About The Names We Go By (Added Content)

Post 1661:

The Names We Go By: A Novel (Added Content)

Chapter 1: Loot

            He was set up high in the hills behind three granite boulders that tended toward pink in the sun. A small opening in the rock afforded enough space to manage the barrel of his rifle down the slope, gunmetal as still as the stones left and right. Someone was riding alone and deliberate up the trail to his cabin. He wasn’t much partial to hosting company. Just a little longer and the lone stranger would know permanent the error of coming this way.

            His repeater was cleaned from the night before and aimed at a point where anyone sticking to the trail would have to cross, maybe a hundred yards down. His gloved hand steadied the weapon while an unadorned trigger finger was bent ready and hard calloused. He heard a raspy voice calling, “Hey Loot! Loot Moreno! You up there!?”

            As the rider below kept on, he let out a half minute’s stored breath and allowed his body some slack. A familiar face passed by the gunsight. He got up slow and dusted off his heavy wool pants, steady and sure-footed around the boulders while high pines drifted back and forth under a sharp afternoon sun. Jasper Bedford was close now, struggling atop a horse appearing to match the rider for age. “When you going to learn to make yourself known farther down the hill?” asked Moreno. His throat caught as he tried to project. It had been a spell last he’d said so many words running.

            “Your violence could never extend to me,” Jasper announced, slurring his proclamation a touch as he eased back the reins. “Our rich history has taught me so, though I’m sure you’d jump to say otherwise.” He gathered steam as he spoke and patted his vacant stomach. “Ah, lives such as ours can’t be snuffed so trivially.”

            Moreno’s voice was steadier and attained a sharper edge. “Point is, I don’t know if it’s friend or other. Holler sooner. My mutt blood doesn’t come with the power to see past what is.”

            Jasper appeared ready to let fatigue slide him from his saddle as Loot neared. “I can’t ever remember when I’m supposed to call out. Apologies. Confusing in a way, rocks and the trees. Everything out here tends toward sameness.”

“I suppose.”

“Don’t be so disappointed in me,” Bedford huffed. “I’m a top hand at finding the nearest saloon, regardless of orientation.” Jasper’s long bare chin was raised, trying to claim back some dignity.

            “Well,” said Loot, “that’s got the ring of truth.” He took the reins with his naked hand and ushered the gray gelding up a widening trail carpeted with brown tree needles to his home; just a little cabin, fashioned out from an indention in the mossy cliff-side. “All to say, if you’re feeling unsure out here, early introductions are best.”

            Bedford sat high in his saddle before addressing Moreno with a formal bow. “Your logic is concise and unimpeachable, my friend.”

            “Get on down,” Loot said, breath still quicker than normal. “Come inside and take coffee. Smelling whisky about, so I reckon you already got a jump on feeling warm.”

            “I did indeed,” Jasper smiled tentatively. He was weary and near drunk by any reasonable standard. Coming up on Moreno’s hideaway absent proper form was a good way to hasten St. Peter. He whispered a warning reminder to himself for next time, else it might be his last.

            Loot moved fast to spell the horse its rider. “You’ve got a look like you might be about done in. Take my hand. I’ll help you off.”

            “Cheers. My steed could be tuckered. A ghastly trudge to get up here.” Jasper cleared his ragged throat and spit once his feet were under him. “More importantly, my procreative elements suffered greatly from this unforgiving saddle. The leather is harder than diamonds.”

            Loot patted the weary animal just above his drooping eyes. “A bettin’ man might wager on your horse falling dead before too long.”

            “Oh,” Bedford said, scratching his wrinkled brow in wonder, like Loot’s assessment was a revolution in thought. “Losing Rocinante would be a dreadful loss. I really enjoy him, despite the deleterious effect riding has on my balls.” He stood up on his toes a little when he said despite. It was a habit Moreno had noticed and tried figuring out for years. Bedford liked to get higher up to put extra heat to a word, but there was no telling when it might be or what word might command the honor.

            “You’re strange, JB, even for an old white man. Gonna get to what brings you?” Loot hitched the horse and opened the door to his little hideaway. It was a tidier situation than one might expect from the outside. A dry, single room setup that served mostly as surroundings for a large cast-iron potbelly stove. Transporting it up the steep hillside might’ve whittled years from a man less robust than Moreno.

            “Yes, what brings me,” Jasper said, removing a tan duster big enough to force Loot into assuming it was a borrow. He placed it on one of two chairs in the cabin and took to the other like he’d just endured all forty years of wilderness. “I know you don’t love callers, but I felt duty bound to make the ascent.”

            Loot pulled the other chair near his visitor and sat himself. “Something’s weighing heavy, enough to go through that flask more than once.”

            “No fooling you.” Jasper was staring at the table, rubbing the sleeves of his wrinkled brown suit for warmth. “I always said you should’ve been a newsman.”

            Loot grunted. “Nothing against your trade, but I never myself understood the draw.”

            Bedford kept to the table, attempting to avoid the sober midnight blue of his friend’s eyes. “Like I said, apologies for scaling Olympus. You value your privacy, I understand.”

“Value might not be the right word, Jasper.” Moreno kicked the dirt-covered stone floor with the heel of his boot. “People don’t hole up like this without necessity hammering in some of the nails.”

            “Of course,” Jasper smiled, patting the top of his glistening head. He was about the only “European” Loot had ever known that refused a hat. It didn’t make much sense to him or anyone else, considering the nature of the man’s hair. It was sparse and ragged and nonexistent saving the sides, the color of chalk or soot, depending on the spot. There was something to his looks, though. Bedford had forgiving brown eyes to match his suit and slumped shoulders that would rise to meet excitement or fall to share a burden. His was a posture of ready humility, always reacting and therefore always engaging. Most meeting the wrinkled writer gave over to his winning ways within minutes. In that regard, Loot, as much as he’d deny it, was like the herd.

“I understand it’s not been ideal up here, but solitude sometimes is best society,” Jasper said, all thumbs, trying to find the old feeling of familiarity with his host. It had been near six months since their last encounter.

            “Best society. Is that one of your writings?”

            “Hell no. It’s Milton. Paradise Lost? Forget it. I was trying too hard. Foolish.”

            “Paradise Lost, huh?” returned Moreno. “Well, that’s a title I can get my head around. The lost part, anyhow.”

            Bedford realized he was clenching his veiny hands with strength not called upon in many years. He wrenched them apart and used one to awkwardly smack Loot on the knee. “I’ve said it before, but a woman or two could really make time go faster. Isolation is fine, but life needs punctuation marks.”

            “You’re saying what you’re always saying? Saying it different?”

            “Yes! Copulation, my good man. I can always hire a few discreet beauties to make you forget about things.”

            “What things in particular?” Loot would play along, seeing that it was helping to speed Jasper’s recovery.

            “Anything in particular. Anything in general. I find that in general, a little affection can cover a multitude of particulars.”

            “Same old letch, Jasper.”

His shoulders were high as they’d go, a product of the lightened mood. “I won’t prevaricate. You’ve always had my measurements.”

“Don’t know how you get through a day without paying for flesh.”

            “Me neither,” returned the writer, now hitting Loot on the arm. “But,” Jasper stopped, all of a sudden embarrassed. His hollow drunkard’s cheeks turned ruddy, regretting the frivolous course the conversation had taken. There was hard truth on the docket and a swift tonal change wasn’t the best way to go about things. Still. Enough stalling. Had to be done. He leaned in for the sharp bend. “I came to let you know, word from Thunder Hill was sent through on the telegraph. That’s the machine, we’ve had one—”

            “I know all about it. On and on about that damn thing each time seeing you.”

            “Of course,” Jasper coughed, sitting up solemn as his back would take. “Anyway, word came down that Ben Laird’s dead. Happened yesterday. I climbed Rocinante for this mountain the minute I confirmed the sad news.”

            Loot moved strange and turned his head as he took in Jasper’s report, like dodging slow punches. “How?”

            “Fever grabbed him up and didn’t let go. Only took a week, start to finish. Something in the lungs. Said the last few days it was like he was breathing underwater.” Jasper imagined a bought woman from the week previous, anything not to contend with the choking sensation presently gripping his throat. Fighting the urge to pull for his flask and shrink lower, he instead raised his bearing high to Loot. His friend was now standing over the homemade table, head almost forcing up the roof. Jasper’d never seen a man to match him on the frontier. A neck like a tree trunk. Legs bigger than the average westerner’s waist. Hair black like coal ran south of his shoulders absent a hint of gray, despite a run of years now stretching well into middle age. Dark blue eyes didn’t seem likely on a face with such uniformly olive skin, but you could trace that back to his unique extraction. Loot’s mother was a white settler who’d come over with a big family from somewhere in the high climes of Europe with barely a nickel and barely a word of English. Jasper’d heard rumors of a scandal, some sort of affair with one of society’s “undesirables.” A young rider that caught her eye, apparently named Moreno. He was hanged shortly after Loot’s birth, this unwanted horseman, part Mexican and part Indian. The only time Bedford spoke with Moreno about his past, Loot put on like none of it made a difference. No allegiance to any band of people or group had ever earned him a damn thing, he said. The only tribe he’d ever joined turned him bad and done the world wrong. He explained it vague, not enough to help Bedford make sense of it. Jasper found the parts he knew and the parts he didn’t endlessly fascinating, but the writer made no more approaches toward it. He’d always respect Moreno’s wishes, much as his inquisitive nature told him to do otherwise. In a wide-open country where the individual was a castle, Loot was a fortress on a hill too high for the clouds. Close as Moreno kept his own council, Jasper, without knowing exactly the reasons, knew the man cared a whole heap about very few.

            One such was Ben Laird. 

            “Damn. Preacher Laird. Damn shame,” Moreno said, setting down a shaky tin cup of coffee in front of his guest. “Should’ve had some more years left in him.”

            “I thought you’d want the news, bad as it is. And you don’t have to tell me what it was… the connection and the like. I know I’ve asked b—”

            Moreno covered Jasper’s mouth. “You hear that?” he asked, hand still where he left it. It was large enough to cover most of the writer’s face. “Twig broke. Sounded not too far off.” Moreno listened breathlessly a little longer and sprang. With strange agility he grabbed his repeater and glided out of the cabin, down the hill to his spot behind the three boulders. He fell to his chest silently, just in time to catch sight of black hair coming across his field of vision. One shot. Before the smoke cleared, he knew he’d hit his target dead between the eyes.

            “Should I ready myself?” Jasper yelled, doing a bad job of moving quickly down to Moreno on his skinny legs. Loot was leaning against one of the boulders by the time Bedford made his way. The newspaper owner was struggling to free his pistol from its holster and wiping sweat from his spotty forehead with a favored red silk handkerchief. The thin air wasn’t helping his lungs to find respite.  

            “It was just a bear. Big for a black. Had a good summer of eating, looks like.”

            “That’s nice,” Jasper panted, still a little on edge from Loot’s sudden dash.

            “Not really. I’m fixed for meat.”

            “Why then did you fire?”

            Moreno was a little embarrassed, poor decisions with a gun not being a common trait. “Didn’t know it was a bear until I’d already fired.” He paused abruptly. “Or maybe I did. Hell, thought someone might’ve followed you up here, Jasper.”

            “I’d never give away your spot, Loot.” Despite his wily ways, Bedford could pull an honest face and mean it when the occasion called.

            “I know it,” said Moreno. “C’mon back inside and take a load off.” He walked up and stood square to his friend. The sun was getting lower and his massive shadow was thrown up along the boulders behind. “Truth is, I shouldn’t have shot. Didn’t used to make mistakes. Not that kind.”

“But your aim was perfect. I’m still trying to figure out how you heard it from the cabin.”

It’d take more than a bit to describe being in tune with nature. Moreno chose a smaller explanation, one with a quicker exit. “Killing’s not the hard part, JB. Deciding, choosing’s the hard part. Either I’m old or Ben Laird’s death has me jumpy.” There was a solemnity in his voice the newsman couldn’t recall hearing.

Once inside, Loot seemed unsure whether to sit back down, moving cautiously. He was somewhere else, even in the familiar confines.

            Bedford had a sip of near tasteless coffee and coughed, saying, “Also wanted to tell you I was off to the funeral.”

            “Why?”

            Jasper pulled out a flask from the coat pocket next to his heart and drank the coffee taste away. He’d done his sacred duty as the bearer of bad news. Now he could resume normalcies without feeling too guilty. “Well, I knew the man. And there’s more than a few folks from Durington heading down.”

            Loot wasn’t mad at the newsman. Just mad in general. People had every right to pay their respects to Ben Laird. And Jasper, he was the type that earned his keep and helped more than most would ever try. Still. “Sounds like scheming. You’re wondering who’ll show up. Write one of your stories on it.”

“I don’t have any malicious intentions,” Jasper said pointedly. “But yes, I made plans to pen something simple to honor the good pastor. Nothing beyond that.” He rubbed at his thin salt and pepper mustache as it quivered from nerves.       

Moreno’s voice was a locomotive engine when he called upon it, arrestingly low and powerful, and he knew it. “Sorry, JB,” Loot said, gentler now. “Anyway, Thunder Hill’s a long ride. Day more than Fort Callaway, if you’re really about your business.”

            “We’ve got three days until the service. They’re holding off, presumably on account of all the people coming in for saying goodbyes.”

            “Best be on your way then,” Loot said. His delivery was too flat and cold to be believable as an honest demonstration of his feelings; from years of conversations and searching questions, Jasper could discern that much.

            “I’m sorry,” Bedford said, standing up. “I really am.”

            “It’s not your fault, Jasper.”

            “I know. But I’m wondering if I should’ve said anything. Obvious you’re itching to go to Thunder Hill. Looks like you’re ready to knock down a wall. Not that I need a demonstration.”

            “How could I? Too many gawkers. You know I can’t risk it.”

            “That’s precisely my point. Sticking my nose in.” Jasper clenched his weathered teeth together after another stingy drink. “Anyhow, anyway, I’m truly sorry about your friend.”

            Loot stood up and signaled the visit’s drawdown. “Appreciate you coming up here and giving me the news. No small favor. I’ll be owing you.”

            Jasper took his mighty hand for a shake, having one last look around the cabin. Orderly as it might be, he felt for his friend. The thing Milton said about solitude and society felt like horseshit. As publisher of the Durington Daily, he was well-versed in the practice. A man could move a heap of nonsense with the right words. “It’s me that forever owes. Be seeing you, Loot.”

            Moreno watched Bedford down the trail, one old horse on top another. He’d kept his calm through the visit as best he could, but his insides were suffering. He walked in circles over the flat ground in front of the cabin, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets, heart and head arguing the immediate future. If he could’ve taken leave of his body for a minute, he might’ve forgiven himself the turmoil to recognize the undeniable drama. In a life full of gunpowder and darkened decisions, Loot Moreno had only made a few friends that were worth a handshake. One was heading down the mountain, on his way to stand over the grave of another.

            “No,” he said, over and over, repeating the circle until his boots had cleared the pine needles from his path. A taste like iron and ash filled his mouth and nose. The past and all its leavings were pressing on his brain, coming to the fore, dashing what little peace he had like breakers against rock.

            Finally, he stopped retracing steps and repeating words. Jasper Bedford was out of sight now, probably nearing the flats leading into Durington. The short walk back to his cabin was labored and panicky. Despite the brisk air swirling against the mountain, little circles of sweat were collecting underneath his rugged arms. I’m just worried for the boy, he thought, removing the single glove to look disdainfully at the top of his hand and the mark carved into the skin. He wanted to forget the time when he looked at it with pride. Live with it like you have been, he thought, arguing with himself. It wasn’t an uncommon thing for Moreno, considering the isolated nature of his existence. This was different, though. This one-party quarrel was going somewhere. It was about going somewhere. It won’t hurt to go check on him. Ben’s not around anymore. You can talk to Doc Rufus, make sure he’s okay. Kip and the rest of the townsfolk of Thunder Hill will never know you were there. Same as it always was.

            This was the logic that led Loot onto his saddle and down the mountain. After packing enough provisions to quickly get there and back, he took the western hill trails that skirted Durington Valley and gave Fort Callaway an extra wide berth. It was a strain to put on Pecos, but Moreno knew how far and long to push the muscular quarter horse. Despite the roundabout route, they made it to Thunder Hill’s vicinity ahead of the big party that set off from Durington. No surprise. He’d spent most of his days in a saddle, chasing or being chased. Putting himself out to pasture was a fairly recent development, compared to the whole of things. Not enough time to unlearn the ways of getting around fast and quiet over difficult terrain.

            After sighting the town, he stopped just above the tree line on the mountains to the south. Thunder Hill was plumb center in a valley flat as a table, surrounded by cliffs and mountains on all but one side. There was no way to approach without being seen for miles. “We’ll wait till dark,” he told Pecos, patting his deep brown coat just above the shoulder. Loot could hear the sound of water nearby; either a little mountain stream or waterfall. “Let’s get you a drink, brother,” he said, walking Pecos along the uneven slope, taking his time. It was no use lunging about and turning an ankle. Although the two-day trip had been steady as she goes, he had a sense that getting hobbled could mean the end. Maybe it was the feeling that his sand was on the wane; he’d never speak it, but his legs and back were giving him little fits. Loot held the reigns and watched each step carefully as the sound grew in intensity. “Not much fun off the beaten path, brother,” he whispered, guiding Pecos gently along. “Just a little farther and we’ll take rest till night’s black as coal. Moon won’t be much. Then we’ll go see Doc.”

Chapter 2: Kip

            “There is but one thing we can seek with a mind toward what matters. One thing that can’t be moved when we strip it all away. The loves and desires of this world, enticing as they may be, are nothing compared to the Glory of God.” Kip Laird believed what he spoke. He needed to. The only father he’d ever known was gone and there were secrets in his midst. A look down at Ben’s bible gave him strength, but stubborn questions persisted. Getting on with the day was the goal. Then, getting answers.

            Everyone packed in the humble church was transfixed on the young man behind the pulpit. Many of the females were quietly taken hostage by his bold green eyes and precociously handsome face; despite the worthy menfolk sitting in their midst, men they’d sworn to cherish alone. There wasn’t much harm in it, one of those innocuous untouched understandings, like a thousand silent contracts folks strung together in community enter into without form or rancor. The entire congregation, young and old, couldn’t help but admire Kip’s humble passion and sense for the Good Book. His voice was fresh and eager. There was excitement in it, a signal to all that he loved speaking and hinted at an even stronger fondness for listening.

            As adept as Laird could be at handling the Message and the wanting eyes and all the rest, now there was a new heaviness to hide in everything he said and did and everything that went on around him. His adoptive father’s body lay still in the house next to the church; the man who’d preceded Kip in the running of the church and one of the founding members of the Thunder Hill community. Man, woman, and child alike did their best not to stir and cry at the thought of Ben Laird, stiff and cold, spirit already ascended, flesh prepared for the dirt.

            It wasn’t Sunday. The usual din of a working town drove on steady outside the church walls. Between needed words of hope and comfort, the congregation cringed hearing the sounds of the less devoted to God and His word.

            “Ben built this house of praise and worship with his own hands and sweat, alongside many of you, when I wasn’t even a pup.”

            As the older pioneers nodded and grumbled their agreement, solemnity was punctured by the tinny sound of a faraway piano and unfettered hollering from afternoon drinkers. Realizing the limits of their grace, many began turning toward the door to express disgust.

            “C’mon now folks,” Kip said, bringing the attention back his way. “That doesn’t sound like Armageddon. More like a few wagonloads a’ranch boys blowin’ steam before heading back out to it. Ben wouldn’t judge those men, but I’ll tell you what.” The young preacher set down his Bible and stepped purposefully out in front of the pulpit. He stood quiet on sturdy legs straight and true, inflating his rugged chest and shoulders as a physical manifestation of spiritual strength. A tiny smile snuck from the side of his full-lipped mouth as he sunk his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I think our Ben would want to be the center of attention, just this once.”

            The congregation laughed, pining after a collective moment of release. Not everyone packed into the pews believed the same things the same ways, but they were all there to pay an honest measure of homage or respect to Ben. Kip leaned slightly toward the attendees and forged ahead with his message, pressing across the battle lines and checking his swelling emotions. He wondered if they could sense the maelstrom breeding chaos in his soul. Like Mr. Caesar at Pharsalus, unsure of the outcome, but sure that ahead and head high was the only way. For now. A time for every purpose. Lord, hand me down Solomon’s inscrutable wisdom. I’ve need of it presently.

            Pieces of Kip’s past had been revealed, whispered hot and sick in his ear by Ben Laird during those dying days. How many in his midst had been keeping the same secrets, and for how long? He snuck a glance at his family in the front row. His adoptive sister Elsie looked up at him with salt-burdened, loving eyes. As she cried pure tears of a grieving daughter, did she know? Mabel Laird, the woman he’d called mother since he could make words, freshly widowed, dignified and well-presented to the last—she had to know. Kip tried to imagine a scenario that ended with her innocence or ignorance on the matter, but none came to mind.

            And now that he was privy, what good did it do? He looked at ruddy-cheeked Sydney, his mostly good-hearted but troubled older brother, puffy and usually ill-fitted to his surroundings. Syd could be awkward and inflame, though his recent enlistment as one of the young Thunder Hill deputies had helped even his keel. Kip thought perhaps he’d broach the subject of secrets with Sydney first. Maybe today. Or not. Oh God give me a little strength, what to do? Handle your business first, remember? Honor thy father. Don’t go pitching fits in holy hallowed moments.

            “So, let’s not get too caught up attaching ceremony or tradition to this day. Pa wasn’t about such things. I’m of limited years and limited wisdom, but I doubt there’s many a man of faith that put less stock in all the ‘nonsense’ surrounding belief.”

            Another reference to the man they’d gathered for. It helped Kip recapture their attention and lent him a tick to put personal gripes on hold. Remember your Solomon.  

            “Nonsense,” the young man declared, making bold gestures with his hands.

            It was a bad impersonation, but they got the point. Ben liked to wave his long fingers in front of his face and say, “That’s a hot pile of nonsense,” never failing to follow the gesture with a tiny wink and a country-sized smile. Each attendee in the church had their own memory picture of the man, and in capturing them, they felt an impossibly pure mixture of grateful and sad; a formula rendered by looking back on a life lived right before man and God.

            After a prayer and some grateful words amongst the family and friends, Kip walked over to the Laird house, no more than twenty paces from the church door. It was a sturdy affair with a neat little garden out front and yellow flowers underneath the windows. Not the biggest place in town, but it was looked after like new by Mabel and Elsie. Besides the steep green roof, the house was as white as the church that it sat next to, at Mabel’s insistence. She said if God took up in a white residence, so should she. Like most things mentioned sidesaddle by a woman, old Ben accepted it as a joke and a threat, in equal portions.

            Old. Ben Laird never really had the chance to be old. Kip lamented this truth as he stepped slowly up to the open coffin sitting in the front room. A man in a fine Chicago black suit with slicked-back tinsel-gray hair sat hunched on a little stool by the body. A stranger might think he was lost in prayer, but Kip knew better. He was holding his slender stomach, practicing a sort of exhalation ritual. “Doc Rufus,” said the junior preacher. The three syllables cut through the whole house, powerful and unwavering. Kip couldn’t bear to speak softly at present. He feared any cracks or gentleness in manner might turn him brittle to breaking. “Is that breathing some new technique for wrangling a hangover? Something from one of your New York medical journals?”

            “New York? Medieval. Worse. Prehistoric. This country is behind. Sadly behind. If I could get some publications from France or England delivered to this backwater, maybe there’d be something worth reading.”

            “But?” Kip smiled.

            “But I doubt that would even do me any good. We’re centuries away from catching back up to the Greeks or Romans. Persians. They had fine physicians.”

            “The Persians,” Kip crossed his arms. “You only bring them into your tirades after particularly long nights.”

            “Well, good reason for it. You do your part, youngster?” Rufus asked, rubbing the thick mustache that covered his top lip. He was proud of each and every whisker, as long as they remained dark. The doctor claimed his facial hair as proof that he was a man no older than thirty to any woman passing through town. It worked, generally, until he had to take off his bowler. Add all that up and the doctor got a fresh trim at Billy’s Barbershop every morning and rarely went about head uncovered.

            “I sank my heels in. Got through it. Getting through it.” Kip accepted a sturdy hug as the older man rose to his feet. Doc Rufus was in his early 50s, near as tall and still strong as Kip, especially thick in the neck and arms. An embrace from the town surgeon required a little preparation or at least resolution. Rufus wasn’t given to handing out quarter to those close to him. As they slapped each other’s round shoulders Kip said, “You might’ve come in the church this once. Could’ve used the support. I know it’s not your way, but heck.”

The doctor grabbed his sheened lapels and looked down in self-defense. He wasn’t ashamed or regretful. Something with more layers. Given his fondness for the kid and the setting and the circumstances, though, he’d let it go this time. A grunt followed by silence was his chosen course of action. Rufus understood the boy’s burdened state of mind as well as anyone could. They were looking down at his closest friend: Elias Rufus had struggled and bled alongside the departed. They’d survived a war, cleared forests, fought off Indians, traversed a whole country together. That the doctor and preacher agreed on very little was a hard bit of philosophy for any youth to chew, even one as sharp and clear-headed as Kip.

            “Sorry, Doc,” Kip sighed, sensing he’d tread clumsy on proper etiquette. “I’m tired, I think. And it’s more than that. More than this whole deal,” he said, motioning toward the casket. The body was so strangely inert; the absence of life making it infinitely more dead than the box that contained it. The simple casket sat there on dusty sawhorses, waiting to be observed and inspected by morbidly interested townsfolk making their funeral faces.

            “I can see you’re full of complications,” Rufus said with a playful bit of suspicion. His inquisitive icy blue eyes sharpened toward the young man and then relaxed again. “Are the rubes coming in, kid?”

            “You can hear them out there as good as I can.”

            “Though I consider myself learned and fairly understanding of the human experience, this is one tradition I’ll never apprehend.” He pulled a leather flask from his back pocket. After a short taste he passed it to Kip. “What do the rubes get out of seeing a body? I can indulge a gathering, telling tales, remembering. But the spying of a breathless being, not even a being at all. The rubes are an astonishing lot.”

            The intake of liquor momentarily wrinkled the junior preacher’s usually fresh face. “You’re in here yourself, paying respects. Judge not, if’n you please. And what do you get out of calling everyone a rube? How and why you settle on these terms, it’s quite astonishing.”

            Rufus beckoned the flask back with a hand thick from life’s hard fight. “Me being here’s different than being in the worship house. You’ve known that about me since you were knee-high.” He gave the youth a hearty slap on the back. “I love you, son. But as for your astonishment, well, follow that river to its source. You’ll find an almost incalculable lack of life experience at the headwater.”

            Before Kip could muster a response, the door swung open and Mabel walked in with typically short, determined steps. After a carefully muted cough the new widow turned back to the door and held out her hands, fixing a warm expression for the procession of people, prayers and personal messages to come. Her dark brown eyes, now observably swollen from grief, shot holes through her adopted son and turned with vigorous ire toward the silver-haired doctor. “I don’t want you here, Rufus,” she said, as mannered as she could. “Please find your way out the back. I’d appreciate you being quick about it.”

            Rufus donned his signature charcoal bowler without a word. He bowed in retreat to Mabel and gave Kip a wink. The doctor walked past the narrow staircase then skirted through the warm kitchen where he’d broken bread so many times before. Mabel’d been out those nights, nights with the women’s church group or playing cards with the few ladies of Thunder Hill sharp enough to keep her interested. Ben’s dinners weren’t exactly a secret. The “rumor” was famous around town: everyone imagining Preach Laird, Doc, and Sheriff Cox all exchanging stories and whiskey over a warm dish. When Doctor Elias Rufus, as he liked to be called in public, was asked what they discussed, he would deny it outright or tip up the shiny brim of his hat to say, “Some things aren’t for public consumption.”

            Mabel made sure she heard Rufus close the door then gave Kip one more look of admonishment before nestling her petite frame between his body and the casket of her late husband. She waved people in with the smallest dutiful smile on her trembling lips. “You shouldn’t talk to that old heathen,” she whispered between handshakes. The line was awkward, as people had to go out the way they came.

            Between God bless yous and thanks for comings, Kip whispered back, “I’m sorry, Ma. He was here paying his respects, just like everyone else.”

            “I know you’ve always been partial to him,” Mabel said. “Heaven help me, your father was. Despite me. Maybe to spite me. I shouldn’t have been so rude. Y’all didn’t deserve it.”

            Kip draped a long arm around the woman who’d taught him devotion and wit as much as anyone else ever could. “This isn’t a day you apologize for anything, Ma. I love you. Everybody loves you. Even that old heathen.”

            Mabel almost let out a defensive laugh. She bumped him with her hip as they kept coming, one handshake after the next. Otto Buchholz, the blacksmith, with his entire brood. The town surveyor and his wife. Lindy Samuels, with her fiancé. He was fairly new to Thunder Hill, working the town’s first official bank. Kip had wondered if Lindy would show, hoping she wouldn’t. He lowered his emerald eyes and accepted her warm little hand. She did a full curtsy that gave off not-so-subtle hints of flirtation. The obvious gesture riled Elsie; she was standing next to him now. Sydney sat on a windowsill in the corner, chewing on a toothpick and looking out the glass with a hangdog expression. He fiddled with his crooked short brim hat and rubbed his paunch, typically unable to summon the requisite patience for observing decencies.

            More and more piled in. Kip tried not to wince as they scuffed up his mother’s prized rug and filled the house with whatever smell they couldn’t get off their clothes that morning.

            Kip was reeling from the consistent sorrow that hung over everything. It was inescapable. The little draft that always managed to find a path through the house was stunted by bodies. A coat of sweat began to form on his normally pacific face. There was still the burial. More words. More thinking about Ben’s dying revelations and pretending not to. God help me.

            The crack of three distant gunshots sliced their way through all those thoughts. Everyone present stiffened and apprehensively turned their heads toward the noise outside. Sydney roughly pushed his way out the door and started running in the direction of the gunfire. “Syd!” Kip yelled, pulling his mother and sister close. “Keep them all here if you can. I’m going to see what that’s about.”

            He didn’t wait for a response. His father’s Colt was in the study next to the stairs. He grabbed it and checked the load and action, spinning the oily chamber and snapping it closed again. Quickly he was out the backdoor and around the front of the house, trotting heavy through the thick mud of Thunder Hill’s main thoroughfare.

            It didn’t take long to see. Two men were down in the street, not moving. He recognized the Tollier brothers, sons of one of the county’s prominent ranchers. Another man he didn’t recognize was leaning against the hitching post in front of the saloon, bleeding in silence from a wound in the right leg. Sheriff Cox, Syd, and three others were training their pistols at the hobbled man, yelling with hammers cocked. Kip skidded to a stop at the periphery of the fracas. “Everybody, calm down,” he said, gripping his dead father’s gun tight in his right hand. He didn’t have the weapon raised. There seemed to be enough of that at the moment. “The man’s wounded.”

            “Back,” the newcomer said, using the post to steady and turn his focus on Kip. He was a singularly large black-haired man who didn’t seem too put out by the bullet in his leg or the numbers stacked against him. The newcomer started raising his pistol again but stopped, looking directly into the green of Kip’s wondering eyes. The shouting continued from every which way and the big man appeared to be somewhere else all of a sudden. He dropped his weapon then slumped to the ground, wind gone from his sails. The young preacher was fixated on the face of the stranger. It was brown as treated oak, made darker by a layer of dirt caked across his cheeks and forehead. Only that wasn’t what had Laird’s focus captured. There were two vertical lines below the eyes of the wounded man where his skin was slightly lighter. He was crying. Without knowing a thing, Kip could tell that this wasn’t the sort to go bawling over something as trivial as a bullet wound.

            “Stay out of this, kid,” Sheriff Cox said, slowly closing the distance to the shooter. “And stay still there, chief. It’s a few fresh holes if you’re thinkin’ to reach back for that gun.” The sheriff was lean as a bottleneck at the waist and taller than average, not to mention tough as a coffin nail. He had a flattened nose and dark eyes, carrying the focused aspect of someone you ignored at your peril. Cox wore the same style blue denim shirt and sheepskin-lined leather jacket every single day, on account of being superstitious. The lawman had faith in his skill and pride in the way he went about his part, but he also figured never getting shot besides once in the ear was based on some measure of plain old luck. He’d worn a uniform for the Union during the dark days of the War, and now he wore another. Cox had no inclinations toward changing his ways as long as intransigence kept him above dirt. “Back away!” he commanded. “All of you!”

            Everyone obeyed. Kip was confused and angry. Selfish thoughts flooded his mind. His father still needed burying. He still needed his answers. Had to have answers. There hadn’t been a shooting in Thunder Hill in ten years. Now two bodies in the street. This odd figure at the center of it. Kip looked at the gun in his hand and turned his head toward the church. He forced himself into returning to a dutiful mindset. The spiritual torch had been passed down from Ben; there were no more comers. Duty bound or not, Kip didn’t want to go back still unsure of who he was. Every step through the stubborn muck of the road seemed a mile. Ma to take care of. The church to take care of. The faithful. The flock. Elsie, that was a knot that needed a man’s work. It was all on him, and he wasn’t even sure he was a man. Only one thing was certain. He couldn’t go forward in earnest until he knew exactly where he’d come from.

Chapter 3: Carrying On

            Kip sat against the wall in his room above the Grimes General Store, heavy-eyed but unable to catch a wink. Something about the big stranger in the street had him riled bone deep. He needed to know more about the man, but presently he was miles short of his best. After the excitement of the shootout and the unremitting pain of returning his father to the dust, he’d taken more whisky in the last twelve hours than the whole of his life. Ambrose, a three-year-old golden retriever, made a whimper and set his pointy nose on Kip’s legs. The dog lifted its head and brought it down again and again.

            “You understand me, don’t you boy?”

            For a moment Ambrose stopped and looked at his struggling master. Then he yawned and licked his chops. “Or, more likely, you need to eat and do your business.” Magic words. The retriever’s tail began wagging furiously, thudding against uneven floorboards every three or four cycles. “Fine,” he said, peeling himself slowly from the floor like he’d been stuck there for years. The movement set off little demons of pain throughout his body until they all seemed to run at once toward his head. “Mother of mercy,” he groaned, afraid to even rub his temples. Despite the human’s condition, Ambrose was encouraged by the simple fact of progress and started scratching at the door. “Let me get the leash, Ambs.” He tied the rope off short and tight; no choice, living on the town’s main thoroughfare. Too much length and his excitable friend could wind up trampled by horse or carriage. “Hold on, now,” he said, finishing the knot, fighting off the throbbing above his eyes. He held the homemade dog collar with one hand and pulled on the rope hard but not enough to see Ambrose choke. It seemed in good order. “Try not to explode on the front walk, will ya?” The suggestion was met with another happy lick of the chops and rhapsodic wagging.  

            Before he could reach the knob, two gentle knocks were followed by a small, familiar voice. “It’s Lindy. You around, hun?”

            Ambrose looked up at his suddenly paralyzed owner. A few whimpers from the dog forced him into regaining his senses. Kip opened the door and secured his pet. “Hey there, Miss Lindy. Sorry,” he stopped, imagining the sight and smell he was presenting to the lady. “We weren’t expecting.” Ambrose scratched his hind parts. “Guess that’s obvious.”

            She was smiling sympathetically and trying in vain for sad eyes. They weren’t at all convincing. Lindy danced through life. No time for sadness when you’re dancing. Wouldn’t even be appropriate. “How you faring, handsome?” she asked, letting her fiery hair spill down with the removal of a pin and shake of the head.

            “I’m well enough. Maybe didn’t acquit myself too heroically in the wee hours last night, but okay.” He barely lifted his head as he spoke, letting his sandy bangs fall over his eyes like a wave.

            Without a lick of time or added ceremony, Lindy Samuels was across the threshold, kissing him on the mouth wet, all sorts of angles and intensities. Her tightly gloved hands wrapped sure around the back of his neck as she pulled him down to stay the embrace. Kip eventually surrendered a hand for the small of her back. His lips met the tightness of her uncovered shoulders. There was familiarity to the exercise. Shame too.

            “C’mon now, Lindy,” he said, pulling away just enough for breathy words. The contest between heart and head was no small thing. Something so sweet only seemed right after the bitterness of the last few weeks—that is, he wished it seemed right.

            Lindy wasn’t stricken by any such contest. She wouldn’t let go. Never did, really, once she got her hands moving. She loved to play with his thick hair, separating the darker roots from the lighter ends with her dainty fingers as she whispered lecherous. He didn’t know what was so interesting about hair or the great need for such talk. This time, unlike the other times, he wasn’t pretending to indulge what he couldn’t understand. “Don’t push me away, Kip Laird,” she said. So dramatic. Uses both my names for some dang reason. As always, she was unrelenting, turning his already disheveled mane into something more confused. “You need me right now.” One of her wild hands found comfort below his waist.

            “I need you to go,” he pleaded, guiltily looking right and left like his home was a train station platform. “Somebody could’ve seen you come up here. We’ve spoke on this.”

            “Who cares?” Her hand remained tightened with intention.

He made a guttural sound at the touch that meant a million things but mostly just one. “This ain’t Chicago. It’s a small town and people are gonna talk.”

“Let them,” she whispered, fingers making things tumble.

“You’re getting married. Dang, Lindy. If the banker fella finds out, I’m more than likely to take a bullet in the back.”

            Her face was no more than an inch away and all parts of their hips and legs were tangled up. Kip felt convicted and drawn back in, depending on the second; every time they kissed it was Hell and Heaven. He understood his dalliance with Lindy was a simple sin of the flesh, base and low. But that wasn’t the whole of it. He did feel for her. A substantial portion of him wanted to close the door behind and spend the day in her enthusiastic embrace, laughing and carrying on like consequences were mere myths. But not now. God help me, not ever again.

            And so, after a few more minutes of mumbled deflections, he was able to steer her back and out the door. She said something about it not being over while he repeated fine, fine, fine, all the time trying to keep her hands off his britches.

                                         __________________________________

            He slid down the door and listened to Lindy descending the steps. Ambrose sat in front of him, mouth closed and completely still. The animal looked disappointed at his master. Kip almost laughed at the idea, but it wasn’t that funny. What did he know, anyway? Maybe Ben and Jesus and all the saints and angels were behind that dog’s messy eyes, using Ambrose as a vessel to witness the messy destruction of a young soul. I might still be drunk. “Come here, boy,” Kip said, holding his hand out while Ambrose lowered his ears and gave over for a good hearty petting. “Just a few seconds more, pal. Got to space out departures, in case anybody out there’s by the door.”

            The dog wagged his tail and plopped his rear back down, craning his head forward to make sure the petting kept on without interruption. Boy and dog enjoyed a few moments of peace before Kip could will himself back to his feet.

            As he reached for the knob, three sharp knocks sent him reeling backwards. “You in there?” Another female voice, but not Lindy.

Remnant head pain and lingering agitations gave Kip notions of playing silent, but Ambrose was reaching a breaking point and had been the good soldier long enough. “Yeah,” he coughed to clear his throat. “Yeah, Elsie. Coming out.” He wiped his face wildly with the back of his hand and forearm then opened the door quick and nonchalant, playing for regularity. His sister was on the landing, looking fit and proper in her black dress and tilted silk-lined hat. Twisting rivulets of blond fell down in carefully executed chaos over her porcelain forehead.

            “Aren’t you gonna put something on?” she asked, aiming her tiny purse at his barrel chest.  

            “I’m wearing things, Else,” he said with a contained smile. “And we’re not traversing the Himalayas. My boy needs his time in the sun, is all.”

            “Alright, feller. Only, conventionally some type of shirt is placed underneath the suspenders. Forgiveness if I’m being a little lady about things.”

            “Else,” he said, unhid irritation in his voice, trying to control Ambrose down the steep, narrow staircase. His place had its own door, right next to the store entrance. That was the good news. Bad news was the stairs; a boot wrong and it’d spell curtains.

            “I’m sorry,” Elsie said, following him down with royal composure. If he was holding on for dear life, she was floating like a feather and making a show of it. “And since you asked so politely, I’d be happy to walk with you and Ambrose.”

            Once outside, Kip struggled to find a point ahead and stick to it, still battling the headache. He was experiencing a good old-fashioned hangover. The prospect of ever drinking again seemed worse than death, but he had a feeling a lot of full-time drunks fostered similar thoughts after their first hard stint with the bottle. “I think I’m dying, Else.”

            “All things pass,” she said weightlessly. “Besides, I think it’s best to save the drama for your sermons.”

            Elsie placed a guiding hand on his back and took the rope as they nodded past Mr. Haines the butcher and Mrs. McCarthy, the recently widowed schoolteacher. “We’re heading out back, Ambrose,” she said, moving the party along with a sudden vivacity, “but you hold steady until we’ve got some privacy.” A quick look behind at Kip. “Can’t have you adopting your master’s manners.”

            “Hilarious, Else.”

            She didn’t respond to his jab, instead walking head high with Ambrose, long skirt swishing against the tall yellow grass behind the store. Kip leaned against the back wall of the building. A hazy minute or two went by before Elsie handed back control of the dog. “I understand the impulse to tear yourself asunder, but it’s past midday.”

Kip bent over, hands gripping his knees as he fought the urge to vomit.

“Unfettered and unseemly isn’t your style, feller.”

            “It’s past midday,” he reasoned, kneeling down to pet his dog. Ambrose was calmer now, but still hungry. “Not two years from now. A little repose is all I’m asking for.”

            “Alright,” Elsie said, realizing Kip wasn’t in fighting shape. She leaned in and whiffed his breath. “But what you need is a repast. Something to lock horns with that presence. I’ll go back up and grab you a shirt, feed the dog.”

            “You don’t have to.” There was too much decency in her offering. Maybe she knew about Lindy Samuels and was granting calm before the storm. Could be he was thinking too much? Or not at all. Damn that whisky. Damn. Sneaking around like the most pitiable sinner, lying by not telling the whole truth. His people deserved more. Especially Elsie and especially now.

            Finally, he threw up.

            “There,” she said, reclaiming the leash. “After you’re gathered, go place yourself out front. My guess is you’ll put the other town beggars out of business by the time I get back from feeding the boss here.”

            “Always funny, Else.” He was talking to the ground, talking to her.

            “Wherever more than one is gathered, somebody has to be wittier.”

            “It never stops.”

            “Never will.” She winked as he rose up, meeting his pain with a sweet surprising smile of understanding. “Meet you out front.”

            Five minutes later, Elsie emerged on the orderly little boardwalk outside Kip’s apartment. He was sitting with his long legs dangling over the side, sleepy again now that his stomach was calm. She threw a black shirt over his back along with a gray bandana. The cheerless colors crushed his heart all over. Making a show of mourning seemed an extra dose of cruelty to the ones needing comfort and the ones doing the comforting. No matter. Conventions.

            After getting up and tucking in, Elsie asked him to wait a tick. She slid back inside the door and emerged with a fresh towel and washbowl full of clean water. “Figured you’d cleanse up before we adjourned.”

            He was grateful to dunk his head. The idea of baptism struck him. If ever he needed another one. “Suppose you’re right,” he said, rubbing off the stink and sick from his hands. “Probably needing a scenery change. Three little kids started poking me with a stick before you got out here.”

            “You possess an indelible gravitas,” she said, holding her arm wide for him to escort her. “Even partially adorned. Fully adorned—well, you’re positively magisterial.”

            They walked slow and silent in and out of the overhang’s shade, grateful for a cool mountain breeze dancing down from the mountains. Crossing two streets of hardened clay, they arrived at The French Café. Only people that made Thunder Hill home used this appellation. To those passing through, it was simply The Café. Understandable. They served nothing French. An ancient named Beckett French owned the place, is all, and despite the lack of international cuisine, it was the best joint (out of three) in town.

            Though swollen with customers, several parties stood up and offered their tables when the Lairds entered. Conversations about crops and cows and yesterday’s shooting skidded to a stop in every corner.

            “Oh no, fellas. We couldn’t,” Kip said. Simple deferential instinct.

            “Thanks, George. Wilson, thanks so much,” Elsie followed, happy enough at taking the first seat offered. Before he could object, the young preacher could see a chair and a clear place set in front of him. He began to mumble something like an argument but found himself cut off. “Just pipe down and accept some courtesy. Let other people take care of you. Stuff that mule obduracy.”

            “I’m only—”

            “Nope,” Elsie said, holding up the little menu in front of her comely, heart-shaped face. Kip looked around and realized that elbow-to-elbow in the busiest spot in town was no place for an argument. He took his medicine and began to brood in silence, still wearing the weight of Lindy Samuels around his neck. Little Cara, French’s youngest granddaughter, came by with water. Kip ventured close to swallowing the glass whole. Drinking the wrong thing makes you thirsty. Perhaps the start of a sermon. Cara immediately came back and refilled his glass, big honest eyes and honest innocence. Probably best not to do a sermon on debauchery’s aftermath.

            “Thank you, Cara,” Elsie said, rolling her eyes like she was witness to his thoughts.

