XIII

The first thing I noticed, waking, was the silence. There wasn't a sound anywhere, inside or outside the truck, except for the quiet breathing of the woman in my arms.

Gail stirred sleepily and burrowed closer. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees during the night- as it often does out there right after a storm. I stuck my head out of the covers and saw there was light under the canopy. The windows were white with frost. I summoned my courage and squirmed out from under the sleeping bag and blankets piled on top of us, tucking them back around Gail. I put on coat, hat, and boots, and opened my suitcase to find a pair of gloves.

I found them all right and stopped in the middle of pulling them on, looking at a small, unfamiliar, paper-wrapped package tucked in among my belongings. The printing on the wrapper said: RODRIGUEZ CURIOS, JUAREZ, MEXICO. I hesitated, pulled off the gloves again, opened the package and looked at the rolled-up belt inside-obviously a farewell gift from Mac, something he thought I might be needing on this job.

It looked innocent enough, just a handcarved leather belt with a heavy, ornate buckle. It was, I knew, almost as innocent as it looked. There were no secret compartments, no razor blades concealed between strips of leather, no steel spring knives or saws. The only gimmick was the buckle, carefully designed to serve a number of purposes, some quite lethal. It was a grim reminder that I hadn't come here to play amorous games in the snow.

"Good morning, darling," Gail's voice said behind me.

"Is it as cold as I think it is?"

"Colder," I said. "You stay wrapped up until I get the cab warm. How's the glamor girl this morning?"

"She never felt less glamorous," Gail laughed. "I'd make a terrible Eskimo; I like to take my clothes off when I go to bed… What have you got there?"

"Just something I picked up in Juarez."

The falsehood was a little harder to manage convincingly, I noticed, than it would have been the previous day. I dropped the open package in front of her.

"Oh, a belt," she said, and let it lie rather than expose herself to the cold by reaching out to investigate. "I don't like those damn big fancy cowboy belts. I think a man looks much smarter in a plain, narrow belt."

"I'll remember that," I said, "the next time I want to look smart."

Outside, I warmed myself quickly by shoveling the snow clear of the truck's exhaust pipe. Then I shoveled a path forward and started the motor to warm it up. The pickup rocked a little to indicate that Gail was moving around in back. I went back to investigate and found her sitting up with a blanket over her shoulders, pulling on a fresh pair of nylons. The snow was still frozen on the ones she'd had on the night before.

I said, "I told you to stay put."

She made a face at me. "It's not so cold."

Her breath made a misty plume on the still air. Her legs, in those sheer stockings, looked colder than anything on earth. I reached out and pinched one of her toes through the nylon.

"Can you feel that?"

She looked startled. "Why, no, I-"

"You," I said, "are a lovely dope."

I grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her towards me, disregarding her squeals of protest. I gathered her up in my arms, carried her around to the cab and shoved her inside.

"It'll start to get warm as soon as the sun rises, but in the meantime," I said, "you put that coat on and stay in there all covered up if you want to get out of this with a full complement of toes and noses, not to mention fingers and ears. What do they teach you Texas girls, anyway?"

She gave me a grin. "After last night, darling, need you ask?"

I started to close the door and stopped, looking at her. Something had changed in her face. It wasn't just that the hardships of the night had inflicted serious damage on the smooth, hard polish with which she'd embarked on this journey-that her elaborate hairdo was a tousled mess and her careful make-up mostly missing. She didn't even have much lipstick on. Then I realized that it was the mouth itself that had changed. It was softer and prettier than I remembered it.

"What's the matter, darling?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said, "but you'd better comb your hair. You look like a sheep dog."

I went back to melt some snow for coffee on the Coleman stove and told myself that a woman always looks more beautiful after you've made love to her, but I was suddenly a little scared. I didn't want her to turn into a nice girl with a sweet warm mouth. It didn't fit in with my calculations at all.

We had no trouble getting back to the highway, and it didn't take us long after that to reach Carrizozo. For some reason I found myself remembering the time I was working for an Albuquerque newspaper before the war- before Mac got hold of me and taught me a different profession-and had driven through Carrizozo in the spring when the cottonwoods were pale green and the tamarisk hedges were just turning pink. There were no pale new leaves on the cottonwoods today, and no feathery sprays of color on the tamarisks. There were just bare branches and tracked-up snow.

We needed gas, and Gail wanted a nice rest room. When it comes to selecting a place to go to the John, any woman can keep looking much longer than seems natural or safe, and she was no exception. The one she finally picked was no better than the three we'd passed up, as far as I could see, but it sold a brand of gas for which I had a credit card, so I turned in gratefully before she could change her mind.

The man who came up to fill the tank, after setting aside a snow-shovel, was wearing high-laced hunting boots and a red plaid cap with earflaps. He was on the young side of middle age, but not much so, and he had that kind of broad, freckled country face with a long, rubbery, lugubrious mouth and sad light-blue eyes that wouldn't change till he died.

"You folks come far this morning?" he asked. "Have any trouble? No, I reckon you wouldn't in this rig." He patted the fender of the pickup approvingly and glanced up. "Place you want is right around the corner of the building, ma'am, but you'll have to get the key off the cash register inside." He watched Gail walk away, with the veiled expression of a man who has his dreams. Then he glanced quickly at me. "You'll want the regular, I reckon, Mister."

"That's right."

He uncapped the tank and brought the hose over. "We get a big snow just about every year," he said, "but damn if people don't act like it was the end of the world every time it happens… You want me to take those chains off for you? You'll beat them to pieces if you leave them on, now the blade's been over the road. Cost you fifty cents."

"It's a deal," I said.

He got a big hydraulic jack and rolled it over. I stood by, waiting. I saw Gail come around the corner of the building, picking her way where the snow was packed so she wouldn't damage her fragile blue pumps. She'd made the necessary cosmetic repairs, combed her hair smooth and hung her pearls back around her neck. Her expensive sweater and skirt were telling no tales. There are still problems to be solved in the fields of science and medicine and international relations, but the ladies' garment industry has got it licked. Nowadays, a girl can spend the night out under quite strenuous circumstances and still greet the morning without a pleat out of place.

She looked pretty and feminine, tiptoeing through the snow like that, but I wasn't watching her just for aesthetic pleasure. I saw her discover the telephone booth nearby-or pretend to discover it. She glanced my way, and I nodded. She made her way over there and picked up the directory without closing the door. Watching her leaf through the pages, I saw her frown quickly and go back a page. She looked up, with a startled expression on her face. I walked over there.