I read for a while, a hunting-and-fishing magazine I'd brought along, and wondered how the duck hunting had been down along the Rio Grande that fall.  I'd been busy and hadn't been able to get away during the season.  I don't go after big game much anymore after all the years of tracking the biggest - or at least the most dangerous - game in the world, but there's still something special about wing shooting.  I listened to the shower running next door, and the john flushing, as the woman who'd been put into my care prepared to retire to the soft bed that was probably well over twice the size of the hard prison cot or bunk to which she was accustomed.

I remembered the happy, confident girl she'd been, and I reviewed in my mind the disturbingly erratic behavior of the hopeless, suspicious woman she'd become.  Well, after long confinement it couldn't be easy to cope with liberty, particularly a liberty that held out very little promise.  I was tempted to look in on her before going to bed, but I told myself she'd had eight years of bed checks; she deserved to be left alone on this, her first night of freedom.  But I was uneasily aware that I'd leaned on her pretty hard at dinner, needing her comlete story to confirm the judgment I'd formed of her auch earlier.  I couldn't help remembering the ugly scars on her wrist.  Even after I'd turned out my own light, a bright line showed under the connecting doors; and after while I found myself getting up again, putting on dressing gown and slippers, and extracting a small plastic vial from my toilet kit.

There was no answer when I knocked on the door.  A sudden panic moved inside me, and I pushed my way into the room beyond.  She was sitting on the side of the nearest big bed, in the big, brightly lighted double room, looking bleakly at nothing.  After a little, she turned her head, acknowledging my presence.  Then she smiled very faintly, and opened the hand that was clenched in her lap, displaying the little knife I had given her, closed.

"It's all right," she said.  "I wasn't going to.  Do you want it back?"

"Not if you weren't going to," I said.

"I had to know," she said. "It would be an answer, wouldn't it?  To everything.  But sitting here I decided it was the wrong answer.  Hell, I survived Fort Ames after a fashion; maybe I can even survive being out of Fort Ames.  May I have that sleeping pill now?"

"Yes, of course."

I went into her bathroom for a glass of water.  Returning, I gave her a capsule and the glass.  The knife was lying on the bedside table.  I left it there and helped her to rise and prepared the bed for her.  When I looked at her again, standing there, she was smiling that faint strange smile of hers once more.

"Service," she murmured.  "Do you tuck in all your clients, Mr. Helm?"

"We aim to please, ma'am."