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was a pool hall. Now, with the oil boom, Main Street was almost a mile long, and it boasted a fourteen-story hotel and a handsome sandstone-and-granite bank building. But in most respects the basic character of the town remained peculiarly unchanged. Only the oldest structures, the shabby nucleus of the place, seemed to have any permanence. There was a wraithlike quality about the others, the hastily thrown-up shops, honky-tonks, gin mills, and cothouses—yes, even the magnificient hotel and bank—an air of restless hovering, as though they had been brought here by the wind and must inevitably move on with it.
    Sadly, although why he was sad about it he wasn’t sure, Lord pictured the town as it once was and knew, with prophetic certainty, that it would be that way again. In a few years; a few decades, at most. It was only a matter of time until the magic of oil would lose its potency, and the town would be as it had been. Just another wide place in the road. Just big sands.
    Years ago, over in the wilderness of Iraan-way, he had waded a shallow place in the Pecos, and plowing through the tangled brush and trees on the other side, had come into a city. Its central square was paved. Its business structures were solidly and expensively built. In the tiled lobby of the motion picture theater stood a beautifully sculpted fountain—dry now, nested with scorpions and centipedes. For there was no one in the city. There had been no one there for so long that few people in Iraan knew of its existence and none could even remember its name.
    Lord drove slowly down the Main Street of Big Sands, expertly weaving a path between the high-booted men with their mud-daubed hats and the huge twenty-two-wheel trucks. He drove slowly, his manner idly deceptive, eyes and ears alerted for trouble in the raucous chaos of swarming crowds, coin pianos, and tinkling glassware.
    The city and county fathers had never been of a mind to banish the boom’s illegal elements; only to control them. For “everyone,” as was generally known, liked to drink, just as “everyone” liked to gamble and whore around a little. And as long as a man hurt no one but himself, what difference did it make?
    Tom Lord guessed that it made no difference to him, if it made none to others. He guessed it was every man’s right to make a damned fool of himself. “Sic transit gloria,” he thought, parking his car at the courthouse curb. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow…”
    He got out of the car and entered the courthouse.
    He climbed the stairs to the second floor and went down the shadowy, linoleum-floored corridor to the sheriff’s office. There was a light on there. He paused on the threshold, pushing the Stetson back from his forehead.
    “Somethin’ I got to tell you,” he said. “Didn’t know whether I should at first, but I guess I better. I just killed a fella…”

7
    S heriff Dave Bradley had changed radically since the pre-boom days of Big Sands. Or, to be fair, time and circumstances had changed him. Insofar as he was conscious of change, he disliked it and fought against it. He hated the increased responsibilities of his job, the necessity to be an important executive instead of a simple lawman. He hated the advancing age which made him curt without cause, peevish and suspicious without reason. Yet he could not hold back the years, and he would not retire from office.
    Sometimes he would hint at retiring, suggest that he was too old for the job and that a younger man was needed. But his friends and subordinates knew better than to agree with him. Or, if they didn’t, they soon learned. He wanted assurance, not agreement. He wanted to be told that he wasn’t old, that he was more than capable of his duties. So that was what he was told.
    He continued to run for office. Since no one would think of opposing him, he continued to be elected. Why not, anyway? Where was the harm? It made old Dave feel good, and Tom could do his work for him.