“Will you answer one question first?”

He has the talent to cock one eyebrow inquisitively. For some nonsensical reason she has always admired men who can do that. Ever since her third birthday when Uncle Dave—

She shuts off the thought, slamming a door roughly upon it; she says: “‘Investment opportunity for Western Americana bibliophile’—don’t you think that’s ambiguous? Your ad doesn’t make it clear whether you want someone to invest in your business so you can keep it going—or whether you just want to sell it and get out.”

He turns away momentarily. She guesses he’s looking at the customer in the back of the store. The man is well beyond earshot, putting a book back on its shelf and taking another down to examine it.

Doyle Stevens says, “How many sane people you think I’d find, invest money in this loony operation to keep it going?”

“So you want to sell it and get out.”

He waves a hand around, bringing within its compass everything in the shop.

“My wife and I owe the publishers close to ten thousand dollars in unpaid invoices. Another two, three thousand to the jobbers. Owe the bank sixty-five thousand in business loans, eighty thousand mortgage on our house. So you see the plain fact is, Miss Hartman—”

“Mrs.”

“Beg your pardon.” He takes it without a break in expression. “Mrs. Hartman. Plain fact is I could’ve filed bankruptcy but I’d rather not see a receiver take over this inventory. I kind of doubt we’d be fortunate enough to have it fall into the hands of a banker with a true hankering for Western books.”

He folds his hands, interlacing the fingers, looking down at them as if making a religious obeisance. “I was hoping to sell to somebody who’d have—at least a certain respect for this collection. Here, look here.”

He takes down off the shelf behind him a heavy hardcover with a pale blue dust jacket. It looks quite new. Stevens opens it with reverent care. “Triggernometry. Cunningham. The first edition, Caxton Press. Pret’ near mint condition. You have any idea how rare and precious this book is to a true collector?”

Then he replaces it on its shelf and heaves his thin arm high, pointing toward the very top of the bookcase. “Up there—all those? Firsts. Lippincott. Complete works of General Charles King, starting with The Colonel’s Daughter, eighteen and eighty-one. The first Western novel. The very first Western of all time.”

He possesses a bashful wicked smile like a little boy’s: peeking at you out of the corner of his eye, trying to get away with something when he thinks you’re not looking. “That is if you don’t count the penny dreadfuls and the Prentiss Ingraham dime novels and those God-awful stage melodramas of Buntline’s.”

She watches his face. He isn’t smiling any longer. He says in a different voice, “Who the hell remembers General Charles King now.”

“I’m afraid not I.”

“Why, shoot,” he says with a scoffing theatrical snort, “without Charles King there’d’ve been no John Ford, no John Wayne, no nothing.”

He is glaring at her. “I gather that doesn’t mean a whole hill of beans to you. So tell me, Mrs. Hartman. What are you doing here?”

She smiles to deflect the challenge. Liking him, she says, “What if you found an investor to back you with operating capital?”

He looks as if cold water has been thrown in his face. He catches his breath. “What are you saying to me?”

“I’m asking whether you’d prefer to settle your debts and close up shop and go spend the rest of your days in a trailer park—or whether, given the chance, you’d stay in business here.”

It evokes his ebullient laugh. “What the hell do you think?”

She turns a full circle on her heels, surveying the place.

He says: “It’d be very painful if I thought you were kidding around with me.”

It’s nothing wonderful, really. A self-indulgent novelty-specialty enterprise in a cutesy-poo shopping mall. A couple of walls of books, most of them of no interest to anyone whose interests don’t include such arcane memorabilia.

No one from her past life will ever dream of looking for her in a place like this.

“I’m not kidding around with you.” She faces Doyle Stevens. “How much do you need?”

“Thirty-five thousand for the moment. And no guarantee you’d ever see a penny’s return on it.” He says it quickly and takes a backward step, ready to flinch.

She says, “You’re just a hell of a salesman, aren’t you.”

“I’m glad you’re perceptive enough to recognize that God-given talent in me. Marian doubts I could sell air conditioners in Death Valley. God knows what ever got me into retail trade.”

“Do you regret it, then?”

“I regret I’m not rich, yes ma’am.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you now.” His smile has warmth in it for the first time.

She asks, “How much does the business lose in the course of a year?”

“Depends on the year. By the time Marian and I take our living expenses out—we can usually figure on breaking even more or less. But the last two years have been poorer than normal. Partly the economy. Partly that our customers keep getting older—the demographics would make a market researcher weep. Half our clients are geriatric cases. Sooner or later their eyesight goes bad or they pass away. Whichever comes first.”

A motorcycle goes by with a roar calculated to offend, and the white-haired man glares toward the window. “Our new generation there doesn’t give a hang about the old West. When was the last time you saw a Western in the movies? You don’t see any horse operas on the tube any more. Was a time twenty years ago there’d be two dozen cowboy series on the television every week.”

He looks grim. “Remember True Grit? When was the last respectable Western book on the bestseller list? It’s a sad thing, you know, but there’s a generation out there all the way up into their twenties who think the American myth has something to do with automobiles. They’ve never heard of Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp or Cochise.”

A man’s voice startles her from behind her shoulder. “Doyle, there’s a bloody story in that.”

It’s the customer in the khaki suit. He has a book in his hand. “This any good?”

Doyle Stevens takes it in his hand. “The Journal of Lieutenant Thomas W. Sweeny. Westernlore.” It brings out of him a reminiscent smile. “An absolute delight. Sweeny founded Fort Yuma, you know. Remarkable stories about the Indians down there. They had paddlewheel steamboats on the Colorado River in his day, did you know that?”

She remembers her brief stroll. “You could hardly float a toothpick on it now.”

The customer sizes her up. “That’s the bloody dam builders. You know a hundred and fifty years ago before it got overgrazed and before they bottomed out the bloody water table with too many deep wells, a good part of what’s now the Arizona desert used to be grassland. Green and lush.”

“It’s a shame,” she says with a polite little smile, wishing he would go away.

Doyle Stevens says, “Mrs. Hartman—Graeme Goldsmith.”

She shakes his hand. His eyes smile at her with more intimacy than she likes. He’s odd looking, especially up close where his astonishingly pale blue eyes take effect. It’s been too long since he’s been to the barber; he has a thatch of brown hair just starting to go thin at the front and she thinks she detects a pasty hint under the camouflaging tan: likely he drinks more than he ought to.

“That’s G-r-a-e-m-e,” he says. “Nobody can spell it. My mother fancied the bloody name.”

Time has faded the accent but he is distinctly Australian.

Doyle Stevens, about to burst, says, “Looks as though Mrs. Hartman’s going to be our new business partner.”

“That so?”

She says, “If Mrs. Stevens approves.”

“Well well. Good-oh. We’ll have to give it a proper write-up in the Trib.”

An alarm jangles through her.