            “You’re handling this like a Spartan, aren’t you?” he asked, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            The only thing was to continue. If he went another direction she’d train him back. Since he was aware of the world, there was Elsie, made sharp by God. He’d speak his piece and follow it out. “Pa’s dead, is what I mean. We’re sitting here wearing black and people are looking at us queer. Not a lick of it seems to stick to you, though. Just chin up and crack wise, like always.” Due to the close quarters, Kip’s analysis was hardly above a whisper. Still, Elsie felt the intended bite.

            “I’m away from Mama for twenty minutes and,” she stopped abruptly but not emotionally, gaining composure. “Is this going to be our midday meal? If so, I’ll go invite myself to sit with the boys from the Thompson spread.”

            He turned around. Elsie wasn’t threatening idle. Thompson’s cowpunchers were indeed seated in the corner. “You’re not going over there,” he said, squaring back up to the table. “They’ve been whispering things unsavory.”

            “I heard a little. Nice to know my curvatures can’t be ‘hid by no ladylike adornments and my backside is just the right size for grabbing hold.’”

            He was brimming. Playing into her. “Don’t with that.”

            “Why not? I bet they’d enjoy my company.”

            “I reckon they’d do more than that, if you open the barn door.”

            A scowl like he’d never seen came across Elsie’s unblemished face. Her dimpled chin was protruding as she bit down on what she wanted to say. Her eyebrows, darker than her golden hair, were crooked and bent in more than one direction. Elsie’s natural good looks made it worse when she turned them against you. “I’m sorry,” Kip said. His hands were in the air to signal apology and surrender. He really did regret his behavior, from after the burial and on. Elsie wasn’t supposed to be caught up in his backslide. She was good and right most all the time, and it was nice of her to check in on him. Nice to take him to French’s. Their routine. Heaven knew she almost had the same heap piled on her shoulders, what-to-do’s and wonderings. He stopped thinking of his damned thumping head and gathered his hands together, like offering a prayer. “You know what I’m thinking… I shouldn’t be acting like this.”

            The gesture seemed to have a disarming effect. Elsie rolled her shoulders back and let the seat catch the nuances of her frame. “You’ve got a lot on your mind,” she said, “more than just Pa. Something specific that won’t just go away.”

            “That’s right,” Kip said, fiddling with a fork that looked like it predated the word antique. “But how’d you guess that, Else? In a rush you’ve moved from insightful to clairvoyant.”

            “You were on about something the other day. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it…”

            Kip thought back through the vicissitudes of the last week. It was fog. Was it possible that he’d broken reticence and offered up the secret to someone who could understand? Was Elsie playing coy, just pretending she wasn’t already privy to the things revealed to him by Ben? Add to that, he still didn’t know if she was feigning ignorance about Lindy.

Damn. Had the haze and crushing confusion caused some sort of fevered state of forgetfulness? Surely not. Even she wouldn’t be able to cut jokes pulling the same insufferable freight. Then again, she was a powerful, beautiful bird. His sister. “So,” he said, toeing for solid ground, “we haven’t talked about it…”

            “Not in any good order. But whatever it is, I can handle the reins. God, give me something else to think about.” She almost laughed, then caught herself. Pining for diversions wasn’t proper public form. Elsie knew it, yet somehow, she knew the desire to be inevitable. At least for her.

            “I’m not your brother.”

            She was still as stone, deciding from many options on which way was best to go. “I’m aware of that. We’ve talked on this. I mean, you know what I mean.”

            “I’m not putting it in the bullseye.”

            “Try harder, then.”

            “Before Pa passed, he told me some things. Elsie, he said who my real parents were. How I ended up here at all.”

            Elsie leaned forward and said, “Mama and Pa always said you were left on the steps of the church.” She took the fork from his hand and gripped his thick fingers lightly. “So, this is what you were getting your mettle up to talk about the other day. Before you just faded off.”

            “If you say so. I was here and there, truth be told.”

            “Well go on and finish, because I didn’t get the whole of it. Whatever it is.”

            “My parents—my other parents were killed when I wasn’t much but a baby. Pa got to know the man who brought me. They kept in touch over the years. Said it was Loot Moreno.”

                                                      ___________________________

            The din of dishes and conversation dropped away as Elsie’s hazel eyes went narrow and turned from green to gold depending on the spot.

            “I know what you’re gonna say,” Kip continued, “but this came out of Pa’s mouth straight as Gospel fact.”

            “But c’mon, feller. He was uttering all manner of nonsenses those last few days. Think of the state the man was in. Loot Moreno? He’s a make-believe monster. Heaven’s sake, they still tell stories about him around campfires to scare runts.”

            Elsie wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already run through, but he trusted her enough to disclose the rest. “I might’ve just let it be…”

            “But?”

            “But then I set eyes on the man yesterday, the one in the shootout. Call me crazy, but I think that’s Loot Moreno.”

            “I’m calling you crazy,” Elsie said, crossing her arms. “And how’d you come to this conclusion?”

            “A couple things Pa said about him. His gun. Heck, you didn’t see him. Unique, to say the least. Then his hand when they were dragging him away. He had this one glove that fell off. A strange mark. A circle with two lines. I’ve heard about that mark.”

            “Let me guess. From Pa.”

            Kip couldn’t help but smart from the incredulity. “No. But a few other places.”

            Elsie had every reason to throw water on whatever his brain was cooking up. He was talking myths and legends and the fevered last words of a dying man.

            And his head was killing him.

            And the man who raised him was gone forever. “Hey, Preach,” said Andy, Beckett French’s son, coming by in his trademark grease-stained apron to get their order. Preach. It was a strange thing to hear. Ben Laird’s title since the founding days of Thunder Hill. Someone had to be the first to say it. A rather inglorious passing of the torch. Elsie could see the awkwardness bubbling underneath Kip’s placid visage.

            “Hi there, Andy,” Elsie said, smiling wide up at the waiter, calming the chaos of his day with her orderly teeth and playful, shrugging shoulders.

            “That was a nice service yesterday,” Andy said, wiping his hands as a way to deal with the clunky nature of decency. “I’m sure gonna miss Ben. No finer fella around. Anything we can do, don’t hesitate. People are being polite sometimes, but I mean it true. Glad you came in today.”

            “Thanks, Andy,” Kip managed, “kind of you.”

            “Y’all want to order?”

            Yes, Kip thought. I want to eat and quit all the talking. Elsie went ahead with her order as Sydney barged in the café, ungraceful as ever. His backside and belly knocked every dish, chair or person down or to the side. When he docked with their table, Elsie stood up gasping. “Syd! What happened to your face?”

            Sydney asked a speechless Andy if he could get him a chair and stood rapping dirty knuckles on the table as Elsie looked him over and examined his wounds with her hands, trying to do too much with them in the absence of proper medication and dressings. Kip let her chide their brother for getting hurt and left it alone. The moment was all too revealing. He couldn’t believe that before today he’d thought to confide Ben’s deathbed confessions to Sydney. Trouble stuck to him like he was bred for it. Much as Kip loved him, his brother rarely made things better.

            “Really, Syd. How’d you come by all that?” Kip finally asked, patting his arm on one of the few spots not ruined by blood or muck.

            Sydney answered like a cannon shot. “The damn crossbreed put the boots to me is what happened. Took four of us to get him in the cell yesterday, even with the bullet wound in his leg.”

            “But I saw you yesterday,” Elsie said, thinking he might need sewing up, “You seemed to come out all right.”

            “No, little sister. This was from today. He near escaped on the way back from seeing the judge, clattering all of us with them irons. I’m telling you, that mutt bastard is a ruffian of the highest order. Devil’s spawn, I’m thinking. Scary sumbitch is what I’m saying.”

            Everyone in French’s was looking at their table now, silent and attentive. Elsie and Kip might’ve been a heavy presence in the room, but now, with Sydney there, the Lairds were center stage with a spotlight beaming down.

            Andy came back with a chair and Syd collapsed into it. He took a drink of water from Elsie’s glass and left blood on the rim from his split lip. “What’s this fella’s name?” Elsie asked softly, eyeing the room, serving everyone notice to go back to their own doings.  

            “Calhoun. Brandon Calhoun. Son of a damn gun, I think he broke something in my chest. I better get on and see Doc Rufus. Hope he’s not too drunk yet.”

            Syd looked first at Kip and then to Elsie. It was an expectant face, that said help me up here, dammit.

            Kip did the lifting and told his brother he’d be checking on him later.

            “Always with the courtesies,” Syd said, rubbing Kip’s dense hair with a mixture of condescension and acceptance. “I’m off then.”

            “Why didn’t you go straight through to Doc’s?” they asked, almost in unison.

            “I was walking by and saw you through the window. Can’t a man talk to his family? Just wanted to check in’s all I’m driving at.”

            “You wanted to let Betsy Taylor get a look at you all rough and lawman’d up,” Elsie said with a tiny smile and flared nostrils.

            “Ain’t she working?” Sydney asked, suddenly a little spryer in his boots as he torqued his head back for a last survey.

            “Afraid we haven’t seen her,” Kip added. “Just little Cara and Andy running the tables.”

            “Damn shame. She’s developing into quite a sight.”

            “You’re incorrigible,” Elsie whispered harsh. “Thrashed and all, still the same.”

            “Pretty girl, all’s I’m trying to tell you. No sense hiding intentions under my hat.”

            “There’s wisdom in that,” Kip said, sitting back down, forced to smile at Syd’s unchangeable ways. “Before you leave—that prisoner, are you sure he’s giving you the right name?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I don’t presume to do you fellas’ jobs, but that didn’t look like any Brandon Calhoun I’ve ever slapped eyes on. Assumed it was something a little more mysterious.”

            “Nothing mysterious, little brother. Don’t go making it a something. I know you’re boiling cause Pa’s peace was interrupted, but it won’t matter come a few days.”

            “How’s that?”

            “I mean Brandon Calhoun’s gonna hang. Judge sentenced him this morning. That’s why I got this face. He wasn’t taking too kindly to it. Figured on you doin’ the math.”

            Elsie gave her goodbye as Sydney lumbered out of the café. Kip wore a pensive look that had her worried. “Whatever it is, best you stop rolling it around.”

            “I don’t know, Else. The whole thing is off. And hanging…”

            “You’ve got your principles.” She gripped his hand. “But he did shoot down those Tollier boys. You’ve got nothing to say for it. Justice isn’t pretty.”

            The crushing headache was starting to dissipate, leaving space for confusion, doubt, and shame. Though the young pastor opposed executions, he wasn’t upset about hanging in general, as was most likely Elsie’s point. His problem was specific. He needed some answers. Answers beyond the words of his dying father.

            He rubbed her fingers, amazed at the softness. Elsie was near a miracle. He still needed to come clean about Lindy and what he’d been up to, almost as much as she deserved straight shooting. It would have to wait a little longer.  

            Kip raised his hand to flag down Cara or Andy. He was about finally getting some lunch.

            Then, he needed to go to jail.

Chapter 4: Waiting for the Wanted

            “You boys get down off the wagon now.” The man serving instructions was calm, hunched casually on a bulky mount. His red and gray-bearded face was barely visible to the two men driving the stage. “The ones inside, come out showing hands.”

            “Who the hell are you supposed to be?” asked the fella riding shotgun. He was ill-groomed and short for teeth, as was the driver.

            “I’m Fallstead. United States Deputy Marshal Fallstead, if you’re hard for credentials.”

            “Seems awful steep demandin’ for someone set by his lonesome,” growled the driver, spitting tobacco juice down his scraggly chin. “You just get on out the way before we get angry.”

            The wind was pushing a cloud of dust down the narrow road. The deputy marshal shielded his slender eyes by turning away from the stage and lowering his old tan bowler to his meager eyebrows. It was hard wrapping their heads around this obstruction; out on his own, showing his back without hint of caution. They scratched at their spotty beards and tensed their muscles and tried thinking if they’d heard tell of this lawman.

He turned back slowly after the air cleared. “Tell your boss to come on out that carriage. Needin’ to wrap this up and get back to town.”

            The driver and his companion exchanged bewildered looks and started busting their underfed guts. The door to the wagon opened and a tall man rigged in a striped three-piece suit stepped out. He was a dimpled picture, tailored head to toe. The tips of his fingers glinted in the sun as he extended his hands outward. “What can I do for you, Marshal?”

            “Called on to bring you to town. Got a warrant signed by the judge in Boyd City.”

            “You didn’t even ask who I was.”

            “Don’t need to ask. Seen you before, Mr. Trill. You know, ‘round.”

            “I don’t recall meeting.”

            “Never said we’d met.” Deputy Marshal Fallstead slowly lifted the short brim of his hat and looked hard at the three men before him. “Y’all put down any weapons, and I’ll ride you into town living as is. Fair dealing. Sure it’ll get worked out.”

            “What’s the charge?”

            “No charge yet. Suspicion of murder. Couple of folks that worked your ranch haven’t been heard from. Two negroes and a half-breed.”

            “Doesn’t ring a bell.” Trill pulled off his velvety top hat, allowing his shining black hair a breathing. He was proud of his pretty. “Three creatures. Not even people. Hardly worth coming out here.”

            “Don’t much care one way or the other about them or you. Clear it up with the judge.” The lawman sighed audibly and said guns like it wouldn’t be said again.

            “You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve.” Trill seemed taken with himself. “Don’t you have any cohorts?”

            “Yep. Got one cohort. Not necessary for you. Last chance, now. Goes for the slinger that’s still holed up in that wagon, too. So we’re clear.”

            “You must be about the most impetuous son of a bitch I’ve ever had the bad luck to meet,” Trill said, putting his hands on his hips. Fallstead looked at the ranch owner’s rig. Polished like new. Probably never been fired but to show off to some purchased company.

            “Alright, then.” Fallstead showed no tells. Most men would tighten up or, at the very least, change their expression. Not so with the veteran marshal. He reached across his body and pulled his pistol, killing the dirty man with the shotgun before he even knew a fight had commenced. The driver was dead before his pal hit the dirt. Both headshots. Fancy Mr. Trill was struggling to pull, but he was pulling. Idiot. Fallstead winged him in both arms and once more in the shoulder. Trill looked like a puppet on a string, gyrating back and forth before falling to the road in agony and then shock. He’d live. Maybe.

            “You wantin’ me to let you reload?” The question came from inside the wagon.

            “Nope,” Fallstead answered, holstering and finally getting down from his steady mount. “I saved the one.”

            “You gonna shoot me before I get the chance to set my feet?”

            “If you make me.”

            “Alright then.” The man inside came out the same door as Trill. He stepped over the moaning cattleman with his head held high, sporting a weathered look of unflappable confidence.

             The two had about fifteen yards between them. The man from the carriage was staring holes at Fallstead through the smoke of spent cartridges. The marshal wasn’t so keen as his opposite, looking only as much as he had to.

            “There is a resemblance,” Fallstead said, hardly loud enough to reach the other.

            “What’s that?”

            “I met your brother in Boyd City, Mr. Rade. That’s how I knew you were coming this way.”

            The gunman’s symmetrical face took an odd shape. “Not possible.”

            “No?”

            “Picker’d never sell me out to no tin star.”

            “Picker didn’t want to.” Through all the talking and shooting, the marshal’s face still hadn’t changed. Rade the gunman was put off. The “tin star” seemed lifeless. Plain old-fashioned bored.

            “You trying to say you beat it out of him?”

            Fallstead didn’t answer, but he took note of Rade, lowering his arms little by little.

            “You trying to say he’s dead?”

            Again, no answer.

            Time and silence were enough for the gunslinger. He went for his right hip and came near to clearing the pistol from its holster before Fallstead’s final bullet blew a wide hole through the back of his head.

            “Let’s get you up,” he said, walking calmly over and kicking Trill lightly in his boot sole.

            “You’re a lunatic,” the ranch owner cried. He didn’t look so prim anymore. The only parts of him not covered with dirt were soaked through with blood. “You can’t just kill everyone.”

            “You’re still alive,” the marshal said, stolid to the bone, voice rough from use but still even. “C’mon. I didn’t shoot you in the legs.”

            Fallstead had a quick look at the scene and started shaking out his gun hand. Trill was still jabbering, but the marshal had tuned him out. Despite a thousand cries and protestations, the tortured suspect found himself tied from his wrists to Fallstead’s saddle horn. He was made to see nothing past the anguish, running alongside the lawman’s apathetic horse as they worked their way back to town. Every so often Trill would surrender footing and find himself dragged and stomped by the animal’s hind legs. Mr. Trill’s piteous five miles back to Boyd City was as bad a journey as one would dare consider. By the time they arrived, he was parched all the way through and busted up all over. One of his shoulders had gone wayward, and an ankle’d gotten broke. Not to mention the exhaustion. Not to mention the three bullet wounds giving way to unnatural colors.  

            Boyd City’s sheriff was sleeping in the jailhouse when Fallstead walked unceremoniously through the door. The prisoner was unconscious, slung over his shoulder. “Sheriff Utterly, get yourself roused,” the marshal said. Utterly was unmoved. Grumbling, the marshal set the cattleman down on the floor and kicked the sheriff’s chair hard enough to tip it over. The town’s leading arbiter of justice found himself waking up next to the dirt-ridden, bleeding body of Mr. Trill.

            “Jesus Jupiter!” the sheriff said, popping to his feet, reaching for his gun out of instinct.

            “Nope,” Fallstead said, flat and hard as a mesa top.

            The sheriff slapped himself and postured up a bit. “Oh, hey there, Holt.”

            “I’ve got a gun. No need for pulling yours.”

            “‘Course not. I didn’t know you was here. There.”

            “Normally you take sleep on the job?”

            “It’s been trying times, Trill and all that goes with it.”

            Fallstead looked right through the pudgy excuse of a man. No wonder he’d been called in to apprehend the rancher. Utterly was wholly unsuited for sentry duty, let alone rounding up villains. “Well, there he is.”

            Sheriff Utterly gave Trill a poke with a single fat finger. “Is he dead?”

            “I reckon no, but if you don’t raise the sawbones, he’s gonna end up that way directly.”

            “Too right,” Utterly whispered, running a hand through his tousled hair. “I’ll go get the doc.”

            “No.”

            “No?”

            “First I get the money.”

            “Oh yeah. S-sure. The money.”

            Utterly shuffled behind his desk and pulled an envelope from one of the top drawers, handing it to Fallstead like feeding a hungry lion.

            “Okay,” the marshal said, turning to leave.

            “What about the rest of his people?” the sheriff asked reluctantly. “Trent and Saul, they weren’t angels, but them boys weren’t all bad.”

            Fallstead turned back but didn’t speak. The jailhouse was thick with the smell of Trill’s blood and shit and Utterly’s general odor. He needed air, freedom from these little men.

            “So, they didn’t make it?”

            Now the marshal answered quick. “No. Trent and Saul didn’t make it. They threatened an officer of the peace. Made their intentions clear.”

            “Made their intentions… ok then. Just…” As that last searching word escaped his quivering lips, Utterly was cursing himself for not leaving the intimidating marshal be.

            “What?”

            “Oh, ah, nothing at all. Everything’s great. Really appreciate you coming and helping out the county.”

            Fallstead stood straight. He wasn’t the most physically imposing man, but the adjustment rattled his spurs and caused the sheriff to shiver. “If you’re thinking this might’a been some sort of overreaching justice… well.”

            “I didn’t say that!” Utterly whined. “I did not say that. At all, Marshal. You’ve done a fine job here. Above reproach. Beyond reproach. Irreproachable, all accounts.”

“Good luck to you then,” Fallstead said, no less hasty than before. It’d been a long ride to Boyd City, and he’d kicked up a good bit of dust in the matters relating to Mr. Trill and his gun thugs. Stepping out of the jail, he looked up and down the town’s main thoroughfare. It wasn’t a vista that inspired; Boyd City had but one passable hotel and a few other fledgling businesses. The lone corner cantina was in a sorry state, half adobe and half rotten timbers. Fallstead found himself headed there all the same, brown leather duster flapping behind from a welcome night breeze.

            The marshal could hear the rumblings of a fracas as he neared. He walked up crooked steps and positioned himself to the side, between the door and the cantina’s lonely little window. Inside things were boiling over, but he made no move for his gun. Fallstead took off his gloves and fished out a pouch of tobacco and papers from an inside coat pocket, getting fixed to roll a cigarette. The marshal practiced tedious care with his cigarettes, especially now that he was getting on in years. He limited himself to three a day and intended on enjoying the whole process, every time through. The goings-on in the bar were confined to the background; for the moment, Fallstead was solely focused on a good smoke.

            “Best you come here and learn your place.” Inside the shabby establishment, a brutish, middle-aged man with a large purple birthmark on his right cheek was winding up tight as a spring. His ire and want for sexual gratification were going the way of a pretty young woman leaning on the bar. Whatever his will, she didn’t seem inclined on bending to it. The lady took a quick shot of whisky and kept her body square ahead, looking manifestly unimpressed.

            “Predictability is a powerful force,” she said, staring straight at the modest array of watered-down bottles behind the bartender. For all the disinterest in her manner, there was youthful eagerness in her voice too true to mask.

            “What’s that?” the man asked, all bluster and malformed thoughts. Every second served to rile him more. He was stroking his mangy chin hairs with one hand and hiking up his saggy wool trousers with the other. “You’re the one first looked at me, little girl.”

            She smiled and tapped the top of an empty shot glass gently with her gloved middle finger. The barkeep, tired and oily from too long a day, poured her another and withdrew. She threw back the drink with the same quick form as the first. Every man in the cantina had a head turned her way; she was wild-haired, blond and brown streaks flowing and colliding down the halfway of her back. She wasn’t tall, but her portions were presentable in all the right places, made more inviting by her vestments. She wore leather britches that clung tight to her skin, square-tipped rustler boots and a thin flannel shirt tucked in tight and unbuttoned low enough to show off more than a trifling tease of her breasts. A fancy man might find fault with her shoulders; they were rugged for a lady. Then again, she presented as something more than just some lady. “I looked at you because you’re about the ugliest son of a bitch I’ve seen in a spell. Creation gone awry. I picture a wagon overturned, something like that. What’s your name, specimen?”

“Tim. And you’re fixin’ to be sorry for taking tones. Thinkin’ I might give you a good ride before I cut you up.” Full of confidence, he gave the room a round look of sinister satisfaction before returning his attention back to the girl.

            She didn’t move at his heavy step. Her seeming lack of fear stalled his approach. He licked his teeth and played some more with his whiskers, eyeing her backside. The other men in the room inched away and exchanged looks of worry and wonder. They all knew getting in Tim’s path was a dicey proposition when his blood was over the lip.

            “So, you’re thinking,” she said, still fixed forward at the bottles. “That’s a dangerous line to take, Tim. Sort of a baby with dynamite, I’d reckon.”

