Miss Rowan and I have decided that Harvey didn't do it, and I'm stuck. If it had been plain and simple that he did it I would have been back there to keep your desk dusted when I was supposed to, day before yesterday. Miss Rowan has hired a lawyer from Helena with a reputation that stretches from the Continental Divide to the Little Missouri, and it would be his problem. But I suspect he doesn't see it as we do. His head's on it, but I don't think his heart's in it. Mine is, and one will get you fifty that Harvey's clean. So you see how it is, I've got a job. Even if I had no obligation to Miss Rowan as her guest and an old friend, I've known Harvey Greve too long and too well to bow out and leave him in a squeeze.

Of course from July 31, day before yesterday, I'm on leave of absence without pay. I hope to be back soon, but as it stands now I have no suggestions for a replacement for Harvey in the jug, and it looks like-excuse it, as if-there'll have to be one with good credentials. If you want to have Saul or Orrie at my desk, my strictly personal things are up in my room, so all my secrets are safe. Television here is often a bust, and I have got to be back in time for the World Series. Give Theodore my regards and tell Fritz my first thought every morning is him-the breakfast in his kitchen I'm missing. In these parts the two favourite nicknames for pancakes are torture disks and gut plasters. AG

When he got it, probably Monday, he would lean back and glare at my chair for a good ten minutes.

As I left the post office I took a look at my shopping list. The population of Timberburg was only 7463, but it was the biggest batch between Helena and Great Falls, and its customers covered a lot of territory-from the Fishtail River, where the hills graduated into mountains, east to where the range got so flat you could see a coyote two miles off. So in about an hour I got everything on my list, with four stops on the main drag and two on side streets. The items: