a felt hat-and thought of the marshal, Carlos Huntington Webster, Carl at the table in the department store with another man and a girl who could, yes, very possibly be the girl in the car smoking a cigarette. He liked her beret. If this was the same girl, the one driving could very well be Carl, Carl coming closer each day. He had thought earlier, Where will you see him the next time?

Here, where he was standing at the chute entrance to Walter’s slaughterhouse. Jurgen stepped inside.

Walter’s cutters would arrive after dark and set to work on the cows and the heifer, have sides of beef hanging before morning. Darcy would arrive in his snub-nosed refrigerated van he’d bought at auction, and get the sides out of here before any government inspectors showed up with their meat stamps. He’d take the load to Walter’s market where they’d hang and chill for twenty-four hours before Walter dressed them out. There were sides usually hanging in the barn’s chill room, from cattle bought at legal sales for inspectors who dropped by unannounced.

“That’s what they do,” Darcy said, “sneak up while you’re trying to make a living.”

Jurgen had never met anyone like Darcy Deal, a former convict-they had imprisonment in common-who worked now as a cattle rustler and looked the part in his sweaty cowboy hat and run-down boots with spurs. Darcy had a hard, stringy build and seemed to prefer looking mean. Jurgen was hesitant the first time he approached him.

“Do you ride a horse?”

“You askin’ if I can?”

“When you rustle the cattle.”

“I work afoot. Shake out a rope on the cow, put a feed bag on her and lead her to the truck, if I don’t use a trailer.”

“Then why do you wear spurs?”

“I walk in a bar, they hear my spurs jingle jangle jingle they know who I am.” Darcy grinned, three or four days’ growth on his face. “My boots are about worn through, but I never once had these can openers off ’em.”

Jurgen said, “I like the sound they make, that ching... ching, with each step you take.”

“You hear it,” Darcy said, “look out. They’s a cowboy come in the bar.”

Jurgen smiled. “Instilling fear in the hearts of the customers, uh?”

Darcy said, “Somethin’ like that.”

Jurgen asked him, “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re one of the Kraut prisoners broke out of somewhere. Walter says you stole a truck and drove out the front gate in it.” Darcy said, “I never tried to escape. I looked at gettin’ out in two years and I did, got paroled, but then busted my foreman’s jaw- we’re workin’ down in a mine and he give me some lip-so I was thrown back in to finish my time. This prison’s on a hill, two thousand yards from the Cumberland River, if you ever got a chance to see it from inside. Eddyville, named for a Civil War general.”

Jurgen was thinking, General Eddie Vill?

“General H. B. Lyon,” Darcy said. “Eddyville’s where he was from.”

Jurgen said, “Well, we both know what it’s like to be a prisoner, don’t we?”

Darcy said, “You don’t hardly have any accent.”

“I try to improve my English.”

“What’d you do in the war?”

“I commanded a tank in the desert of North Africa, sat in the turret with field glasses and directed fire. Our sixty-millimeter gun could destroy a British Stuart at more than a thousand meters. Other times I flew a single-engine reconnaissance aircraft, looking for British tanks they would try to conceal, covering them with Bedouin tents.”

“Is that right?” Darcy said, sounding interested, though Jurgen doubted the cowboy knew what he was talking about.

Darcy said, “You must’ve killed some people.”

Jurgen said, “Well, when we hit a tank it would often go up in flames. Sometimes one or two of the crew would get out.” He paused and said, “We would machine-gun them,” and paused again. “But not always.”

“I been shot at,” Darcy said. “Haulin’ ass out of a pasture. I pick up steers from growers that set their price of beef high and wait for buyers who don’t mind payin’ it.”

Jurgen had to think about this. He said, “The butcher is told how much he can charge for a pound of meat. But the grower, or the feeder, can ask any price he wants?”

“That’s how she works.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Don’t knock it, it’s why we’re in the black market business makin’ a good buck.”

“I’m surprised Walter has the nerve.”

“You kiddin’? Walter’s fuckin’ the United States government, breakin’ the law in the name of Adolf Hitler, ’cause Walter’s a hunnert percent Kraut.”

“You don’t care he’s your enemy?”

“Walter? The enemy’s over across the ocean, Walter’s my partner.”

“So you don’t care you’re breaking the law.”

Darcy looked surprised. “It’s what I do. How I make my livin’. I round up cows in the dark of night. It don’t have nothin’ to do with the government, my gettin’ back at ’em for puttin’ me in jail. Man, I’m an outlaw. I been one since I was a kid. I stole cars, I sold moonshine, I hit guys and the fuckin’ court’d call it ‘assault to do great bodily harm.’ Damn right, guy gives me lip, I’m suppose to take it?”

Jurgen was nodding. “Yes, of course, you’re an outlaw. You don’t need motivation to steal cows in the dead of night, other than it makes money for you.”

“So I can eat,” Darcy said. “Listen, take a ride with me in my truck. I’ll show you how to rope a cow and put her in the trailer.

Tell you what to say to her she won’t start mooin’ at you. You’re keepin’ an eye on the house, light showin’ in a window upstairs. You’re not nervous, but you wonder what the hell they’re doin’ they’re not in bed asleep.”