With tie flapping, shirt unbuttoned, shoes unlaced, Kear followed the boss through the living room and down the flagstone walk to the street. The boss opened the doors of the Honeychile Bakery truck and said, "In here."

Mrs. Jane Huprich dropped her mop. Her varicose legs trotted across the wet lobby of the Jordon Building, and her flabby fat arms reached for the tall man with bright eyes who stood near the elevators. "It's me, Mom," the man cried.

Mrs.

"Matt!" Mrs. Huprich cried. "Matt, baby!"

"I got a full pardon, Mom," Matt said, stroking her tangled white hair. "Right from the ruling state official. You won't have to scrub floors anymore! I'm going straight, Mom. I'm a good mechanic now. They learned me a lot in the enclosure. Come on. I got a used truck outside, I bought cheap."

Mrs. Huprich and son walked through the oddly twisted doors of the Jordon Building and into the gray twilight that awaited dawn. The Honeychile Bakery truck waited too.

Gary Abston peddled his bicycle against the flow of cars carrying day-shift workers through the half-light. He whirled into Walnut Street, twisted a fresh copy of the Morning Herald into a fiendishly clever knot, and hurled it in the general direction of a front porch that flashed past on his right. Never slowing, Gary threw the next paper entirely across the street. He chuckled as it cleared a picket fence. "Bang, bang!" he blurted. His red shirt, with a picture of a mounted cowboy on the back, ballooned in the early morning breeze.

Gary

"Whoa!" Gary roared. He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bowlegged man with squinting luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk. Gary looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The bicycle clattered in the street.

"Howdy, partner!" the tall man said. "The rustlers are headin' for the plateau! We'll take the short gash and head 'em off at the canyon!"

"Ramrod Jones?" Gary chirped.

"Here's the truck I haul Quizz-kid, the I.Q. Horse, in! Let's get after the rustlers!" Jones said.

"Gee, I've seen all your pictures, Ramrod," Gary said. "Silver City Raiders, Rustlers of Silver City, Silver City Rustlers—"

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