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car lights all shut off, that Buick bouncing on its springs a little and the radio turned down low playing something Mexican out of Denver. Well, mister, they was having theirselves a good time. Well, so that fall old John and Lloyd’s missus jumped up and run off to Kremmling across the mountains there and holed up in a motel room. Shacked up, living like man and wife. But it wasn’t nothing to do there unless you was a hunter and wanted to take a potshot at a deer or a bull elk. It’s just a little place, you know, along the river, and ruttin in a kingsize motel bed can get tiresome after a while, even if you can lay the room off on somebody else’s credit card. So after a while they come back home and she went back to Lloyd and says to him you going to let me come back or do you want to divorce me? Lloyd, he slapped her so hard it spun her head around, and he says all right then, I guess you can come back. Then Lloyd and her went off on a running drunk. They got about as far as Steamboat Springs, I guess, and turned around. When they come back they was still together. I believe they still are. Lloyd, he said it took him all of a two-week drunk to wash old John Torres out of his system.
    How long did it take to wash him out of the wife’s system? Harold said.
    That I don’t know. He never said. But that’s one thing about him for sure. Old John could get to you.
    I don’t guess he’s getting to nobody now, is he.
    No sir. I reckon his day is over.
    Still, I guess he had his fun, Raymond said. He had himself a good run.
    Oh, he did that, Schramm said. None much better. I always thought a lot of old John Torres.
    Everybody did, Raymond said.
    I don’t know, Harold said. I don’t imagine Lloyd Bailey thought that much of him. Harold put his fork down and looked around the crowded diner. I wonder what become of that punkin pie she was going to bring me.
     
    W HEN THEY HAD FINISHED LUNCH AND LEFT MONEY ON the table for the waitress the McPherons moved next door into the sale barn for the one o’clock start. They climbed up the concrete steps into the middle of the half circle of stadium seats and sat down and looked around. The pipe-iron corral of the sale ring lay below, with its sand floor and the big steel doors on either side, the auctioneer already in place behind his microphone sitting next to the sale barn clerk in the auctioneer’s block above the ring, both of them facing the ranks of seats across the ring, and all the animals sorted in pens out back.
    The seats began to fill with men in their hats or caps and a few women in jeans and western shirts, and at one o’clock the auctioneer cried: Ladies and gentlemen! Well all right now! Let’s get to going!
    The ringmen brought in four sheep, all young rams, one with a horn that had splintered in the waiting pen and the blood was trickling from its head. The sheep milled around. Nobody much wanted them and they finally sold the four rams for fifteen dollars each.
    Next they brought in three horses one after the other. A big seven-year-old roan gelding came first that had white splashes on its underbelly and more white running down the front of its hind legs. Boys, the older of the ringmen hollered, he’s a well-broke horse. Anybody can ride him but not everybody can stay on him. Boys, he’ll get out there and move. And he understands cattle. Seven hundred dollars!
    The auctioneer took it up, chanting, tapping the counter with the handle end of his gavel, keeping time. A man in the front row allowed that he would give three hundred.
    The ringman looked at him. You’ll give five hundred.
    The auctioneer took that up, and the roan horse sold finally for six hundred twenty-five, bought back by its owner.
    They sold an Appaloosa next. Boys, she’s a young mare. Not in foal. Then they sold a black mare. She’s a young thing now, boys. About two years old, not broke. So we’re just going to sell her that way. Three hundred fifty dollars!
    After the horses were