Willets buildings were not imposing.  One-story frames predominated, with here and there a two-storied structure, or a brick aristocrat seeming to call attention to its substantial solidity.

Willets had plenty of space in which to grow, and the location of the buildings on their sites, seemed to indicate that their builders appreciated the fact that there was no need for crowding.  Between each building was space, suggestive of the unending plains that surrounded the town.  Willets sat, serene in its space and solitude, unhurried, uncramped, sprawling over a stretch of grass level—­a dingy, dirty, inglorious Willets, shamed by its fringe of tin cans, empty bottles, and other refuse—­and by the clean sweep of sand and sage and grass that stretched to its very doors.  For Willets was man-made.

From the second story of a brick building that stood on the southern side of the street, facing the station, Gary Warden could look past the red station into the empty corrals beside the railroad track.  Jim Lefingwell, Warden’s predecessor, had usually smiled when he saw the corral comfortably filled with steers.  But Gary Warden smiled because the corral was empty.

Warden was standing beside a flat-topped desk at one of his office windows.  Warden was big, though not massive.  He seemed to have the frame of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender he might have carried his flesh gracefully.  But Warden had lived well, denying himself nothing, and the flesh which had been added had formed in flabby bunches, drooping his shoulders, sagging his jaws, swelling the back of his neck.

And yet Warden was not old; he had told some new-made friends in Willets that he was thirty-five.  But he looked older, for a certain blase sophistication that shone from his eyes and sat on the curves of his lips, did much to create the impression of past maturity.

Warden dressed well.  He was coatless, but he wore a shirt of some soft, striped material, with a loose, comfortable-looking collar and a neat bow tie.  His hair was short, with bristles in the roll of fat at the back of his neck; while at his forehead it was punctiliously parted, and plastered down with precision.

Warden was not alone.  At another window, her elbows on the sill, her hands crossed, her chin resting on the knuckles of the upper one, sat a woman.

She was young, slender, lissom.  There was grace in every line of her, and witchery in the eyes that watched Warden with a steady gaze.  She too, was hatless, seemingly conscious of the beauty of her hair, which was looped and twisted into glistening strands that fell over her temples and the back of her neck.

As she watched Warden, who was smiling at the empty corral, she withdrew her elbows from the window-sill, twisted around, so that she faced Warden, and idly twirled the felt hat that she took from her lap.

“Does something please you, Gary?” she asked with slight, bantering emphasis.