They were unsure whether or not Phil Burbank and Bronco Henry had ever consummated their love because there is no such scene in the book. In the 1960s serious novelists knew such material was taboo. That night I did a careful re-reading and saw how this highly skilled writer had craftily transmuted what might have been an explicit physical scene in the hideout willows into a nature description that could offend no one but was quite obvious to those in the know.