            “Enough!” he roared, lunging forward wildly. She quickly ducked under and took several short steps away from the bar. Tim crashed over two rickety stools and into the skeletal drunk that’d been previously stationed to her right. As he turned and regained his bearings, he stared at his prey, breathing angry and deep as a bothered bear. This time, she had a pistol drawn, steady at the hip.

“You gonna kill me, little missy?” Tim asked, stumbling away from the bar in her direction.

            She drew back the hammer with her thumb. “Closer and I’ll be obliged to shoot your pecker right off.”

            Tim stopped his advances and looked around the room one more time. He saw nearly familiar images swaying all around, the way one does after too much time inside a bottle.

            “Take it easy, ma’am.” The suggestion came from the darkest corner of the cantina, in the smoky shadows to her left. “Tim, you back off. She don’t look like she’s messing about.”

            “Stay on out of this, Jay,” said the drunk, refusing to look off the girl.

            “Can’t do it. We need to be getting back. Mr. Trill’s expected.”

            “I reckon you’re gonna be disappointed there,” she said, eyeing the second man.

            “What’s that mean?” he asked.

She kept her attention on Tim and snuck another glance at his companion. They were opposites in disposition and appearance. As he stepped slow from the corner she could see he was kept up proper, slender and in possession of a handsome face.

            “Boss Trill’s either dead or locked up, is what I mean,” she said, dispassionately and demonstrably returning her pistol snugly to its holster.

            “That’s not possible,” replied the dapper gent. The other patrons continued parting to the few peripheries the little joint provided. Outside, Fallstead was down to about a quarter of his cigarette. The girl saw the smoke drifting into the cantina and smirked before her attention was forced back to the fracas.

            “I’ll show you what’s possible.” Tim had lost the last of his meager cool. He reached for his gun, but she was far too quick; as promised, she fired a .45 caliber slug into his privates. As blood began spraying a wide pattern, the patrons and bartender ducked and dove in random directions, disoriented by the volume of the shot. The only one not stumbling about was poor Tim’s compatriot, the handsome buck named Jay.

            “Jesus,” he said, moving over to check on his wounded friend. “Who the hell are you, lady?”

            “Apologies. Name’s Sybille.” She took two steps back toward the entrance to make certain no one could flank or sneak up on her.

“You duurty bitch—” Tim cried, holding his wound and trembling. He repeated it over and over until it was barely audible.

            “Don’t bother helping,” Sybille said, addressing Tim’s bereft friend. “He’ll bleed out in a minute or two. Die a woman.”

            A few breathy insults later, she was proved right. Jay closed the brute’s eyes with red hands and stood up seething. He was bent knees and balled fists, like springing to action was the next thing.

            “So ends the life of Tim. Not the brightest star. How about you, Jay?”

            “What about me?”

            “Just that I noticed you pulling the hammer back on your sidearm when you knelt down. You lookin’ for vengeance?”

            “Wouldn’t be fair. You’ve already drawn.”

            “I can remedy that,” she said, darting her eyes around the smoky room. “As long as everyone in this shithole makes it clear they witnessed a fair fight.”

            Nothing but a few indiscernible mumbles.

            “I’ll take that for affirmation.” Sybille slowly slipped her revolver back in its place.

            “I don’t want this,” he said.

            “Okay. Expected as much from the associate of a man threatin’ to take up with an unwilling woman. From a man who works for a no-good murdering son of a bitch.”

“That’s enough.”

            “Enough’s the right word. You’re played out, mister. No job, no friends, no backbone.” She let her gun hand dangle and gave a long breath. “Guess I’ll be seeing you boys. Or we can do it the old way.”

            “The old way. What’s that mean?” Jay asked, shiny teeth grinding.

            “It’s simple. Both of us take a chair. Set a candle in between. When it burns down to nothing, we draw. Never even have to get up. You slump to the afterlife real cozy.”

            “You’re crazy.”

            “So that’s a no then.” Sybille turned and walked out to the street without looking back. Hopping down to the hitching post, she heard a gunshot and the thud of a man falling behind her. Calmly adjusting her saddle, she said, “Guess that’s all of ‘em.”

            Marshal Fallstead tossed his cigarette and kicked Jay to make sure he was out of print before walking deliberate toward her. His legs didn’t pick up as light as they used to. Not after a long day. “You asking to get killed, Sybie?”

            She made her eyes big and pleading. “I knew you were out here smoking. Saw it rush through the window, just like you wanted me to. What’s the big deal?”

“Deal is I don’t want you getting a bullet playing some game. It’s damn stupid.”

            “Sorry, Pa.” She turned from her horse to give Fallstead a kiss on his rough cheek. “It is better when you shoot them, though.” A group was starting to form around the body, but not a soul ventured toward the marshal or his daughter. “He was a bad guy, and you handled it.” She chanced a smile. “Your badge makes witnesses less prone to revising their stories.” A kiss on his other cheek. Fallstead smirked and ran his hand gently through her wild hair. Despite the soft spot she was exploiting, a degree of irritation never fled his countenance.

            “Trill’s in jail,” he muttered, noticing a few of the Boyd City townsfolk walking up to learn what consequences the shooting had produced.

            “The rest?” Sybille asked. She looked up and saw a faraway thought behind her father’s gray eyes. It was all the answer she’d need. “It’s for the best. Not like you killed a wagon train’a nuns.”

            Fallstead left her for the fresh body still leaking on the cantina porch. Sybille could tell he was more cross than usual, but she wasn’t worried; she had news in the offing. After grabbing her pale curved straw hat from her saddle horn, the lawman’s daughter moved around her horse and took to a knee. She brought out her pistol and used the butt to draw a circle in the dirt with two horizontal lines, looking over to make sure Fallstead wasn’t watching. After saying a few words under her breath, she looked to reconnect with her father. “Any problems?” she asked.

            Fallstead looked expectedly at Brad Utterly, waiting for him to answer his daughter’s question. “No,” said the sheriff, standing over the body with his hands on his hips. “I suppose there ain’t.”

“That’s good to hear,” Sybille said. The townsfolk jumped a little every time she moved, hands always near her gun belt. Her energy was untamed and unpredictable, and them that hadn’t witnessed the speed of her pull had learned about it by now. “You run a real tight outfit, Utterly.”

            “Well.”

            “Sorry, Sheriff. Excuse me one sec. Pa, can I get a word?”

            “What is it?”

            Sybille nodded him away from the crowd, close to the window where the deputy marshal watched her stirring trouble. “I’ve got something. Before you showed, I overheard some boys talking in the cantina. Three or four counties over, there’s gonna be a hanging in a few days.”

            Fallstead looked down at his firecracker daughter and started groping around his tattered jacket on a quest for tobacco. “I’m gonna smoke another.”

            “Pa…”

            “You made me shoot more people than I planned on today. Don’t go heavin’ judgments.”

            “Fine. Anyhow, one of these boys works in the telegraph office. He was telling the other fella.”

            “Who’s the other fella?”

            “It doesn’t matter. The other fella ain’t a factor in the telling.”

            “Go on girl. Putting your nose in.”

            Sybille propped her hat up to make sure he could see there was no fooling in her eyes. “The telegraph man said the hanging’s over in Thunder Hill. A shootout or some such. Man shot down two or three others in the street. Took a bullet himself in the fracas.”

            “Waiting for why you’re telling me.” His scratchy voice was growing louder. Again, a long day.

“There was a description of the man that went to law across the territories, in case he was wanted on anything else. Guess he seemed the type to merit inquiry. Anyway, I listened to the telegraph man’s description. Sounds like a gent I’ve heard tell about.”

            “Who?”

            “Loot Moreno.”

            “No.” Fallstead’s answer was strident. He wasn’t blind to his daughter’s unending desire to see him in hot water, to see what he’d do. He wished he’d never told her word one about the past.

            “Description fit. The few that know are talking like it could actually be the damned legend himself.”

            “People talk nonsense, Sybie. Nothing but, most times. Didn’t think your ears were inclined toward hearing it.”

            As he started to walk away, Sybille pressed. “This man for the gallows, the one not called Loot Moreno—has a mark on the top of his hand. You need me to describe it?”

            Fallstead stopped and lit up the cigarette he had in waiting. “It can’t be him. He’s dead. Everyone said he was dead. I made sure… everyone said.”

            With all that had taken place, Sybille was still light on her feet. She slapped her father’s thick shoulder like she was fixing to mount up and the only thing for him to do was follow. “Yeah. But they said the same thing about you, Papa.”

Chapter Five: Dodge City

            “If y’all are needing anything else, let me know. Don’t you hesitate on account of… just don’t hesitate. I’ll be praying hard on it.”

            “You’re a goodly lad Kip,” Mrs. Bristol cried, English accent heavier than usual in her sadness. “And I’m sorry we missed yur pah’s wake. Of all tings to miss.”

            “Don’t say that. With all you’re going through.” He took her cold hands to stop them shaking. “Don’t say that.”

            They were standing in the muggy air near the bed of the struggling Mr. Bristol. Doc Rufus was kneeling toward the old man as he tried to speak through cycles of agony. A brutal cough and fever had latched hold of the shop owner; he was in a bad way. Doc set a cold cloth on his patient’s forehead and whispered that he’d be back to check on him in a bit. As he fastened up his medical bag and walked by Kip, he offered a sideways look absent much hope.

            Kip’s heart sank as Mrs. Bristol grabbed his hand again. He thought highly of the Bristols and wished to God he could answer her grasping with something more. It was impossible not to think of his father and how quickly strength could be taken from the strongest of men.

“Be with him,” said Kip. “Never seen you two as quitters.” They weren’t just words. The Bristols were proper in their manners and bearing, but somehow suited to hard frontier life. They’d lost three children in their days as young adults and decided to start afresh across the Atlantic. Theirs was a successful business, one of the first to find home in Thunder Hill. Kip put an arm around the portly, red-faced Mrs. Bristol and gave her a gentle squeeze. She seemed to curl up inside his rangy embrace. He almost fell asleep on the padding of her shoulder. The days had taken a toll on all there present.

            “Come here then lad,” Mr. Bristol wheezed. Finally, the cough had let up enough to allow him an audible thought. Kip sat down next to the bed with caution, hoping not to break the momentary peace. He could feel the heat and sick coming off Bristol’s body. “Had a… good enough run,” he said, sputtering his way through the syllables.

            “Don’t be talking that way, sir. You still got acres of work here on this plane. Wouldn’t bet against it. Rest up and do what Doc Rufus says.”

            “Never mind that, boy.” Bristol’s hand found a new grip. He raised his head until it touched Kip’s. His milky eyes were pinned as he spoke. “There’s darkness, boy. Watch. Don’t wish for it. Finds you eventually. Comes from places you can’t imagine. From nowhere it comes.”

            He’d heard people say crazy things before under fevers. They usually did, in truth. Mr. Bristol’s declaration wasn’t particularly eerie, but there was a clarity in the delivery that caused a lump in Kip’s throat. “You rest now, Mr. Bristol.”

            The old man sputtered and nodded. The young preacher took a spare cloth from the bedside and wiped away spit running down deep wrinkles. Brave suffering was dreadful. Like any decent churchman, Kip felt burdened by this part of the Call. The Lord’s work felt more work than Lord sometimes. Still, there was strange comfort in doing his part, keeping away from the mysteries and suspicions of the previous week. “I’ll be back to look in on you both. Get some rest now.” After patting Bristol gently on the arm and giving his dutiful wife one more tender hug, he walked softly out of the bedroom, head down and solemn. He found Rufus waiting with his arms crossed, leaning causally on the front doorframe.

            “Talk with me a minute?” the doctor asked.

            “Of course,” Kip said, squinting into the waning light of dusk as they exited. His visit with the Bristol’s had not been brief. “What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing’s wrong, per se.”

            “Please Elias,” he said. The lively green of his eyes was more like red from fatigue. “Just tell me what’s needling.”

            “Worried about you, is all, huffing and puffing your way out of the café yesterday.” Doc set down his bag and took measure of the young man. “Darting across the thoroughfare toward the jail, no doubt on some crusade. Question is, a crusade of what nature?”

            “I wasn’t on a crusade. And I know you’re mocking the faith. Close-mindedness and melodrama aren’t requisites for all our conversations. Maybe pa being gone’s given you more sand.”

“Watch it, son.” The flint in Rufus’ warning was something he couldn’t recall hearing.

            “Sorry.” In an instant Kip was turned back to a boy.

“Then there’s the drinking,” the elder continued, close enough for Kip to go lightheaded on his shaving rum. “I might not be the best medical man this side of the Mississippi, but I can certainly tell and smell when someone’s been down the whisky hole a few days. How’s that head, besides mostly empty?”

            “Better,” Kip said, smiling a little with a charming, embarrassed look on his face. Rufus wasn’t one to let a mood keep sour for long. He was grateful for that. “I’ve only had a swig or two since yesterday.”

“Good lad.”

“Why’d you have to turn me from the jail yesterday?” It had indeed been a sudden interruption, and they hadn’t had a moment alone away from the Bristols to discuss it since. Kip felt the question still merited asking.

            “Did you happen to slap eyes on the dying man in there? It’s your job—calling. You send the rubes off packing with a smile, I try to keep them on the mortal coil.”

            “Snatching me from the street? Mr. Bristol is a long way from his last breath.”

            “Shall we trade professions outright, then?”

            “Rufus?”

            The doctor seemed to look everywhere save the younger man’s eyes. It was uncharacteristic. Rufus was inveterately unashamed, deliberate in speech and action. “No idea what you’re jabbering about. It’s been a hard time, I know. Perhaps the notion struck me, you gettin' to your job.”

            “By expediting the prospect of looming death in my face? We’d buried my father the day before.”

“That’s actually not a terrible point,” Doc Rufus conceded, scratching the round top of his hat. “It’s possible that I was a little off the target. Salubrious aims don’t always pan.”

            “Hope you’re treating everybody else in town with the same deft perception and skill. We’ll all live forever.”

The doctor took up his old boxing stance as a tease. “You’ve got a lot more cheek than your father, young Laird.”

            “Yeah, well. Might be we had a lot less in common than you’d imagine.”

            The doctor bent his thick eyebrows and ceased the playful gesture. He didn’t like the tone or the implication.

            “Let’s speak later, Doc. Nothing but long days lately. Best be off to check on my family.”

            Kip offered a hearty handshake and allowed Doc to yank him tight for a hug. He accepted it in kind and with no delay, like the two hadn’t spent the last few minutes lashing each other.

            “Give your mother my best,” Rufus said with a wry smile, pulling out his flask and marching with proud strides in the direction of his house.

            He can’t help but be himself, Kip thought, taking the opposite direction. He adopted a route through the narrow alley between the Bristol’s shop and the newspaper office which opened up onto Thunder Hill’s Main Street. Activity in the town was beginning to ebb as folks made their way home for supper. Laird found a few moments of relative peace, concerned as he was with the Bristols and the odd behavior of Doc Rufus. Casually walking along the boardwalk, he did his best not to let the clanging commotion of the saloon break his tranquil state. Parts of him wanted to belly up and spend the night getting dead drunk, but he dismissed the thought as quick as it came. The town’s sole preacher couldn’t be seen assenting to too many fleshly habits, no matter the desire for escape.

            Stepping off the boardwalk, he heard a coarse voice coming from the door of the saloon. “Hey, Kipper! C’mon over here!”

            He squinted toward the call and spotted one of Thompson’s hands that’d been lunching in French’s the day before. “Hey there,” Kip said, changing his posture from lazy to alert. “It’s Valentine, right?”

            “You know damn well it is, church boy.” Valentine seemed convinced he’d found the pinnacle of all insults. He laughed hysterically and put on a sloppy show of swagger as three more of his associates tumbled through the saloon doors like cars from a derailed train. Each man looked sweaty and wound up from hours of typical day-off carousing.

“I’ll be seeing you gents. Bless you now,” Kip said, sensing no good from more conversation.

            “Hold on there,” Valentine returned, “I ain’t done talkin’ to ya.”

            “Probably because you’re yet to say a dang thing.” Doc Rufus was right; Kip did have more cheek than his father.

            A cacophony of mocking and slander went Valentine’s way via the mouths of his buddies. They were having quite a laugh, the way followers usually do when their leader is knocked down a peg.

            “I’m sorry,” Laird said, sensing that he’d caused more damaged pride than intended. “Gonna go home, see my family.”

            “Your sister there? I might myself come a callin’.”

            “Yeah, she’s a pretty piece.” One of the others was chiming in, shorter and even less presentable than Val. “A real shapely, pretty piece. I think we get a taste of her before it’s back to the stead. Looks bred for passing around. What u thinking, boys?”

            “That’s about enough,” Kip said, rolling up the sleeves of his mourning shirt, aware of the incongruity. He was tired and at sea but talk like that was more than petty wind. Too much for turning cheeks. “Come on. Let’s get it over with.”

            As they dropped off the end of the boardwalk onto the road, little puffs of dust sprang up from the concussion of their boots. Each man fanned out in a slightly different direction, creating a semicircle around their prey. He didn’t see any guns and didn’t suspect there’d be any; Joey the bartender was a bruiser and intractably consistent in confiscating all firearms once his patrons were sufficiently soused. These boys had hit that mark and then some.

“Don’t worry, Preach,” Val said, fists clenching. “After we beat your ass down, we’ll take care that sister plenty good. Your purty mama too. She’s gotta be getting lonely by now.”

            Kip had tussled and roughhoused all his life, no different than any other boy trying to find his place, but this was the first time he felt propelled by proper malice. Without a word he took two hefty steps forward and slammed a rugged right fist into Valentine’s mouth. Crooked teeth went sailing. Val was felled like a tree long in need of an ax.

            Everything seemed silent, like justice was taking a moment for itself. The three remaining cattle hands were stunned at first. So was Kip. His first coherent thought was one of concern. “Sorry,” he said, holding his hands up apologetically to the others. Bending over the downed Valentine, he tried to summon him back to consciousness.

            They weren’t having repentance. A boot from Kip’s left found a way to his ribs. From the right a fist cracked him across the jaw. The pain was blinding until the short mouthy one came over with an empty whisky bottle and smashed it over his forehead. For a few seconds he felt nothing, careening between the present and darkness.

            Then they really started in, going like hyenas as he rolled around next to the sleeping Val in hapless defense. Inside a growing cloud of dust, the beating only grew more ferocious.

            When it looked like the three drunks would never part from their task, two shots rang out. An older man in a traveled three-piece suit stood just away from the fracas, lowering his smoking pistol from the sky to the group’s general direction. “I think it’s time for a cessation. That boy had his fill, Jesus H.”

“Who the hell’re you?” the short one asked, snot dripping from his cracked lips.

            “I’m not sure that’s relevant, vagabond.”

            “You ain’t relevant, dude.”

            “That’s … clever, I suppose. My name is Jasper Bedford. Not from here.” The stranger tried to straighten his saggy frame and cocked the pistol nervously using two hands. “I implore you gentlemen. The outnumbered party has benefited from whatever lesson you meant to teach. Find respite. Elsewhere, please.”

            A crowd of around thirty people was now watching the scene from a distance. The previous day’s shooting had the citizens of Thunder Hill skittish but nonetheless curious, wanting to know the situation but not wanting to engage. The questions and grumbles were fairly uniform throughout the gathering.

            It’s got to be the boys from the Thompson place. Stirring up trouble’s common as breathing for those fools.

            Who’s the old fella doing the gun-toting? Didn’t he come in town the other day? What’s he still here for?

            Is that Kip down there in the dirt? What in God’s name is he doing getting mixed up in such foolery? Shame on him. Like Mabel doesn’t already have her fill.

            Where’s Cox? Sheriff, ain’t he? What are we paying him for? This town is startin’ to look like Dodge City.

  It seemed the brief stalemate might fall apart between Bedford and the three brutes until Cox thundered his big spotted horse down the street to quell the situation. He fired a few warning shots in the air with his oily Winchester, holding the reins with his non-trigger hand.

            The lawman pulled up behind Jasper Bedford and threw a leg over his saddle, sliding off the horse smoothly. His rifle was pointed and clenched with stiff purpose at the short man standing over Kip.

            “Sheriff. Ain’t nothing.”

            “Shut your mouth, Stevie. Damn half-formed drunk.”

            “I—”

            “I’ll plug you finished, swear to God. Pulling this. Like I don’t have enough on my plate.” The sheriff chambered a round in the Winchester. The large barrel was roughly twenty feet from the three men, more than close enough to put fear in their addled heads.

            “Out of the way! Let me go!” Lindy Samuels emerged from the crowd after escaping her blustering fiancé’s fervid grasp. As she offered Kip tears and succor, the witnesses’ chatty concerns turned hell for leather into whispery gossip of the lewdest order.

            Cox was standing beside Jasper Bedford, just a few feet away. He ordered the old newsman to holster his weapon with one wag of a finger. Bedford did it immediately and without question. The sheriff kept up his intensity and focused on seeing the dust settle. “You boys get. They’ll be nothing more on it if you do.”

“No jail?”

            “Not even to sleep it off. You start running back to Thompson’s right now, and my word’s good.”

            The three looked down at Val and Kip, then at each other. A kernel of sense was taking root.

            “The deal ends in five seconds. Start running.” Cox pulled the rifle butt tight to his armpit. He had no intention to fire, but he couldn’t let them know that. Not with Val and Kip bleeding in the dirt. Not with Miss Lindy mixed in the workings and her banker dandy seeing red.

            “Let’s get,” Stevie said, running crooked with his friends down a narrow alley out into the prairie land that led to the Thompson’s. Cox let out a deep, silent sigh. He told the crowd to get back to their business and rolled a pair of angry eyes at Jasper. The writer let his shoulders sink in embarrassment and cleared himself from the scene, allowing the shifting group of spectators to envelop him.

            “Go fetch Doc Rufus,” Cox said roundly, figuring someone would take up the task. He bent down with a long sigh and started slapping Valentine lightly on the face. “Jesus, Kip. You really gave him a walloping.” He lowered his thin gray eyebrows at the youngest Laird. The two young men were almost on top of each other, faces covered in blood and clothes made brown by the dusty road. Lindy Samuels was close to coming apart, holding Kip’s head in her lap. Over and over she kept kissing the top of his head, repeating something the sheriff couldn’t quite make out. Cox didn’t know exactly what her involvement was, but exact wasn’t needed to whiff trouble coming down the line.

As Val finally came around, Rufus arrived. Cox exchanged a loaded look with his old friend and stood up to give him room. The sheriff backed up and onto the boardwalk, watching the crowd from above. Mabel and Elsie Laird had just rushed to the scene. Mother and sister wore very different expressions; Mabel was concerned, asking her loopy son questions. Elsie wasn’t asking anything. Her generally welcoming eyes were fixed and hard. Trouble coming down the line, the lawman thought again.

