CONCERNING AN OUTLAW Early in the afternoon of the first day of December the sky darkened, and a cold, raw wind began to shriek through Willets.

The company corral was empty; and again, as on the day before Kane Lawler had visited him, Gary Warden stood at one of the windows of his office smiling.

Warden was almost satisfied.
Only one disturbing thought persistently recurred; Lawler had got his cattle through to Red Rock.
A crimson stain appeared in Warden's cheeks as his thoughts reverted to Lawler's return to Willets, after disposing of his cattle to the Red Rock buyer.

And Warden's shoulders sagged a little, the smile faded and he glared malignantly at the bleak, gray clouds that sailed over town on the chill, bitter wind.
Oddly, at the instant Warden's memory was dwelling upon the incident of Lawler's return to Willets, Lafe Corwin, the storekeeper, was mentally reviewing the incident.
Willets was a cow-town, and for the winter its activity was over.

All the beef cattle in the section, with the exception of three thousand head still held by Lawler, at the Circle L, had been shipped eastward, and Willets would now descend to supine indifference to considerations of gain.
Lafe Corwin was tilted back in a big wooden chair near the big, roaring-hot stove in the lounging-room of the Willets Hotel.