I'm fixin to go do somethin dumbern hell but I'm goin anyways. If I dont come back tell Mother I love her.

Your mother's dead Llewelyn.

Well I'll tell her myself then.

She sat up in the bed. You're scarin the hell out of me, Llewelyn. Are you in some kind of trouble?

No. Go to sleep.

Go to sleep?

I'll be back in a bit.

Damn you, Llewelyn.

He stepped back into the doorway and looked at her. What if I was to not come back? Is them your last words?

She followed him down the hallway to the kitchen pulling on her robe. He took an empty gallon jug from under the sink and stood filling it at the tap.

Do you know what time it is? she said.

Yeah. I know what time it is.

Baby I dont want you to go. Where are you goin? I dont want you to go.

Well darlin we're eye to eye on that cause I dont want to go neither. I'll be back. Dont wait up on me.

He pulled in at the filling station under the lights and shut off the motor and got the survey map from the glovebox and unfolded it across the seat and sat there studying it. He finally marked where he thought the trucks should be and then he traced a route cross country back to Harkle's cattle-gate. He had a good set of all-terrain tires on the truck and two spares in the bed but this was some hard country. He sat looking at the line he'd drawn. Then he bent and studied the terrain and drew another one. Then he just sat there looking at the map. When he started the engine and pulled out onto the highway it was two-fifteen in the morning, the road deserted, the truck radio in this outland country dead even of static from one end of the band to the other.

He parked at the gate and got out and opened it and drove through and got out and closed it again and stood listening to the silence. Then he got back in the truck and drove south on the ranch road.

He kept the truck in two wheel drive and drove in second gear. The light of the unrisen moon before him spread out along the dark placard hills like scrimlights in a theatre. Turning below where he'd parked that morning onto what may have been an old wagonroad that bore eastward across Harkle's land. When the moon did rise it sat swollen and pale and ill formed among the hills to light up all the land about and he turned off the headlights of the truck.