            Rufus ordered everyone away and enlisted Cox to help. He was clearly irritated and had already put in a long day with the Bristols. “Lindy, Mabel, get on back,” Doc barked, whisky on his breath. “Boy,” he said, pressing lightly on Kip’s sides, “does it hurt bad to breathe?”

            “I’m sorry about this. Tell the sheriff. Is Val okay?”

            Rufus took Kip’s hand and pulled him up to a sitting position. He checked his arms and hands for any breaks. “Val’s fine. His smile’s been permanently altered, but I’m not discounting the possibility of improvement.”

            “I’m sorry,” Kip repeated.

            “Enough with the sackcloth, kid. Save the apologies for the rubes. They’re gonna be restless having an amateur pugilist for their holy man.”

The remark almost made Kip smile through the pain. He asked for help getting to his feet. His rugged body was battered, but he’d recover. The worst was his hand; Val’s flat face turned out to be hard as granite. He shook it out and patted Rufus on the back, offering him thanks.

            “My pleasure,” Doc smiled wryly. “A real exclamation mark to the day.”

            “Hey.”

            “What?”

            “Later on, you need to cough up why you were really keeping me from the jail. I ain’t letting go of it.”

            The doctor fiddled with his gray hat and checked his pocket watch, doing a bad job of feigning indifference. Kip caught a glance between Rufus and Cox. The sheriff clutched his rifle and looked off down the road. “We just went over this,” Rufus said. “You’re still a little punch drunk maybe, not remembering things.” 

            “I remember it not being settled proper.”

            “Better set your mind somewhere else. That’d be my advice.” The physician held out his hands and waved them around, clearly indicating he was talking about the town and everyone in it.

            “Owe you my gratitude, Sheriff,” Kip said, walking toward the leftover crowd and his mother. She started to wipe the remaining blood from his face, but he stopped her. “Don’t go ruining your fancy garments.”

            “You could always ask Lindy for a swath,” Elsie said. She was standing next to Mabel, arms crossed indignantly. “Seems she’s more than happy to lay down vestments at your altar.”

            “Elsie, I’m sorry.” Kip was singing the same song, and it was a song nobody wanted to hear. Sorry for being a house built on sand, everyone. Sorry for taking up on the sly with a betrothed woman, Elsie. Apologies for scuffling with the dregs and miscreants that I’m supposed to be ministering to, God.

Kip wanted his senses stripped. Val was still prostrate in the dirt, moaning intolerably. Lindy was casting a Gorgon-like stare in his direction. The mutterings and whispered bits of gossip from the onlookers were ants on his skin. He just wanted to get away and wash it all off. He met his mother with a trembling kiss on the forehead and told her that he was going home for the day. I want to go with you, make sure you’re okay, Mabel said. I’m fine, just a few scrapes and bruises, he answered, lying straight to her loving face.

            Lowering his head, he walked slowly through the crowd and across the road, heading gingerly toward his place above Grimes General Store. No one would bother him there. His mother was the only one in town maintaining unflappable support, and she’d be turning in after an hour or so, early as always. He’d knock on Mr. Grimes’ door and procure a bottle of whisky and some bandages to wrap his sore ribs. Change his shirt and wait for night to come in earnest. Banged up or not, he still had things to do.

Chapter 6: Mr. Calhoun & Mr. Moreno

“You hungry there, jailbird?”

            No response.

            “Fine then, Calhoun. I wasn’t getting you anything no how. Just be a waste anyways, considering where yur a-headin’.” Deputy Elbert Rooker threw his feet up on the sheriff’s desk, wiggling his toes inside a pair of silver-tipped boots. Rooker was fastidious about his appearance; he wore a dark suede hat along with a gray silk vest and tailored black pants made from the finest wool a fella could pick from a merchant catalogue. It didn’t do him any favors. Folks in town figured the clothes as compensation for his naturally unpleasant looks. He leaned back in Cox’s desk chair, feet up, chewing on a toothpick. The prisoner sat heavy and hunched on the bed of the cell farthest from the entrance, long hair falling down and around his head. It was his only way to hide. There was no partition or privacy. The Thunder Hill Sheriff’s Office and Jail was essentially one large room. A few old desks, a gun rack on the wall opposite the front door, and two cells. The ceiling was unreasonably low. The prisoner couldn’t have stood up straight if he wanted to.

            “When’s Cox going to be back?”

            “I ain’t his keeper. What’s it to you anyhow, Calhoun?”

            “You’re a bother.”

            “Well I’m sorry,” the deputy said, drawing out his words for a full helping of condescension. “Maybe should’ve thought about that before you plugged them two boys. The Tolliers were friends of mine.”

            “I should’ve smacked you harder then,” the prisoner said.

Deputy Rooker snarled and rubbed near the bandage on his nose. “You won’t be throwing insults when you’re roasted up in hellfire.”

            “You’ve got the measuring of things, I guess.”

            “That’s right, jailbird,” Rooker said.

            “Don’t know why I bother to say, but those friends weren’t the kind worth having. I’d know something about that.”

Rooker spit on the floor and took a dramatic pause before responding. “You don’t know nothing.”

“Firstly, I know them boys were going gray in their beards. Thirty at least, both of ‘em.”

            “Murder’s murder. Reckon the sight of the noose will take away some of that bluster.”

            “Murder my hide!” Calhoun roared, stomping the floor with his good leg. The force of it shook the building. The bolts holding the bars together rattled from the test.

            The sudden outburst caused the young deputy to swallow down his toothpick. “Ahh, dammit,” he hacked, smacking the flat of his bony chest, trying to cough it back up.

            “Only way that’s coming out is from the other end,” Calhoun said, taking small pleasure in Rooker’s new affliction.

            As the deputy continued to demonstrate stabbing pain, Cox entered quietly and stopped cold. “What the hell is this?” he asked, watching his subordinate grab at his throat like a bad actor portraying a poisoning.

            “You’ve got some real hard men here,” Calhoun said.

Sheriff Cox yanked Rooker’s shiny boots from his desk and ordered him gone. “Come back tomorrow with your head on straight.” He pushed the gagging greenhorn through the door and locked it behind, standing silent for a minute, continuing to face the door. He shook his head and stowed his rifle before hanging up his duster and hat. “Where’d I keep it?” he mumbled, rummaging through the desk drawers.

            “It’s in the bottom left. Under the papers,” said the prisoner.

            Cox lifted some old wanted notices and sure enough found what he was looking for. “Thanks Loot,” he said, taking down a healthy dose from an old whisky bottle. “You want some?”

            “Be obliged. Talking to that kid of yours has me reminiscing on my years of seclusion with favor.”

            Cox smiled just enough to show his worn teeth as he walked the bottle over. He stuck it through the bars and gave it a shake. Loot stood up to answer the gesture, making sure to keep his head tucked down and most of his weight off the wounded right leg.

            “What’s all the ruckus? Somebody out there shooting, no doubt.”

            “There was some shooting, sure enough. Your buddy.”

            “My buddy?”

            “The old newspaperman. Jasper Bedford.”

            Moreno almost spit up his whisky. “You’re fooling.”

            Cox shook his head and took the bottle back. “Nope. And if that’s not strange, the shooting was on account of him stepping in to help Kip Laird.”

            Moreno’s dusky face was full of confusion. “The kid’s okay though, right? And Jasper?”

            “Everything is fine. Reckon Ben’s boy is a little at odds. Blood’s up, lost control with some of the town yokels. Out of the ordinary, but not completely surprising. Death of a parent and all.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, you know what I mean,” Cox said, turning a tinge red in the face. The sheriff was good enough at orders and straight talk but nibbling around edges was a skill he’d never refined.

            Moreno returned to his bed. It sank under the weight of his bulk.

            Two knocks on the door. “It’s Rufus. Let me in, Amos. I need to—hell—check on the prisoner’s wound.”

            Cox got up and opened the door. “No need to put on airs, Doc. It’s just us in here.”

            Rufus tipped his cap and walked in, holding the lapels of his long black suit jacket as he came to a stop in the center of the room. “How you doing, Loot?”

            “I’ve been worse.”

            “Well, damn sorry to hear that,” the doctor said, smiling wide and pointing to the sheriff’s bottle. “Glad to see I’m not the only one drinking though.”

            “What’s the kid doing? Getting into some scrap I hear?”

            “Nothing to worry about. The honorable Cox stormed the battlements and quelled any escalations.”

            The sheriff crossed his arms. “I didn’t do much. Battlements? How much you been drinking, Doc?”

            “There may be another problem,” Rufus said, ignoring Cox’s inquiry, knowing the familiar lawman wouldn’t fuss over an answer.

            Moreno stood back up and grabbed the bars. “Tell us, Doc.”

            “The young squire was heading over here yesterday. I more or less diverted him, but he’s kicking at sleeping dogs.”

            “How could he know?” Cox asked, looking from Rufus to Moreno. “What could he know?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” the doctor said. “Another day of rest for that leg and you’ll make your miraculous escape.”

            The laconic sheriff nodded and put his hands in his pockets, pacing around the little space. It was a right mess he was in, but he wasn’t about to let an old friend hang for defending himself against the Tollier brothers. According to every honest set of eyes at the scene, the drunken troublemakers had forced Loot’s actions, drawing down and cornering him outside the bar. Despite the testimonials, the city judge was quick to fix him for the gallows; he was a crooked old bastard. All he could see was a big mixed-breed from out of town and two dead sons of a local rich man. Stacked, sideways jury. Case closed.

            “So damn dumb, me coming here,” Moreno said. “Think it best to just let me swing. Us three here know it’s been a long time coming.”

            “That’s not a situation I’m comfortable living with,” Rufus answered. “You’ve done penance a hundred times over.” The well-dressed physician walked over and put a hand through the cell, patting Loot on his burly shoulder. “Hell, it’d be wasted work, the number of times I’ve patched you up. I can’t see you in the noose.”

            “Me neither,” Cox said, standing resolutely by his desk. He wished Loot hadn’t come to Thunder Hill, but Ben Laird’s death had thrown everybody’s senses astray. “You don’t hang. That’s not the way.”

            “Gentlemen.” Kip was standing in the open doorway. Rufus had forgotten to lock it back up. The older men were frozen in place, as if playing possum was a viable solution to their sudden problem. “Mr. Calhoun,” Laird said. “Excuse me, Mr. Moreno. It’s nice to meet you.” Kip closed the door deliberately, keeping his actions and movements minimal, like drawing out a moment at the pulpit to add tension.

“How much did you hear?” Cox asked.

            “Pretty much everything you’ve said since Doc came in. Not intruding, am I?”

            “You know damn well you are,” Rufus said. “And that’s about all you know. I advise caution here, son. You reversing course might serve all parties. Before things get beyond control.”

            Kip’s laugh was the mocking kind. “Kinda funny, Rufus, being called son. The word seems out of place aimed in my direction.”

            Moreno, Rufus and Cox traded loaded looks before Kip continued.

  “Ben told me the truth… before he passed on. Some of it, anyhow. Been meaning to confirm the story, but dang if it hasn’t been an eventful couple of days.” A few renegade tears streamed down his smooth face. He wiped them away with the inside of his shirt sleeve and jumped at the sound of pounding on the door.

“Sheriff, I forgot something. Just take a second.”

It was Rooker. Kip saw an unprecedented amount of worry ruining faces of men he’d grown up respecting as giants. He knew his presence was for them a complication, but Rooker showing up had them at odds like he’d never seen. Their familiarity with Moreno was about the biggest itch he’d ever needed scratching. He figured the high road for now. “I’ll go out the back,” he whispered, making sure to look at each of them as he stepped across the floor. “And later you can explain the coziness.” He opened the backdoor while Rooker continued rapping the front. “Also,” Kip said, “I’m eager hear about the jailbreak. That should be an adventure.”

Chapter 7: Exposed

            After the scuffle in the street, Elsie Laird went back home and had herself a cry, not that she’d ever be admitting to it. The house was uncomfortably quiet as she cleared the table of a half-eaten meal; she and her mother had been in the middle of a roast left by some parishioners when one of the boys came by to report Kip’s latest travail.

            Following their return, Mabel gave her a war-weary hug before going to lie down. That left an emotional Elsie fetching water, tidying, and stoking the fires proper to last a frigid night. Summer was beginning to loosen its grip in earnest and Thunder Hill sat in a high valley.

            “It’s coming. He left me, and it’s coming.”

Elsie shrieked fierce at the voice and almost took a burn from the kitchen stove. Turning around she nearly shrieked the same; her mother looked natural and undone in a way that was as startling as her words. Gray-blonde hair fell randomly past her shoulders. Her nightclothes were crooked and hanging funny. A ragged homespun blanket was wrapped around her shaking back and chest. “It’s coming. He left me, and it’s coming,” she kept saying. Little bits of light from the lantern and the stove were barely combating the dark. A bit more crept in from the big room in the front and the office that led out to the back porch. Mostly though, night prevailed. The dancing shadows made gothic twists and turns on the walls, but Elsie didn’t deem it proper for being skittish as she was; they’d lived there for most of her twenty years, goodness sake.

            “It’s because he’s not here,” Mabel whispered.

            Her mother wasn’t speaking sense, but she could feel the meat of it involved her departed dad. That calming considered presence, forged by a thousand losses and thousands of prayers and starts and stops. Elsie felt exposed in her own home; she wasn’t the intrepid autonomous woman projected to everyone in town. That personality was luxury afforded by the stalwart presence of her father and steadfast love of her mother. Now half her support was gone. Strange how losing half could make a person empty all the way.

            “Can I get you something, Mama? It’s late for coffee, but maybe something with a bite.” Elsie was desperate for anchoring. Desperate for the both of them.

            “Fetch that bottle of whisky from the top cabinet,” Mabel said, glassy eyed from tears past or tears coming. “Let’s hope your brothers haven’t staked the entire claim.”

            “Yes ma’am,” Elsie said, smiling a little while her mother took a careful seat at the kitchen table. The matriarch was moving slowly, like the last few weeks had shaved away years. The daughter figured it would pass. Hoped maybe, more than figured. The table helped. Thousands of chips and scratches in the wood signaling time and familiarity.  

With two cups poured and the bottle between them, Elsie asked, “What’d you mean just then? What’s coming? What did he leave you with?”

            Mabel took a drink and lingered over the taste. Her affinity toward spirits was stronger than she was likely to concede. Ben had teased her on it enough to realize teasing was a bad idea. She didn’t indulge too often and mostly had enough sense to know when to put the cork back in. Tonight, though, Mabel wasn’t sure her footing was firm. Wasn’t sure she cared, either. “An old woman rambling, Else. Rambling around the house one room to another, rambling around in my head.”

            “I feel wayward the same. Is it more than that, though?” Elsie didn’t want to push too far or retreat too easy. She took a sip of whisky and waited. There was duty in enduring the silence.

            Finally, Mabel answered her lovely daughter. “I can’t tell you exact. But when your dad passed, holes were left open. This town, this county, he was sort of a center. There were things. Things he did for people.”

            “I know that,” Elsie said. “Of course, I know that. He was the best man in the world. Girls always say that about their dads, guessing, but I mean it.”

            “I know you do. And girls don’t often say that about their fathers.” Mabel smiled enough to show she wasn’t all sadness. It spurred hope inside Elsie. “Wouldn’t catch me saying that about your grandpa. Man was a stump in a tended field. Never had a place and took it out on everyone in his path.”
“You’ve said.”

            “And said. And said again. Suppose I’ve become a curmudgeon, or suppose I never wasn’t one. What say you on that matter?”

            She cleared her throat of the liquor sting. “I think both my parents are exemplars. Peerless pedestaled paragons.”           

            The widow sighed dismissively and tapped the table with her cup. “With all you and Kip’s fancy schooling, sometimes I get jealous. Rufus and those lessons he fed you. Talk runs so fast I can’t keep pace.”

            “Sure you can. And do. Stubborn in admitting it is all.”

            Elsie finished her cup and allowed herself a generous refill. Mabel didn’t even notice. The social graces and proprieties of days ago were being overlooked. Perhaps this would be the way for the short run, Elsie thought. Or perhaps everything had splintered off for good. Irrevocably changed. It was either the best time or the worst time to bring up the thing heaviest on her mind. “Mama?”

            “What’s bothering?”

            “My bother that obvious?”

            “Know my daughter’s ways better than she thinks I do.”

            “Not sure the wisdom of letting out this horse. You may never speak to me again.”

            “Ahh. So that then.” Mabel was all mother again.

            Elsie sat up a little. “What do you mean that then?”

            “Kip. You’ve been in love with him since y’all could speak proper. Before that, probably.” 

The word proper wasn’t emphasized, but it’s the one that stuck in Elsie’s mind. Her alabaster cheeks turned ruddy, obvious even in the fitful yellow light.

            “Don’t get overstrung. There’s nothing wrong with it. Some ways, nothing could be more right.”

            “I’m not sure,” Elsie said, reaching across the tabletop to clutch her mother’s hand. “He’s my brother.”

            “He is,” Mabel said, rubbing the smooth tops of her daughter’s fingers. “And he isn’t. Something to reconcile or not. Nothing simple to it.”

            “Lord, I’m far from swift,” Elsie said, embarrassed for old reasons and new. “This whole time I thought I was keeping this grand and awful secret, but it was news to you like the sun rises in the east.”

            “It’ll be a little more complicated. But women and men throwing themselves together is always complicated.” Mabel wrapped the blanket tighter around her body as a cool draft slithered through the kitchen. Her daughter was rare beautiful, clever and still very young; sometimes a perilous combination. Still, there was no sense getting riled over something that at its heart was good. Not with all the darkness out there in the world and no Ben to help her face it. “You’ve always gotten on, you and Kip. There’s no denying it,” Mabel continued, surprised somewhat by her own advocacy but glad to be speaking on a worldly subject. “In a way, Sydney never quite found his place. Less a Laird than our adopted.” She looked flush into her daughter’s changeable eyes for the first time in the conversation. “But those few years Syd has on you, they were tough. They did something to his soul. The dark, the outside world can seep in. Find a way of manipulating a child’s constitution to trouble. From their young days to their last.”

A stronger draft followed Mabel’s statement. The lantern on the edge of the table flickered. Mother and daughter heard the front door close sharply and heavy footsteps coming closer.

            “I saw the lights on.” The sound of Kip’s voice put Mabel a little more at ease and Elsie a little more on edge, but there was something right about him being there with them in the kitchen of the family house. Especially now.

            “The lights? That so?” Elsie said, keeping her flushed face from the full glow of the lantern. She didn’t want to betray she’d been crying.

            “What’s going on, son?” Mabel asked hard. “Scuffling. Trouble. It’s not you. Never has been. The town won’t forgive forever.”

            “I’ll be right back, Mama,” Kip said, walking demonstrably loud up the stairs. Mabel and Elsie looked up at the ceiling, listening to a series of thumps and scratches. They traded a few more sips of whisky before he was back in the kitchen, holding a set of dingy little books in his hand like they were the source of all knowledge.

            “And how can you say that I’ve never been trouble? You don’t know all of me, do you?” Kip’s asking wasn’t aggressive, but he was acres from polite.

            “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m your mama.”

            “Oh, of course you are.” Kip leaned over the table, waving dusty pages. “But you’re also not my mama. And we never talk about it, or maybe we have, once or twice throughout the spread of my whole life. I’m to be grateful and that’s the beginning and end of it.” He was sweating. Sore in body and spirit. Dragging his whole perforated essence around town, one location to the next. The waving of pages stopped. “And, of course, I’m grateful. Yet still, it’s going to eat away at my soul until I get the whole story.” 

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

            Elsie sensed Mabel holding out. The woman that had just been so open and honest with her about Kip was new, suddenly indifferent as stone.  

“I’ll start with this,” he said, holding up one of the little books higher than the rest. It was a dime novel with an amateurish illustration titled, The Three-in-One Gang. “I’d almost forgotten I had a secret trove of these hidden in my room upstairs. Trash, admittedly. Violence and tall tales. But that seems akin to what I’ve been told about my past.”

            “Don’t chew raw with me, boy. You’re taking leave of your respect.”

            Kip paced the table and surveyed Elsie and Mabel, letting his thoughts stack up on each other as neatly as could be arranged after such a day. Tending to the Bristols, brawling in the streets, girl trouble, more drinking, and his latest episode at the jail. The young man was beyond his natural limits. The situation before him would require delicacy; a lightness that could only really come from strength. Were he wise, he might understand. But he was barely a man. A sort of noble desire for the truth was tangled up with a selfish duty to himself.

“What is that?” Elsie asked, pointing to the wrinkled little books. “What is it to do with you?”

            “Just some stories. Fictional, supposedly. But turns out one of the main players is in the jail down there. Met him myself about ten minutes ago.” Kip leaned closer to his mother. “Funny thing. Seems there’s a whole team that already knows him. Betting Mama’s a member.”

            Mabel’s head was down. Elsie stood up and slapped Kip. Whatever his problem, he had no right to take a nasty tone with the woman that loved them most. “What’s wrong with you?” she blared.

            “Loot Moreno. Are you in on this too?”

            “Not again,” Elsie said, moving over to put an arm around her mother. “You’ve taken too many hits. More likely it’s just the drinking. I thought you were a better person.”

            He heard every word but decided they weren’t worth his time at present. “I just met him over at the jail, Else. Mr. Calhoun is Loot Moreno of legend and lore.”

            “Get out. And stop bothering Mama.”

            “I’m just trying to talk to Mama. You’re not on my side. Fine. You’re only about what you want, Elsie.”

            She’d shown her heart too bold in the street. He saw her judging while he recovered from the fight. Judging him for taking Lindy’s help. For letting her cast spells. “Not right now, Kip. I won’t be stepping there.”

            His voice grew louder than he wanted but he made no attempt at calming. “You’re needing more from me than I got. Sorry, Else, but it may never be. God knows I love you, but everything… it’s crazy.”

            “Please stop talking. C’mon, Mama.”

            “It’s Loot Moreno,” Mabel whispered, clutching her daughter’s slender arm. “He’s right. It’s all coming. And he left me.”

            Kip knelt down and tried to capture his mother’s focus. She stared without a goal. Too much whisky and grief. Maybe too many lies. The thought came and left Kip’s consciousness in a second’s time. His mother wasn’t nefarious. More was going on. He could see it in her overtaxed expression. It wouldn’t do him any good to go stomping around the garden. Enough was enough for one night. “I’m sorry, Mama. God, I’m so sorry. We can talk about this later.”

            “Come here,” she said, letting go of Elsie to hold out her arms. Kip fell into her embrace. My beautiful boy, she thought. My beautiful baby boy. Found on a church step. God’s sweetness ever since.

