Now he had on a suit. It was a pretty worn dark gray one, but it fit him all right. You could see that his hair had been cut. Without the hair covering the ears and that shell belt and all he wasn’t someone you would stare at. At least not till you saw him close.

That was not till a few minutes later. Until Mr. Mendez came out of the hotel and Russell nudged his roan up to in front of the office. As he dismounted he looked at me over the saddle and there was that tell-nothing expression, looking at me no different than the way he had looked at Lamarr Dean the moment before he broke a whisky glass against his mouth.

Mr. Mendez was standing there now. He said, “You’re going to do it?”

“I’m going there to sell the place,” Russell said.

Mr. Mendez seemed to stare at him for awhile, thinking or just looking, I don’t know which. Finally he said, “It’s up to you. You can be white or Mexican or Indian. But now it pays you to be a white man. To look like a white man for awhile. When you go to Contention, you say, How are you? I’m John Russell. I own the Russell place. Some people will remember you from before; some won’t. But they will all know you as John Russell who owns the Russell place. You look at it. If you don’t like it, sell it. If you like it, keep it, and see what happens and then decide.” Mr. Mendez almost seemed to smile. “Did you know life was that simple?”

“I’ve learned some things,” John Russell said. “That’s why I sell it.”

He left his roan horse in front and went with Mr. Mendez back across the street to the Alamosa Hotel. Mr. Mendez hadn’t bothered to introduce us. In fact he had not bothered to look at me at all. Which was all right.

A little later this Mexican boy who worked for us took Russell’s horse around to the stable. I was in the office then, having given up on seeing the McLaren girl again. The boy came in through the back carrying Russell’s blanket roll and carbine and put them down on the passenger bench. I remember thinking, What will he do without the Spencer if Lamarr Dean or Early are over there at the Alamosa?