The fellows had quit rummaging through their lunch pails.

"Well, you got anything to say for yourself, boy?"

Will swallowed, felt the apple skin hitting bottom. "No, sir, except I got three and a half days’ pay comin’."

"Three," Overmire corrected. "We don’t count no half days around here."

Will worked a piece of apple peel between his front teeth. His jaw protruded and Harley Overmire balled his fists, getting ready. But Will only stared silently from beneath the brim of his sorry-looking cowboy hat. He didn’t need to lower his eyes from Overmire’s face to know what his fists looked like.

"Three," Will agreed quietly. But he hurled his apple core out beneath the pines with a fierceness that made the men start their rummaging again. Then he scooped up his towel-wrapped jar and followed Overmire into the office.

When he came back out the men were huddled around the time board. He passed among them, sealed within a bubble of dispassion, folding his nine dollars into his breast pocket, staring straight ahead, avoiding their self-righteous expressions.

"Hey, Parker," one of them called when he’d passed. "You might try the Widow Dinsmore’s place. She’s so hard up she’d probably even settle for a jailbird like you, ain’t that right, boys?"

Jeering laughter followed, then a second voice. "Woman like that who’ll put her card up in a sawmill’s bound to take anything she can git."

And finally, a third voice. "You shoulda stepped a little harder on his balls, Harley, so the women around here could sleep better nights."

Will headed off through the pines. But when he saw the remains of someone’s sandwich, left amid the pine needles for the birds, hunger overcame pride. He picked it up between two fingers as if it were a cigarette, and turned with a forced looseness.