Kip stood up and received a kiss on his forehead from Mabel. She bid them both goodnight and gently made her way to bed. Elsie looked up at him and asked, “What was that?”

            “Maybe you hate me right now, but take my word as a preacher. That was someone trying to wrestle a burden off their chest. A piece of one, anyhow.”

            “Loot Moreno,” Elsie said. Mabel had spoken the name. He was real to her now. “It doesn’t make any sense. If he’s not just a story, then he’s really a killer. Unless you’re saying just the bad parts of him were a legend.”

            Kip winced from his ribs and held up the little paperback, hitting it against his head. “Mama’s weary. Spying on the jail only yielded more questions. I was forced away from their gathering when Rooker came back.”

“So Rooker doesn’t know?”

“I don’t think many do. A small club I’ve got intentions to join. I’ll start with these.”

            Elsie looked hard through the dim and read the author’s name. Jasper Bedford. “Who’s Jasper Bedford?”

            “He seems okay. Stepped in when those boys were taking the boots to me earlier.”

            “That old twig in the wrinkled three-piece wrote the book you’re holding presently?” She was incredulous.

            “There’s lots going on, I’ll admit.” Kip took a big breath. “And I came in too hot for what mama deserves. Or you.” His head slumped. “It’s been a long one.”

“I’d say. Hard to reckon how those feet are still holding you up. Beat to a pulp is the phrase that comes to mind… maybe you should get Lindy Samuels to nurse you back to health.”

            Kip scowled but held his tongue except for a tortured goodnight, dragging his battered body toward the front door. Sydney was standing there, hands on his hips, having just entered. He looked like a substitute gatekeeper, disheveled but hell bent on standing his ground. “Where you goin’ in such a huff, youngster?”

            “Did you know?” Kip asked. “They forgot to mention it at the jail, whether you were involved.”

            “What are we talking about?” Syd said, donning a weird smile that was more than a little irritating. “You need to get it together, if you get my meaning. Whole town’s talking. Leave the roughhousing to the men, little brother. Word of advice, all’s I’m saying.”

            “Don’t bother, Sydney,” Elsie said, walking into the room, arms crossed. “Kip always does right. Historical fact.”

            “Ah, both of you can shut your traps. I’m beat up and sick a—”     

            Sydney sunk a fist flush against Kip’s already injured ribs. He fell to his knees, gasping. Another punch. Syd’s meaty right across his jaw. “You want another or are you done mouthing?”

            More gasps.

            “Best apologize to your sister. Do some praying for forgiveness while you’re down there, do you some good. By God. What would Pa say?”

The question hurt more than the punches. Sydney rarely landed anything square, be it blow or word. Tonight, he was filling up the bull’s eye.

            Kip held up his hands, coughing on the pain. “I know who Calhoun is, Sydney.” Kip gathered himself back to his feet but couldn’t quite stand straight. It put him at eye level with the stockier Laird.

            “No idea what you’re about. Man’s gonna hang is all I know. Sent out the telegram to the surrounding counties and everything.”

            “Why?”

            “Because that’s what we do when there’s ‘bout to be a hanging. In case he’s suspected of crimes anywhere else. It’s standard. Besides, I don’t tell you what to preach.”

            Oh no. “Did you tell Cox about the telegram?”

            “The hell difference does it matter about the telegram? No, I didn’t tell him, but he’s been busy.”

            “What’d it say?”

            “Description. Name. The day of the hanging. Standard.”

            “Description,” Kip winced, “did it include that mark on his hand?”

            “Sure. Be strange leaving it out. Didn’t write a poem though. They charge by the letter with them things.”

            Oh no. Kip brushed by his brother and staggered out toward the saloon. He had to find Jasper Bedford. Had to tell Cox and the others about that telegram. It could mean trouble. More than likely meant trouble. Trouble could get in the way of his answers.

            It wasn’t to be. The cumulative effect of getting beaten and brained, the nonstop pace of the day, those final two punches—it all climbed on his back at once. He tripped on a rock in the road and hit the muck. The young man was asleep almost instantly after impact, backside in the air like the top of a Sioux tent. Kip’s long day had come to a dirty and ignominious end.

Chapter 8: On the Wire

            “You been seeing my brother this morning?” Sydney Laird asked, clapping his thick hands to get Deputy Rooker’s attention. Elbert was in his normal state, overdressed and underprepared, nodding off and sagging in the boss’ chair.

            “Who’s all there?” Rooker asked, coming to and groggily grabbing at his hip. If not for Sheriff Cox’s Hang Up Your Guns policy, he might’ve woken up shooting off his own leg.

            “Sheriff’s gonna whoop yur ass again, ER,” Syd said, heavy eyes moving toward the prisoner. Moreno was standing still as sculpture, staring straight back at him. It wasn’t a threatening glare, but still the meager bars seemed absurd, a straw cage for a lion. And there was something else in the prisoner’s look Laird couldn’t put his finger on. Getting riled by the strange silence, Sydney told “Brandon Calhoun” to stop gawking before passing his overwrought attentions back to Rooker. “Well? Have you seen Kip?”

            “Is he not at home?” The question came from the doorway. Sheriff Cox was stepping in, having made his morning walk around town. His neck was red and raw from a shave just earlier and he smelled like two pots of strong coffee.

            “No sir,” Sydney said, “but it’s not for you to be bothering about.”

            “Personal matter then,” Cox grunted, hanging up his ancient duster and sweat-stained hat. He kept his pistol belt fastened. The firearm policy didn’t apply to the man in charge.

            “Right,” Sydney said, trying to sound normal. “Personal matter. Anything kicking up out there?”

            “All’s quiet,” Cox answered. He’d almost perfected the art of speaking without opening his mouth, but it meant in conversating the other was forced more into listening. “Hopefully it’ll remain so. One day of normal would be nice.”

            “How’s it coming with that scaffolding?” Deputy Rooker asked. He was on his feet, stepping about in his silly spurs while trying to assert himself by throwing a verbal jab at the man in captivity. “They better fashion it extra sturdy for this go-rilla. Double the nails and such. Thing’s liable to come tumbling down before it gets the chance to snap his go-rilla neck.”

            “You made the same joke yesterday, ER,” Cox said, wiping off his desk chair before finally sitting. Rooker had that effect; like everywhere he went was a little dirtier for it.

“Hey in the jail!” The voice was loud and clear, followed by two knocks on the door.

            “Who’s there?” Sydney hollered back.

            “It’s Patrick Hudson, Syd. Sheriff Cox about?”

            Cox stood up and told Sydney to open up the door. “C’mon on in, Patrick,” said the sheriff, shaking the broad-shouldered newcomer’s sturdy hand. It was dirty and fresh blistered, but the man showed no feeling of pain.

            “Good to see you, Amos,” Hudson smiled, removing his wide-brimmed hat. It was made of dark fine leather and had a gentle curve to it, though it looked like it’d recently been through the wars.

            “You two head out and ride the valley,” Cox said, nodding at his deputies. “Go about it safe. Try not to get yourself killed.”

            “Reconnoitering the range,” Rooker muttered.

            “Reconnoitering the range,” echoed Sydney. The deputies gathered their gear and made a quick exit, bowing at Cox and his acquaintance like nervous stage actors.

            “Seems like you’ve got the troops in lockstep,” Hudson said, smiling warmly. He was one of the only black businessmen to make it in the valley. A special tolerance for asshole types and general winning ways seemed to do the trick. His was a growing outfit, honest and fair as any Cox knew of. The two had met on a battlefield in Virginia during the War when their regiments got tangled up by the Rebs. They’d known each other as fair dealers ever since that bloody day.

“Lockstep,” said the sheriff, almost forced into smiling. “If that’s how it looks hope you keep the memory close. I ain’t holding my breath for repeat performances.”

“Oh, they’re young yet. Don’t be too much with the rod.”

“What brings you, Patrick? The freight business?”

            “It’s good enough,” said Hudson, grimacing a little after wiping caked dirt and sweat from his forehead. “Me and my men were gonna pass straight through this morning, but a wheel went real bad. Had to pull in full stop and have your smith take a look.”

            “What’d he say?” Cox asked, squinting with interest.

            “Says I’m held up for the day. Be tomorrow morning earliest before we can venture.”

            “That old cuss ain’t much for manners, but he’s good for the trade. Reckon it’s a sturdy appraisal. He’s the sort that hates everyone the same, color not figuring like it does with some.” Cox hated having to say it, but Thunder Hill was no more perfect than the rest of the world. No help pretending otherwise.

            “I got that sense. Hopefully we can get some rooms squared away for tonight. I hate having to go idle, but fate says stop. No sense bucking.”

            “I’ll do what I can for an old friend. Give a word at the hotel.” Cox put a hand on Hudson’s shoulder. The freighter was one of a handful that could pull warmth from the generally stoic sheriff.

            “I appreciate it, Amos. Heck, it’s good to see you. Almost takes the edge off my travails.” Hudson smiled and shook the lawman’s hand one more time, overdoing it the way people do when there’s mutual admiration. Hudson took a quick peek over Cox’s shoulder at Moreno. “Mind if we step just outside the jail for a second?” he asked.

            “‘Course,” Cox said.  

            With the morning sun on their faces Hudson asked, “When’s that hanging happening? I’d like to have my crew out of here by the time the proceedings are underway.”

            Sheriff Cox didn’t answer right off. Just crossed his arms and leaned in curiously. “Hoping to have the matter done and dusted by tomorrow at noon.”

            “Okay. I’ll throw a few extra coins at your smith, try to get us out of here way ahead of it.”

            “Uh-huh,” Cox said, still more than a little confused.

            “Hell, Amos. Just that I got some men on my crew on the younger side, really no more than boys. Not sure I want them seeing that kind of thing. Lord knows if we’re still around, they’ll be insistent. Most these tads are all the way green.”

            “Being a little protective?” Cox asked. He was starting to see Hudson’s angle and had no reason to quarrel with it. Still, the man was acting strange.

            “My son’s on the crew, Amos. A good boy, sixteen, but he’s never had view of the things we had to endure. Maybe I mother him a little too much since she passed, but I’d like to keep him innocent long as possible. Probably sounds daft, but there it is.”

            His son. Now it makes more sense. Men were complicated about their sons. “Ain’t for me to tell a man the rights and wrongs for raising up their own.”

            “You’ve always been a fair man, Amos. Tough and fair.”

            “Don’t know about all that,” Cox said, spitting and looking at his boots, old and comfortable as his ease with Hudson. “So, you saw the gallows coming in, I reckon. I hate those things, myself. Always did give me a chill. Big reminder that someone’s about to get sent up. Building it right in front of where people do business and get about their lives, one of the stranger institutions we got.”

            “Oh,” Hudson said, “have they got the scaffolding built already?”

            “It’s getti—” Cox caught himself. “The hell else would you know about the hanging?”

            “We heard about it last night, on the road from Briggs Creek. Couple of riders said people were talking about it in the saloon.”

            “Briggs Creek?” The sheriff tilted his head as the lines on his face grew deep from concern. “How in Jesus are they talking about it there? That’s twenty miles saying it’s good weather.”

            “More like twenty-two,” Hudson answered. He knew distances as good as any man in the territory. Business depended on it.

            “Somebody sent it out on that goddamned wire. Probably word’s around from here to Timbuktu.”

“I assumed. Another reason I had for pushing through. This kind of thing attracts the morbid. Queer pull a dying man has… folks are starved for entertainment, suppose. Or maybe that’s the way it’s always been. Every time I think people are stumbling toward basic decency, something like this. Yanks me back to cold realities.”

            “Son of a bitch,” Cox growled. He hadn’t heard a jot of Hudson’s last rumination. “I got to go, Patrick.”

            “What’s wrong. Anything I can do?”

            The sheriff actually considered the offer for a few seconds. Hudson was one of the only people he trusted whole for a gunfight. Nah. His son. “No. I’m just needing to pistol-whip one of my deputies.”

            “Okay, then. G-good seeing you, Amos.”

            “Yessir.”

Chapter 9: Sentinel Creek

            They’d tried to find a better option, venturing miles down the west bank of Sentinel Creek. It was almost midday when Sybille came charging back, shaking her head while her young mount blustered and backed up a little before settling from the hard ride. “Nothing for us that way either, Pa. Creek my ass. This here’s some big water.”

            “Warm summer. Melt ain’t let up.” Fallstead was rolling a cigarette, using his other fingers to shelter the operation from cool wind coming down off the mountains. The geography was relatively stark. Not a lot of trees to block the weather.

             Sybille spanked her curved hat against a thigh to rid it of dust. “Right here’s our best option. Otherwise it’s another fifteen miles out of the way. We ain’t got that kind of time.”

            No response.

            “Pa,” Sybille said, pulling her horse around next to his. She almost had to holler to be registered above the rushing waters. “This is where we go.”

            He looked up from lighting his smoke and saw her nodding toward the water. “This is the place, huh?” he asked, casting gloomy circumspection.

            “What’s the matter?” Sybille couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Her father was never the demonstrative sort, but he’d been more or less anemic since hearing the news about Loot Moreno. Up until now, she’d let it alone.

            “Nothing’s the matter,” he said, huffing down his cigarette and wheeling his horse toward the water. “You say it’s the way, let’s go on and cross.”

            “Okay,” she said, still trying to figure his bearing. She watched him plunge into the swollen stream. Now he’s too fast. Away from me or toward Loot Moreno.

            Sybille buried her thoughts deep and took a heavy breath, kicking forward into the charging water. It was passable if everything went right and the bottom dropped at a predictable rate. Nothing they hadn’t done before, but man versus nature was never a sure bet. Both their horses were on the big side, trusty and true, but soon the animals were almost up to their necks in the cool water. It was murky and uniform in its procession, an unrelenting river more than a lively creek. “How you doing?” she asked, leaning against the force of the current and spurring her horse.     

Fallstead was only two or three feet away, but now the noise was overwhelming. She took a short glance at her father and then back over her shoulder. They were at least halfway out. No going back. Her animal was breathing hard and manifesting a little moodiness but didn’t show signs of buckling. We’ll be fine, she thought, realizing the creek was starting to shallow. Sybille started thinking of the fire they’d build in a few hours. The crackling and the glow, wet duds drying out over the flames. The empty nothing out past the tiny lights of night, accepting that none of it was under control and therefore none of it mattered the way most folks thought.

            Too many ideas. A common mistake made by people in dangerous situations, letting the mind wander outside the fence. She shook her head in self-admonishment.

Her mind wouldn’t have made much difference on what happened next. Marshal Fallstead’s horse lost footing from a slippery rock on the creek bed and bucked just sharp enough to send him crashing backward into the water. Sybille didn’t waste time saying anything; instead, she got moving to shallower water so her horse could take easier strides. Her rope was out and, after a few quick overhead swings, the line was around Fallstead’s head and underneath one of his armpits. When it caught, the force almost pulled Sybille in, but she’d prepared for it, transferring her weight expertly to the right side of her body. Long experience in the saddle made her as confident and prodigious as any poke on the range, but still it would take a fulsome effort and shredded hands to get her father reeled back in.

            As Sybille moved toward the new shore, she started yelling out. By now, he should’ve been trying to stand up. “Can you pull yourself in?” she called, sure that he could hear her over the water.

            He gave her a strange look. It only lasted a second yet scared her through. Dancing eyes, fear like a common man.

            Sybille couldn’t believe it. He turned away, pulled his knife and started cutting into the rope. “Are you crazy!?” she screamed. No time to wait for an answer. She yanked her pistol and shot the knife from his hands. No small task considering all the elements stacked against her. “Let’s go,” she told her horse. The animal made bold strides for the bank, just as ready as her to get free from the clutches of the river.

            When Sybille dismounted, all that work climbed up on her shoulders. Her arms started cramping and her legs felt a hundred pounds each as she struggled heavy to her father lying on the edge of the creek. He was on his back, still wearing the rope. She stood over him, watching as he held his left arm.

            “I would’ve been fine,” he said, almost like nothing had happened.

            She sat down in the wet sand next to him, afraid to say what needed saying. “I’m not stupid, Pa.”

            “Didn’t want you getting pulled in,” he said, rolling over to cough up the last bit of water lingering in his throat. “Don’t be making more of it than that.”

            “I see. You were protecting me.”

            Fallstead offered no response, grabbing his arm once again and speaking something rapid under his breath.

            “Don’t you care enough to live? This ain’t a good light you’re in.”

            “I’d a made it to shore eventually. Calm down, Daughter.”

            Now that Sybille had her breath, she took a minute to ruminate over what he was saying. None of it felt right. He’d been acting like a spent cartridge, and Holt Fallstead didn’t fall from his saddle, blundering horse or not. It all smacked of a man wanting to let the current take him away from his problems. 

            “Getting nature to carry you downstream,” she said, finishing her thoughts out loud. A line of clouds with sooty undersides were threatening rain. They needed to quickly find enough wood to start a fire. Lingering on their feelings wasn’t presently an option. “I’m content in letting you be yourself, all quiet, except you’re not being yourself. That’s all I’m gonna say at the moment.”

“Keep your thoughts short, Sybille.” He looked wild now, shaking from something more than cold. The water was vibrating from the ends of his red whiskers. “You don’t want me going back into them ways. Stories and seeing it real—those got different colors.”

            She sighed and offered to help with his arm, but he waved her away. She stomped off and said, “Your welcome,” just to remind him that she was a girl who’d just saved his old ass. There was no figuring it. Since she could remember, life had been pretty simple. She’d gone all over the country watching him earn a living by stopping people that thought they were tougher than the world and every bad thing in it. Sybille learned no philosophizing and no codes but learned to be content by the result of things. Holt Fallstead did what he could because he could, regardless of purpose, even absent purpose. It was simple ability; that’s what carried him along, and her in turn. She’d always thought so, anyway. Now that they actually had a clear path, when there was a real reason behind their destination, he looked drained.

Fallstead sat up and rubbed his shaking hands. As much as he wanted, the marshal couldn’t practice what he’d preached. His thoughts were long and unwieldy. And Sybille could see the history in him, now more than ever. He’d raised a woman strong as any he’d ever encountered. Full of grit as any man that had crossed his path.

He wasn’t acting like himself, plain enough. Before reaching Thunder Hill, there’d be parts of the story he’d have to fill in. Things he’d swallowed and kept down until they were stories and that’s all.

But they weren’t.

Maybe she was right about him wanting to let the river part him from the task. The past was darker and more complicated than she knew, and the future might prove to be just the same.

Or worse.

He got to his feet and slowly and made his way up the bank, feeling old and unsure of himself. Fallstead had grown used to picking his fights. That was the pattern he’d fallen into since... he bent things a certain way to keep himself and Sybille safe, but what was now ahead… it felt like many choices were removed. Fear. A feeling so foreign it took an episode like this to bring it out.

           Enough chewing. He set himself to rounding up his horse and making sure the animal was uninjured. Do what’s next. Keep your thoughts short. Sentinel Creek was to their backside. It had almost taken his life. Or had he almost given it? No matter. Keep your thoughts short.

           Not long and they’d reach Thunder Hill. He’d take care of the fear one way or another.

Chapter 10: A Reader

            “Is he ever gonna be done catching winks?” The question was raised by a thin girl named Stella Ann, aimed at an older girl named Millie Dee. The pair were standing over Millie’s bed, currently occupied by Preacher Kip Laird. It struggled under the weight of his long, hearty frame. He snored away, shirtless and lacking boots. Stella Ann was forced to her toes peeking over Millie’s bare freckled shoulder. She was equally riveted by Kip’s injuries and his physique. “How’s a holy man get all smooth and well-formed you think?” Stella Ann asked. “Is it the holy that does that?”

            Millie shrugged her roommate back. “He’s young and handsome,” she said.

            “I can see that.”

            “This is what they look like, Stella Ann. You’ve just grown unaccustomed to his aesthetic.”

            “I’m sure not following, Millie.”

            “Young and handsome don’t need to come here too regular. When’s the last time a man didn’t almost crush you with his extra layers?”

            “The time’s been drawn out since.”

            “See? There you go.”

            Looking at Kip made the thought of seeing her regulars later on all the more painful for young Stella Ann. “I mean, between all the fat. And the hair. Not to mention the smell.”

            Behind them, Jasper Bedford slipped in the room. It was one of three above the bar at the Thunder Hill Saloon. The rooms were notorious but rarely mentioned, something of an open secret in town. The product of some strange sort of muddled Victorian-American West hybrid morality, when looking the other way or looking to your own was the ultimate ethic.

            Fortunately for Laird, only Jasper and the two ladies knew he’d spent the night. Not that he’d done anything besides sleep. Bedford had made full use of the girls’ services while Kip hibernated; the Rapture itself might’ve come and he’d’ve missed it on account of exhaustion.

“What a night that was,” Jasper said, lightly smacking Stella Ann on her flat backside. She giggled at the old lecherous writer and absorbed a look of admonishment from Millie Dee. They lived together in the room now, though Stella Ann was a fairly new arrival. Millie was a mainstay in Thunder Hill; she attended the church, watched Kip grow from a boy to a broad-shouldered man in just a few short years. She respected the Lairds. The family practiced nothing but kindness during her stint, a time long enough to see her go from comely to only handsome. God knows it would’ve been easier for them to cast her for Jezebel and leave it at that. What she did for pay was never condoned by the Lairds, but to Millie Dee the family rode a line of judgment and caring that very few ever seemed to nail down proper. Both parties tried their best at avoiding self-righteousness. It’s not like she didn’t get the contradiction. Being a Christian and a whore didn’t make for an uncomplicated way to go through life. A girl from Georgia trying to make her part out west, pretty but maybe never pretty enough to land a man of means. Tough luck. God’s plan. She knew not. Someday things would be different. That was her prayer when she could stand to face the Lord. A girl could only read Chapter Four from John’s Gospel so many times.

            “Preach! Wake up.” Millie was kicking the bed’s corner, near to slapping him. Outside the window she could hear rumblings of noontime Thunder Hill. Folks stomping in and out of the stores. Pretty soon a load of leathery men would be descending upon the saloon. That would be bad for Preacher Laird and the church. “Dammit boy, get your ass up!” she hollered, whacking him across the cheek with a heavy hand.

            “Ouch,” he grunted, attempting to roll away from dusty light streaming in through the bubbly window glass.

            “Ouch nothing,” she hollered again, shaking him by his neck. It wasn’t doing the trick.

            Jasper called out from the other side the room, making efforts toward Stella Ann’s nethers. “Millie, my dear, if you’re insisting the young man rise, squeeze on a part of his body blighted by discoloration.”

            “What the hell you mean? Oh, yeah,” she said, shoving both hands flat down on Kip’s bruised ribcage. He seethed and sprang up like a cat, knocking over a delicate lamp made in Paris according to one of Millie’s lying customers.

            “Holy Moses!” He struggled to the corner, engaging sodden senses to seize bearings. After a few foggy blinks and a quick check to see if he was wearing pants, he asked with whatever dignity was possible what he was doing there.

            “Fear not, Mr. Laird,” Jasper said, standing up from the bed across the oddly-shaped room. He was wearing blue union suit underwear with unfortunate little holes for anyone that might be spectating. “You were spirited away to this very location last night, unbeknownst to anyone besides we four in this room.”

            “Millie Dee,” Kip whispered, looking like he was trying to force himself out through the wall. “Can you tell me who this fella is?”

            “Hi,” Stella interjected, voice full of flirt and flimsy southern affectation.

            “Hey there, Stella Ann,” Kip said, once again grabbing his pants around his privates. “Did I?”

            “I can assure you that the status of your virtue remains as it was before last night’s activities,” Jasper said, motioning at Stella to fetch him a glass of brandy.

            “Why’s he keep speaking?” Kip asked, now looking down at the uneven floorboards to avoid the two sets of naked breasts in his vicinity. He hadn’t noticed at first, taken as he was with the shock of the whole scenario.

Millie decided to unleash both barrels on the youngster. She’d dealt with countless men of every color type and creed over the years. A scared kid was no big thing, only until now she’d been cowed by the position he held in town, the respect she held for him, and the house of God his family looked after. No more. He was in her house, sinful and dirty as it was, and it was her turn to do the straightening out. “Listen, this dirty old drunk did you more than one kindness last night, far as I can tell. Be nice to turn up your eyes and thank him. Sit in judgment on anyone in this room, including yourself, just do it somewhere else and on your own time. We’ve got need to sneak you out the alley before the rags start piling in. If me and Stella don’t get ourselves together and out on the floor, Joey’s gonna be up here quicker’n Hermes.”

            The rebuke stung to purpose. Kip stood up straight and nodded apologetically at Millie Dee and the others. “I’ll be off, then. Suppose I’ve handled myself like a proper jackass as of late, last night being no exception. Mister…?”

            “Jasper Bedford, at your service, Mr. Laird. We actually had a brief meeting earlier last evening, but there again you were in a state of duress.”

            Kip rubbed his head. All things considered, it felt a dang sight better than the days before. “It’s late, isn’t it?” he asked.

            “Why’d you think I’m so eager to get you out?” Millie returned. Her arms were crossed underneath her bare breasts; it was an interesting sight, and one which Kip had no ability to ignore.

“Of course. I’ll get my things and be gone in a—wait. You said your name is Jasper Bedford?”

            “I did indeed,” the old man said, sitting back down on the bed and crossing his legs like they were joined for genteel teatime.

            Kip was immediately grateful. He took a real look Jasper. His brain finally caught up to the hard miles he’d walked the last few days. That’s the guy. Kip, you idiot. He’s the one you set out to find. “This is strange, but I came looking for you last night. Guess I didn’t get very far.”

            “Ah, now we’re finally getting down to it. As much fun as I had with these lovely specimens during the wee hours, I have to admit that the anticipation for this conversation had me giddy on a whole different level. Tumescent to the point where I thought about calling in the doctor.”

            Kip saw his shirt hanging sadly on the end of the bed and reached or it. He was acres from knowing what a fitting response might be to Mr. Bedford’s previous statement.

            A knock on the door. Everyone stiffened at the sound of Joey the bartender’s unmistakable rasp. “You girls need to get your parts cleaned and moving. We’ve got customers heading in.”

            Millie Dee and Stella Ann exchanged a nervous look, especially when Jasper spoke out. “Is that the fine man who runs the establishment?” Bedford was shockingly quick on his feet, moving from his pants on the nightstand to the door in a few breaths’ time. He cracked the door. “Good sir. As far as payment, I think this should cover the time for the girls.” He flashed a healthy stack of bills in Joey’s fleshy face. “I’m heading off soon and yet they’re simply too much fun to part with at the moment.”

            “That ain’t how Mr. Trussel likes things run,” Joey said, trying to get a better look inside. Jasper held the door firm with his foot. “Mr. Trussel likes the girls downstairs at first for classing up the place.”

            “And Mr. Trussel is the proprietor of this fine saloon?”

            “He’s the owner, if that’s that you’re saying.”

No answer.

            “Exactly,” Jasper continued. “No time for chatter. Let’s get down to it. With no Mr. Trussel and me wanting the girls for another few hours, I think I can offer triple their rate and a promise to add a hundred percent to my very sizeable bar tab. You can go check it if you like. The total might even bring a smile.”

            “You got the money?”

            Bedford gave Joey a sporting wink. “But it’s in my hand, dear fellow.”

            “It’ll be more than that.” The bartender remained hunched, seemingly unimpressed with the amount of currency being thrust his way.

            Bedford added three more bills to the stack and slapped it in Joey’s hand. “Okay then,” he grunted, lumbering back down the little landing. “Two more hours.”

            “Good man,” Jasper said, looking spry and unaffected by the reduction in his funds. The door closed. “That’s no problem. I’ve excellent standing with Thunder Hill Bank.”

            “What are you up to, you old coot?” Millie Dee asked, pulling back her curly blond hair. There was play in her voice—Jasper wasn’t fresh and handsome but he wasn’t a chore like some.

            The writer clapped once, fully engaged with the day. He scooted back and took another small glass of brandy before hurriedly pulling on his standard brown suit pants. “That was about a few things, Millie. I didn’t want Mr. Joey entering; the discovery of young Laird wouldn’t have served any salutary purpose.”

“Why would you care?” Kip said. The query was repeated by Millie, echoed by Stella Ann.

            “Because it wasn’t your choice to stay here. You shouldn’t be saddled with labels undeserved. Poor as your judgment might’ve been yesterday, concupiscence won’t be added to the balance.”

            Kip felt like God might be helping him. At the same time, guilt was riding up his spine. That was the way of it. Any proper assistance from the Divine was nice in the short term but humbling in the long. Here this old stranger was, defending his chaste nature, unawares of Kip’s flagrant concupiscence. Worst of all, the deceptive kind. His affair with Lindy Samuels wasn’t a simple, dirty transaction. It was the type that could ruin lives. It was already doing so. The young man put his head down in shame, wondering when Grace would run bone dry. Ma and Else would abandon him. The people of Thunder Hill, having no choice, would cast him to the darkness of Babylon, out from community’s embrace, away from the caring hands of the Maker.

            “Ladies,” Jasper said, lighting up a thin cigar, “please leave us the room. I believe I heard the girls from next door heading down just now. You can take a load off in there while I converse with our pensive friend.”

            “I could use a little nap after last night,” Stella Ann said, gathering up a robe from the corner.

            “This whole situation is frightful odd,” Millie said. “Why not just get him the hell out?”

            “I paid for the privacy,” Jasper said, now putting on his boots. They went on without so much as a tug. “And I’ve lost my extra socks. No matter,” he said, grabbing for more brandy as smoke from the cigar filled the room. “Anyway, the privacy. And when our time is done, I’ll still have the two of you under contract to create a distraction down there while I whisk the young reverend unobserved through the back.”

The nature of Jasper’s plan was clear enough now. Still, Kip needed more catching up. As the girls huffed and puffed to the adjacent room, Laird’s complex of emotions must’ve found residence on his face.

            “I think a few moments will help to clear things. Have a chair,” Jasper said, moving from the edge of the bed to Stella’s nightstand stool. Kip grabbed Millie’s from the opposite side of the room and plopped down, trying to focus through the sun and cigar smoke.

            “Apologies if I’m skeptical,” said the younger man, pulling his dirty black shirt on. It smelled like a proper account of yesterday’s proceedings. He laughed and felt the hot embarrassment in his cheeks. “My life’s been turned for a loop, you see, and the more I go looking for answers the more questions pile up.”

            “Relatable, doing what I do. I’ll try to cut to the heart of it with you, sir.” Jasper struck another match and rotated his cigar into the flame. “Sorry. Damn things always go out on me. I get interested in something else. Anything else. It’s almost a condition. Where were we?”

            “You were talking about cutting to the heart of it.”

            “Ah, yes,” he said. “Much as one can in this situation. Do you know a great deal about me?”

            “I knew you wrote books about the Three-in-One Gang. I know that Loot Moreno is a pal of yours, because that’s what they were singing about over at the jail. I didn’t even have to snoop around to hear it. Am I the last one in on all the secrets?”

            “I wrote the books,” Jasper said, leaning back to grab them from Stella’s nightstand. “Found copies on you last night. We observed you as you keeled over in the street. I knew who you were, but when I found the stories in your pocket, it seemed incumbent upon me to… well, here we are.”

            “Obligation, is it?”

            “You’re a man in search of answers, Mr. Laird. Larger scales, boundless quagmires. I used to search in a similar fashion. Now I’m a man in search of a good story and nothing more. Perhaps Providence is the headline when all’s said and done, as your calling proclaims, but sin runs a close second. I’m still trying to put things together myself.”

            “None of this makes any sense,” Kip said, rubbing his face with his hands. He was well-rested, but trying to fit Bedford’s word puzzle together was tougher than bad Greek. “I don’t know who I am. Would that bother you, sir?”

            “I’ll start answering. You start asking,” Jasper said. “As they come to you, send them my way. Works best like that.”

            “I read those books when I was a kid. The Three-in-One Gang, Loot Moreno. They were vicious murderers and thieves. Pagan zealots, though I don’t recall you going into much. I hit the dust before chance gave me time to give another perusal. One in particular, about a family he tried to save out on the prairie. A young boy.”

            “Sounds like you have a pretty sound memory of the tale.”

“Is it true? What you wrote?”

            “Let’s bypass the nature of true versus accurate and get back to the heart, as I was talking about.”

            “That won’t cut it.” Kip wanted it straighter.

            “All but one of those books was written before I’d ever met Loot Moreno or anyone else in the Three-in-One Gang. I was a frontier scribbler taking any job that came my way. Some of what’s in there is true; some of it I made up to fill in the gaps.”

            “I don’t understand,” Kip said, tightening up his posture. “If any of those stories are accurate, why does every good man in town seem hell-bent on helping Moreno? Why would Cox and Doc Rufus risk so much to break him out? What’s your part in all this?”

            “Far as my part, I’m an ancillary piece. I may feel a sense of responsibility, however, on two fronts.”

            “Go on.”

            “I told Moreno about your father’s death. Suppose if I hadn’t, there’d be no trouble. Loot’s been holed up for years. He would’ve found out about Ben Laird eventually. Look, I didn’t think he would jump on a horse and come riding into Thunder Hill. It never occurred to me. The man is smart.” Bedford blew out a long and heavy cloud of cigar smoke. “Usually smart, anyhow.”

            “Still…”

            “Okay, here’s the deal. Loot Moreno brought you here.”

            “My father told me that much. I thought they were the crazy words of a dying man.”

            “Not crazy, young Laird. And though your father’s reasons for the conveyance of information are mysterious, he seems to have told it correctly.”

            “Two fronts.”

            “What’s that?”

            “You said your responsibility was on two fronts.”

            “Yes. I care about Loot, like the rest of those men. They don’t know me as they do each other, but they know what side I’m on. My duty is to help.”

            “This is bordering on fantastical,” Kip said, scuffing a boot on the wooden crooked planks of the floor.

            “It’s only fantastical to the simple-minded. We both know you’re not that. Keep the facts in front of you. Now here’s another one. Loot Moreno saved my life, as he saved yours.”

            “Who is this guy?”

            “He’s what you might call a complicated man. Someone who walked a dark path and decided to walk another. It doesn’t happen often in this world, but exceptions exist to every rule.”

            Kip let all the information go for a second and allowed the world back in. He heard the sound of the piano downstairs, men playing cards. He listened to the clutter of wagons and horses outside and people shouting howdy and good day to each other. Things were normal. He wondered how much longer that would last.

“One thing I’ve been thinking, probably more than anything else,” he said, “I was thinking it since church the day of the funeral, somewhere in the back of my mind.”

            “I’m all ears.”

            “If Loot Moreno brought me here, saved my life, how’d that happen?”

            “How’d you mean?” Bedford asked, tightening his wrinkled expression.

            “Simple. Either he did or didn’t come by my people. If he didn’t, suppose Loot Moreno’s part angel, plucking wayward infants at random from the cold world and certain death. If he did, what occasioned him to take me away? What in heck happened to my parents, Mr. Bedford?”

            “I swear I don’t know,” the writer said immediately. Kip looked him up and down for signs of prevarication, but there was nothing. “All I know is he cared what happened to you. He’d come to check on you. Him and Cox, Ben and Doc Rufus. It was sort of a thing they had.”

            “A thing?”

            “Yeah. Making sure you were okay.”

            “Seems strange. Motherly, even. We’re not talking about the gentlest souls around these parts. Except Ben, maybe.”

            “I think there’s something to what you’re saying there, son. It was a chance to do something right. Like you mentioned, not the gentlest souls. Anyone who forged their own trail out here did it by a huge measure of sweat and probably just as much blood.” Bedford paused, seeming to consider the subject anew. “Maybe you were penance for some, hope for others. You’d have to ask them each for their own. Might not get answers.”

            “On that we’d agree,” Kip said, standing up and rolling his suspenders over his shoulders. “I’ve got my mind set on finding out everything. Spent enough time being protected.”

            “I’m not sure your father knew what he was doing when he told you about Moreno.”

            “Maybe not, but here we are.”

            Jasper scratched the top of his head and smiled. “Where we are is a prostitute’s room, Mr. Laird.”

            “Yeah. Thinking it’s time for a scene change.”

            “What’d you have in mind?”

            “I’ve got to talk to Sheriff Cox. Make sure he knows that the word is out in the territories about Loot’s hanging.”

            Bedford tilted his head in doubt. “You sure? I was told they were keeping the news quarantined.”

            “Heard it from my brother. The very person who sent the message out.”

            “You’re kidding?”

            “I’m not sure blame deserves to be leveled at Sydney. God bless my older brother, but he doesn’t seem to be operating with all the pieces.”

            “Fair enough,” Bedford said, scratching his overgrown gray eyebrows with both hands. They were long enough to fall down into his line of sight when he frowned in concern.  

            “There’s more I want to know. Things I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

            “I’ll be around,” Jasper said. “And there’s always the others. They might be willing to offer some information, now that things are starting to get out.”

            Kip gathered the rest of his things. “You know, Mr. Bedford, I get the feeling that nobody’s operating with the full set of facts.”

            “Perhaps we should all get together and compare notes,” Jasper said. He smiled again, causing his cigar to pivot up.

            “Perhaps we should. If everybody’s alive in a few days, guessing you’ll get the nomination for scribe.”

            “It would be my pleasure, Mr. Laird. Nice to finally meet you, by the way.”

            Kip offered his hand. “Thanks for pulling me out of the dirt.”

            “It’s always fun to meet a reader.”

Chapter 11: Hunters

            “Forging out in the middle of nowhere, middle uh night. This is flat dumb. I’m for thinking we turn around, Ford. Head ourselves back to Buckston. Loot Moreno? Loot Moreno?”

            “I hoped maybe God would grant you the strength to shut your trap for a few minutes longer. Seems I’m a wishful type thinker.”

            The two riders steered their horses through darkness and an unseasonable fog, keeping the narrow rocky road by holding to an agonizingly slow pace.

            “I just reckon nothing but bad can happen here. What are we after, Ford?”

            “Are you getting more dumb as the years go by, Hyde? We’re going after a bounty. The biggest one I’ve ever heard of. A body we can sell to the highest bidder. It’ll make us legends.”

            “I get all that, but he’s gettin’ the noose. How the heck we stop courtly proceedings is past my thinking.”

            “What’s your job, Hyde?”

            “I’m a bounty hunter.”

            “Exactly,” said Ford. “I thought hunting is what you did. I thought that’s what we’ve been doing out here for the last two years. Two years of too cold or too hot, no women or ones that hardly resemble women. Prospects ain’t getting any better, is what I’m saying.”

            “Okay.”

            The one named Ford took a swig of whisky and offered one to his disquieted companion, finding him through the moonless dark and fog with his flask. “We’ve been out here, picking up this mutt or that, getting by on common makers of mischief and card cheats. This one here puts us way up. Money, reputations to boot.”

            “But it’s—”

            “It’s dangerous, Hyde. You’ve said it fifteen times since Buckston, and you’re right.”

            “So, what are we doing?”

            “When word went around back in town about the hanging coming in over the wire, remember how many people saddled up?”

            “A few traveling types. We’re the only two dumbasses of our ilk out here, far as I know.”

            “Not dumbasses, Hyde. Savvy men of business.”

            “A lot of people in Buckston know the stories, Ford. I’m one of them people. Can’t read none but my older brother Kern used to rattle off those dime novels to me. Some grit in them yarns.”

            Ford pulled back the reigns as they made their way down a slope covered with rocks that could prove trouble for his horse. They’d have to be cautious; even slower than before. Still, he thought, pushing on through the night was better. He could think clear in the quiet dark. Currently he had several possible plans that were good enough in theory but lacking large portions of detail and consideration. They could shoot the sheriff and take the prisoner. They could cut a deal with the sheriff and take the prisoner. Or they could just kill the sheriff and the prisoner in an attempted “jailbreak.” He was leaning toward the last.

            Hyde was behind him now. He’d gone mute. As much as Ford hated his partner’s constant prattling, he figured total silence would manifest worse down the line somewhere. Just let him talk. Maybe it’ll get out his system. “Which stories you heard, Hyde?”

            “You know the ones.”

            “Maybe. Or maybe we’ve heard different versions. Them’s mythemological, half these yarns. Somebody telling a thing and passing it on with more ornaments attached that was true. Gets strange and full of fear-making by the time it makes its way to an otherwise brave soul like yourself.” Ford couldn’t help but condescend to his slower-witted associate.

“You think that honest?”

            “Frontier’s full of tales that’ll make your hair stand at attention. My second cousin Billy heard tell of the damnedest.”

            “Dead Billy had the bad harelip?”

            “Yes, Hyde. Dead Billy. Heard tell of this giant fella all covered in hair living up in the woods. Said the thing was like a bear, only it would go about like a man. Didn’t say nothing, but it could think sharp, just like me and you.”

            At this, Hyde bent forward over his horse’s neck and started to cackle into the night. “Whew, whew. Ugly Billy believed something that dumb?”

            Ford sighed. “A lot of people believed it. Still do, I imagine. But you see my point?”

            “Yeah, I see it. But Loot Moreno’s scarier than some damn gorilla traipsing around the damn forest.”

            “Tell me.”

            “He’s part Injun, part Mexican, part demon. It’s in all the old books like I was saying.”

            “You heard those books being read?” Ford asked.

            “I ain’t saying it for sport.”

            “Okay. What else makes him scary? And don’t be holding back. There ain’t nothing but empty land between here and Thunder Hill.”

            Hyde was all too ready to justify his trepidations. “The man who churned up the Three-in-One Gang was named Titus the Exile. Was just a baby of some family of French trappers that came over here hundreds a damn years ago or something. Stories say he was abandoned by his people, left for dead on account of being sick. People weren’t as sophisticated back then, suppose.”

“Go on,” Ford said, keeping his horse slow and on the trail, trying not to laugh at his nervous compatriot.

            “So, Titus doesn’t die, I guess. Gets found by some damn tribe out in the middle of nowhere. They practiced human sacrifice, all sorts of savage shit. It goes that they raised up Titus the Exile, taught him their ways. How to kill and not get killed better than all others practicing similar. How to survive and give up the people you deliver to the universe. The tribe believed that after a killing, you had to say some manner of crazy shit that went out like a telegraph to everything and everywhere. If you did it right, the universe would give you a glimpse of all three places, plus a helping of strength. Some sort of demon power or whatever.”

            “What’s the three places?”

            “Come on, Ford. You know damn well the three places. Ugly Billy told you. Everyone told you.”

            “Just making sure we’re talking about the same thing.”

            Hyde pulled the scarf away from his chaffed face and let out a frustrated breath. “Heaven. Hell. Here. The three places.” He spoke the words like forcing up a bad meal. “Something to do about being able to see everything at once. Never made a lick of sense to me nor anyone else I ever asked. Gives me the shakes though, sure enough.”

            “Yeah, it ain’t a bedtime story for little ones,” Ford said. “Finish it out for me so I feel caught up.”

            “Well, apparently our Titus lived with this band of damned savage lunatics until a plague swept through and killed every last one. Some say it was the Wrath of the Lord, or Jesus coming down with Holy Justice. Might be, or might be they all got sick and died like everyone else in this Godforsaken land.”

            “Killed every single one, huh?”

            “Everyone except Titus the Exile. By then he was any man’s better, strong as a bull and well-versed in all them rude ways. After that, he went out and started roaming the frontier lands. Mostly killing, I guess, saying those words, except when he’d pick up a recruit here or there.”

            “That part never made sense when I heard the telling. Why’d a guy like that want recruits?”

            “What was that?” said Hyde, distracted by something in the wind.

            “I was just saying that it’s strange the bloodthirsty monster you’ve described would want much company around.”

            “You asked for the story, Ford. I’m telling it like I know.”

            “All right. Apologies.”

            “Anyway, supposing he wanted recruits for the same reason anyone would. It gets lonely out here. Type of lonely that’ll make a man crazy.” Hyde was shivering as he spoke, all the way down to his saddle. The telling was helping Ford with a needed distraction but for Hyde it was bringing up fears he’d just as well not face.

“Huh,” Ford grunted. “So he needed partners, however you look at it.”

            “That’s what I’m saying.” Hyde said, trying to sound full of resolution. He suspected his companion was making him tell the story to trip him up, but he’d gotten through right enough. “You tell the rest—like you know it,” Hyde said, renewed with confidence he’d turned the tables.

            “Fine,” Ford said, clearing the cold from his throat. “Titus the Exile roams the land with the Three-in-One Gang for untold years, murdering and raping, taking anything they felt inclined to take. They were a band of outcasts and half-breeds, people that no one wanted around in the first place. Then one day, Titus’s best man challenged him. They say the man wanted to leave the gang, only, there was no leaving. They fought. Titus died brutal.”

            “And who killed him?” Now Hyde was doing the spurring.

            “Loot Moreno. The stories say that Loot Moreno sawed Titus’s head clean off with a hunting knife. When the rest of the gang came to exact revenge for their leader, Moreno killed them too, down to the last one. Innocents got killed in the process. More than a few sodbusters slain, caught between.”

            “And this is the man we’re going to try to collect,” Hyde said, like finishing a closing argument in court. He waited for some sort of clever reply from his partner, but nothing came. Ford rose up in his saddle as they began to crest the hill. “You see something?” Hyde asked.

            “Don’t get all frazzled, but yeah. There’s a fire up ahead.”

            “Bandits, you thinkin’? Injuns?”

            “Looks measly. I doubt a bunch of banditos or redskins would make a fire that small. Guessing it’s weary travelers, like us.”

            “So, should we go around?”

            Ford looked behind at his companion. The fog had just about lifted and the full moon was casting a decent portion of light on their surroundings. “No, I imagine they’ve already seen us. Don’t want to go tearing into night off trail needless. Probably get killed tumbling down some dry creek bed.”

            “What then?”

            “Keep a hand on that old Colt and stay sharp,” Ford said. The trail widened at the bottom of the hill and the fire grew larger in their vision until they could see one solitary figure sitting calmly by the light of the flames.

“Thought I heard a rustling out there.” The voice took them by surprise. A woman underneath the hat of a cowpoke. Not much accent, smooth and pleasant. A young woman.

            “Howdy there,” Ford said, gently removing his heavy grip from his gun and pulling the horse to a stop. He held a hand out for Hyde to do the same. They were close to the fire. Any closer, the heat or playing flames might frighten the horses. Ford held onto the reigns but put both hands atop his saddle horn in a very deliberate fashion. Hyde mimicked his every move. “Cold night out here,” said Ford with a flat but friendly tone. Something a fellow weary traveler might say to another, but nothing fancy and nothing that could start a dust-up. He was curious about the woman right off. It wasn’t a typical situation. She was alone, not wearing a skirt or dress. Man’s clothes, or at least practical, like man’s clothes. He looked for her horse to see if it was tied off by its lonesome, but the light from the fire didn’t travel far enough to eye much of anything.

            “You betcha that air’s got bite,” she said, nodding at them and taking a puff from a long pipe. “You boys are welcome to the fire if your hurry isn’t too hard. Guess riding at this hour, you just might be.”

            Hyde shot a solicitous look at his fellow bounty hunter, sure to shiver audibly while doing it.

            Ford let out a sigh of surrender and said, “That’d be awful nice of you, ma’am. I’m called Ford Wicker. That there’s Hyde. Just riding for Thunder Hill, but looks like we could do with a quick sit and some warming up.”

            “Great,” she said, casually taking in another rush of pipe smoke. “My name’s Sybille. About thirty paces back behind me there’s a tree where y’all can tie your horses. It’s just out a view of the fire, halfway yonder between here and the creek.”

            Hyde took both sets of reigns and rounded the fire, pulling the spent horses through the quiet dark until he came upon the tree. Not one but two animals were tied off to the lowest thick branch of a solitary evergreen. Hyde grabbed at his gun in his normal fashion and thought to call out, but figured that’d just get him a telling off. Ford would brand him sissified or needing short pants. I’m not for that.

He secured their horses to the same branch, talking to himself all the while. The mangy bounty hunter, slow-witted as he might be, was having a disputation in his mind that would’ve plagued a man much more intelligent. Yelling out there was another horse might set Ford and the lady on edge, maybe even to the point of drawing down. Could be she wanted such a dustup, but Hyde had a hard time making sense of that thought. Why tell him the location of the two horses if it was something to keep secret? Dammit, he said, trudging back to the camp heavily through dirt and sage. Rattled as his cage might be, the scene he returned to was calm as a cup of water. His partner sat against a log on the side of the fire they’d come from. The lady looked like she hadn’t moved, one leg out, one leg tucked close to her chest, still smoking on that pipe. They were jawing like two old friends at the end of a long day’s drive.

            “There he is,” Ford said, doing his best to roll a cigarette in the intermittent light. “Come and take yourself a load off, Hyde.”

            Sybille watched the returning bounty hunter steer his body around the flames before nervously finding space next to his companion. She could see holes in the bottom of his boots and hear whatever teeth he had left chattering. Hyde was a scraggly specimen, too fidgety a disposition for a tracker of men. “Mr. Hyde,” Sybille said, “hope there was no trouble finding that tree.”

After stealing a fruitless look at Ford, he offered a stunted no and adjusted his hat so the tattered brim covered his eyes.

            “Anyhow,” Wicker said, “we’re just passing through, on our way out to the coast.”

            “That far, huh?” Sybille asked, still as a rock.

            “Why not. Right, Hyde?”

            “Right.”

            Sybille leaned forward and blew her pipe smoke so it mingled with the fire’s. “You okay, Mr. Hyde? You seem a little skittish.”

All he could think about was that other horse. It merited telling Ford. He was sure of it. But he stayed off it, under the spell of the rare beauty across the fire. “I’m fine.”

“Sorry for the questions. Breeches good etiquette, surely, but I wasn’t raised with the gentility of a proper lady. Rough round the edges,” she said, smiling icily in the subtlest of ways. The expression came off as strangely playful to Ford and wholly unnerving to Hyde.

            “We’re not bothered,” Wicker said, keeping his eyes trained on Sybille and holding his hands out to the fire.

            “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, smacking her pipe empty against a rock. “He’s probably bothered—wondering after the other horse.”

            “What horse is that?” Ford asked, pulling his hands back, tense with sudden suspicion.

            Sybille put her head down and looked into the dark empty of the cleared pipe. Behind the bounty hunters, the answer came. “My horse.”

            Before either man could turn, Holt Fallstead had an arm around Hyde’s head. He sank his hunting knife deep into the side of the man’s neck. As he yanked out the blade, blood sprayed forward onto the fire. The body fell forward, convulsing against the ground. By the time Ford’s mind caught up enough for him to make a move, Sybille had already drawn her pistol and fired a round at his feet. “Wouldn’t go for that piece,” she said, eyes quickly darting from the fresh corpse to her father and finally back to the bounty hunter. He’d already abandoned fighting notions and was making a feeble attempt to belly-crawl away, filled with dread and an animal’s instinct for survival.

            Fallstead moved quickly, driving his bloody blade into the back of the desperate man’s right leg. It went straight through the other side and into the ground. Ford let out a scream loud enough to wake every critter in the valley. “Had enough noise from you,” the lawman said, wrestling the knife free and moving around to the head. Fallstead twisted the wounded man’s face upward and inserted the blade into his mouth, sawing off his tongue with practiced efficiency.

Sybille stood up to survey her father’s work. She walked over and moved Hyde; his head fell clear off. Fallstead was sitting next to Ford, trying in vain to scream with only a stump and broken teeth in his mouth.

            “You weren’t too partial to these boys I guess,” she said, moving with more caution. She’d dealt with violence and been witness to all kinds—even so, the unvarnished brutality had her spooked.

            Ford’s muted ululations were taking on a miserable form. He was pounding the ground with spasmic hands and sputtering up blood and little chunks of whatever remained of his tongue, trying without result to drag himself and his gushing leg away from Fallstead. The marshal positioned himself calmly by Wicker’s side and wiped his bloody steel on the dying man’s fringed suede jacket. “We heard y’all jabbering from over a mile off,” Fallstead said, “so I went out on foot to follow you alongside the trail.” He talked flat and hard and devoid of emotion, like ordering at a restaurant with no time for idleness. “Lot of rocky terrain around here. Sound travels. Should learn to ride quieter.”

            Ford continued to gag. He tried turning on his side but Fallstead wouldn’t let him move. “Your friend was scared. You overestimated your worth. Seems he was the more appropriate party now, don’t it?”

            The question was met with the sorriest series of groans Sybille had ever occasioned to hear. The man was desperate for the other side. “Pa?” she said.

Ignoring his daughter, the marshal went on. “While y’all were talking, I was listening. Most of the story was right, though you could never understand. I say this because your life is going, and only because your life is going.” Fallstead took the blade and slid it into Ford’s ribcage, twisting it as he continued. “And I’ll make you and your friend my offerings.”

            “Pa?”

            “The major part you and your partner left out. After Moreno butchered our leader, he killed everyone. Except me. They called me Dan Clayton back then. Sought vengeance until I was sure he was dead, and my old ways withered away.” Once again, he pulled the knife out, bringing it back down under Ford’s shoulder and yanking it diagonally across his torso. Sybille made a brave effort to keep watching but her stomach knotted and she had to avert her eyes.

            Fallstead knelt over the corpse, breathing heavily. The last cut took a huge amount of physical strength. Ford was opened up like a fish; all manner of organs exposed. The marshal’s hands and face were painted with a thick coat of the bounty hunter’s gory remains.

            “Pa?” Sybille said once more, standing flat-footed and motionless between the two dead bodies.

            “Made a mistake,” Fallstead mumbled. “Made a mistake. Made a mistake. Moreno’s still alive.”

            “Didn’t we already know that?” Sybille asked, rocking back on her heels. Her father’s behavior was fitful now, almost rabid. It didn’t line up at all with the stoicism she’d come to know through the course of her life or the calm displayed during the killing. She chose her next words cautiously, trying to find a crack in his trancelike state of darkened reverie. “You okay, there?”

            Marshal Fallstead, formerly Dan Clayton, stood up and turned toward the fire, staring into the flames. “Since you could hold a gun you’ve wanted to know about the old ways. Every kill, I see you make the symbol. You try to hide it, but it doesn’t get by.”

            “Just curious. The little you’ve told me, plus the things I’ve heard. And, I think there’s something to it. Something useful.”

            “There is. Something useful.”

            “So, what about these fellas? They seemed harmless…” Sybille stopped short of making a full-throated inquiry. Considering what she’d just witnessed, it seemed the only reasonable option.

            “They were going to get in my way.” It was Dan Clayton looking into the flames now. The years of being Holt Fallstead had melted into ash and blown away. “You said you wanted Moreno for what he did to me. The death of my brothers.”

            “Of course,” Sybille said.

            “You’ll watch then. What you want takes more than drawing a circle in the sand.”

            The next hour was the most jarring Sybille had ever taken in. She looked on as her father removed the larger organs of the dead men, scattering them around two circles, each large enough to encompass a wagon. She sat in one while her father centered himself in the other, repeating strange words that he recited to the endless sky. Close your eyes, he told her. You may not see this time, he told her. But soon enough this will give you vision and strength greater than a normal soul, he said.

When they were done, he ordered her to take anything of use or value from Hyde and Ford’s horses. Dawn was an hour away when they resumed their journey toward Thunder Hill and Loot Moreno. Her father seemed steady and sharp-eyed after the circle. Sybille herself felt changed, though not in any particular way. She felt tougher, perhaps. Lonely, even though she now knew her father like she’d always asked to. Maybe Pa was right about the strength and sight. Maybe. I don’t know, dammit.

            After rolling it around, she looked back up into the sky and made a sort of peace with it for the time being. Sybille had pined to witness the full extent of the Three-in-One Gang’s mysterious practices for most of her life. Like her father said, since she could hold a gun.

            Loot Moreno had pushed her pa back to a former state. This wasn’t the marshal or the man at the creek.

Sybille showed her horse a kick, reckoning the merits of what had just taken place were about to be tested and tried, one way or another.

Chapter 12: An Early Stroll

            Kip didn’t need light to find the Laird family home. Nor did his eager dog. They were moving quick down main street toward the end of town. His plate was full like it’d never been. Despite all to come, Elsie was taking up most of his head and heart. There was no time for apologies or attempts at setting things right, not with logic. He cleared his throat. Logic would have to wait. “Steady Ambrose. Sit still now, or I’ll leave you tied up friendless.” Kip gave the front door a determined series of knocks, hoping someone would answer before his dog scratched a hole through to the other side. It was cold and the fog had lifted for clean air; a decent time interval before the sun started its ascent over the high ground east of the valley.

            The door opened with a creak that matched his nerves. Elsie’s face appeared strained as she rubbed her golden hair. One of her full cheeks was red and the other pale; he’d obviously roused her from solid sleep. “Sorry, Else. Didn’t want to have to wake you or Mama up.”

            “Your actions speak opposite.” Her address was quick and coarse. His enthusiasm was well matched by her standoffishness.

            “Yeah,” he said, taking off his old hat as Ambrose tried to nose a way into the Laird house. “He’s crazy, this one.”

            Elsie’s eyes grew big and soft as she looked down and smiled at the golden retriever’s unfettered ambition. “He’s a good boy,” she said. Kip was grateful for the cheer back in her voice. Her scent almost overtook him. It was two types inviting. She smelled fresh and warm and slightly perfumed like a woman and she smelled enough like home to make him weak standing there.  

“I need you to take him,” Kip blurted.

            Her face tightened. “Off leaving things like you did. How’d I know you were still going to ask for something?” She was whispering for the sake of their mother, but it was obvious now she’d have preferred a hotter tone.

            “I’ve been neglecting a lot of things. Been stupid, and you don’t even know the whole of it.” His head was humbled and his hair had fallen over his eyes and chin.

            Elsie was waking up quick. “Do you even know yet what you want to apologize for? Maybe next time I come up to your place her scent will be on you again.”

            “You knew? The other morning?” So much for working up to a confession. Kip considered maybe it was a gift. A reprieve. He hated the little coward hiding inside, the one making her figure things out for herself.

            Elsie scratched the little dimple on her chin and yawned away the last of the night. She shook her head. Kip knew before she spoke that the condescension was about to let loose. “The woman wears enough of that cheap perfume to make a lasting impression. Enough even to cut through the stink of booze you had from the night before and pretty much ever since.”

            “Well shoot, Else.” Kip smiled weakly in self-defense and went back through the last few days and his conversations with Elsie. All the clever ways he’d imagined amends. It was all a waste. He should’ve guessed Else had him figured and then some.

            “You’re a good preacher, Kip. Good at chopping wood, pistol shooting. More than decent on a horse. But I wouldn’t put subterfuge high on the list of your qualities. She’ll get you killed crying on you in the street like she did.”

            “Else.”

            She held up a hand. “I didn’t have the stomach for a showdown, even knowing you were carrying on. So we’re both liars and yellow, though I won’t argue you’re much worse.”

            “We’re breaking Loot Moreno out of jail.” The words shot out of his mouth before he could weigh the soundness of letting them go.

            “What?” she asked, laughing a little, lifting his chin to gather what she could from his avoiding eyes.

            He stepped to her bare toes, propelled by her touch. She didn’t back away. The cold high-country air sent a chill down his neck. “I was fixing to sell a story about me and Doc Rufus going over to the Bristols all day, but I’m not lying to you anymore.”

            She wasn’t laughing now. The firmness in his voice and the agitation of his chest moving in and out convinced her the moment had weight. “The man’s set to hang today,” she said.

            “That isn’t happening.”

            “Because he brought you here as a baby? I can’t remember. Are you Moses or Romulus?”

            “Because I need more answers. I’ve only got some of the story, and I want to understand. He’s the reason I’m alive. The reason I’m here. That there should be enough to merit walking out the path.”

            “The reason you’re alive. Says the fine men who’ve been lying to you your life long.”

“You’d have to put Pa in that grouping of liars.”

She slapped him hard. The snap carried through the thin air. “What are you going to do? Go in there and bust him out yourself?” Elsie’s light skin was turning hot as she contemplated and calculated the worst outcomes. There was no restraining her practical side. “You’re going to get yourself thrown in a cell. Or killed. Tell me this plan.”

            Kip put his hat back on. “No. I’m not saying anymore. Less you know, the better. In case there’s trouble.”

“What happened to not lying?”

            “Not telling you specifics isn’t exactly lying.” He kissed her on the cheek before she had a chance to reel back her face. “Sorry Else, but I’ve got to be bold. No one comes close to you and I love you for it. There it is. Hopefully you’ll be able to forgive me.” He went to kiss her other cheek but found her lips instead. They lingered and breathed on it. Kip had both big arms around her while she moved in powerful little womanly ways inside his embrace.

Elsie pulled away not wanting to. “You don’t have claim or right, the way you’ve been.” Now she was being less than straight. No doubting she’d forgive him his running around—the kiss only served to speed up the process. It still hurt, but she loved him clear. Faith they could bury the hatchet, somehow, through everything. “But come back here after your adventures and see to me. Be careful.”

            He tipped his hat and nodded down at her. “Stay inside today and watch over Mama. I can’t force you, but I’m asking you not to tell a soul.”
            “Kip, don’t get killed helping out your savior. It’s unproductive. And I’ll be needing you around.”

            “I’ve got to go. I wish I didn’t.”

            “Then go.” She pulled Ambrose in and shut the door in his face.

            He turned abruptly feeling better and worse about the day. Walking toward the heart of town, he told himself Elsie and that kiss was all that mattered then told himself to put all that on hold.

It was set up to be the busiest of mornings. He nodded and gave a flick of a wave as he passed by the livery. Speeding by the butcher shop, he came to Mr. Weaver’s freshly-painted telegraph office. It was still too early for anyone to be up and about, dark enough to prevent folks from recognizing the particulars of a face from any distance. Kip gave the street one more up and down glance and went around to the back of the simple one-story building. Before he could knock, Jasper Bedford was at the door, lantern swaying in hand. “Greetings, Mr. Laird,” he whispered. “We’re cutting it close.”

“I know. Any problems?”

            “Come on in. No problems. The girls purloined Mr. Weaver’s keys without a hitch. He’s naked as a jaybird, sleeping off a long one. I had to talk all night to that man before he decided upon taking up with the ladies. Hard to say if I’ve ever heard someone speak longer with absolutely nothing interesting to say. Loot can consider my account squared after today.”

            “Did you disable it?”

            “I did indeed,” Jasper said, pulling out a flask from his trademark brown suit jacket. “This device will not be functional for at least two weeks. I rounded up the spare parts as well. He’ll have to order new.”

            “But no permanent damage?”

            “None. You needn’t worry your Christian soul about depriving the banal Mr. Weaver his livelihood.”

            “Are you still drunk from last night, Mr. Bedford?”

            Jasper rubbed the heavy bags under his eyes. “I am. But only just. I’d like to think that it’s still last night. And as I said, it takes a river of spirits to endure that insufferable stooge.”

            “You better get on.”

            “I’d better. And don’t worry. Our sirens will slip the key back and he’ll be none the wiser. Until he gets here, of course.”

            “Okay,” Kip said, realizing he was breathing rather heavily. “You didn’t let slip the specifics of the plan to ‘our sirens’ by any chance, did you?”

            “Never. Maintaining confidences goes part and parcel with my life’s calling. I’m sure you bear a similar cross, being a man of the cloth.” Jasper was moving his hands like a conductor. It seemed to Kip that the writer’s drinking had him buying into the eloquence of his own speech with too full a heart. Somehow, though, it was endearing.  

“Well, I appreciate you doing it,” Kip said, catching and shaking the old man’s hand. “Hopefully the crime will never get back to us.”

            “Crime?” he scoffed, teetering forward a bit. “No utility in self-flagellation, young man. Forward we must march.”

            “I guess that’s right.”

            “Chin up.” Jasper patted his co-conspirator on the shoulder. “Go on now. There’s still a lot to do.”

            “You headin’ back?” Kip asked, having no choice but to trust that Jasper was equal to his tasks.

            “I am. Hoping for another go with Stella Ann before the sun’s up in earnest.”

            Through grinding teeth, Kip said, “Just get him back the key.”

            “Don’t worry, Preacher Laird. Can I call you Kip?”

            “Of course.”

            “Call me Jasper. Now that we’re getting to be friends, only seems right.”

            “Yeah. Seems right.”

            “Oh, come now,” Bedford said, sensing Kip’s stubborn trepidation. “We all get dirty hands eventually.”

Chapter 13: The Prisoner and the Preacher

            “Jee-sus!” Sydney Laird jumped as light from an old kerosene lamp filled the little jail. It had been dark and quiet coming in; he’d just hung his hat and locked the door behind. It was rote practice, easy to do, even absent illumination. Now he was turned around, eyes made wide by the massive figure of the man he was still calling Brandon Calhoun. The prisoner had the sheriff’s revolver aimed steady at his head. Cox was lying unconscious on the bed in the back corner of the cell. It looked like blood on the floor. Syd was there on the sheriff’s orders to come in early for the sake of preparedness, seeing that the hanging was to take place at the height of day.

            So far, things were off to a rough start. “Easy, Calhoun,” Sydney trembled. His normally languid senses were sharp. He could smell the gun oil. The pool of blood. The sweat of the unwashed prisoner. “Let’s just talk about this. No need for craziness, if you get me.”

            “Calhoun” wasn’t for talking. He closed the distance to Syd before the deputy could put a hand to his own sidearm. Sydney found himself disarmed in the jail cell a few seconds later, checking to see if the sheriff was still alive. “What’d you do, you son of a bitch? Did you kill him!?”

            “Not sure. Do me a favor and take a look.” Deputy Laird watched the giant who’d been planted behind bars thumping back and forth free and wild through the little jailhouse, gathering the items they’d confiscated when he was arrested. He overcrowded the space with his size and frenzied purpose. Sydney looked away from the brute to examine the wound on Cox’s head best he could. It didn’t appear to be a bullet hole. He tore off a yellowed piece of the cheap jailhouse bedding and used it to dab the cut. It was hard to see through the sheriff’s dense salt and pepper hair. “He’ll be fine,” Loot said.

            “Shut the hell up,” Syd said, near to tears. “I don’t aim to believe a murderer.”

            “I don’t expect belief,” the criminal said, stomping into the cell, now with his own dark pistol drawn and cocked. “Get back against the wall.”

            Two minutes later, Sydney found his hands shackled behind his back. The restraints ran through one of the vertical bars keeping the bed up. He was trapped, and there was no complaining about it. Half the pillowcase was stuffed in his mouth and layers of cloth were wrapped around the lower part of his head so he couldn’t spit the gag out. He bucked and moaned and tried to rouse his boss, watching with strained red eyes as the condemned man turned official fugitive, slipping out in full livery into the predawn dark.

After wrestling the restraints a few more frustrating minutes, he finally took a rest. His thick wrists were bleeding and his eyes were stinging with sweat from the strain of trying to break free. He looked around and tried to figure out what happened. Food on the floor. That’s it. Sheriff Cox out of fairness was likely trying to give the lunatic a decent last breakfast, only to get brained in the process.

            Syd moaned and whimpered as loud as the gag would allow, but it was ineffectual. Kicking at the floor with the heels of his boots, it was clear. He wasn’t doing a thing until Cox woke up or Elbert Rooker made his way into work. No telling when that would be. ER wasn’t the kind you could set your watch to. “Eehhhd,” Sydney said, coughing on fabric. He was trying to say shit.

                                                   ______________________

            Three light raps on the barn door. Doc Rufus cracked it open and nodded sharply at the new arrival. “Everything go okay?”

            “Good enough,” said Moreno, entering quick and breathing hard. “But maybe you need to get over to the jail and tend to Amos. I hit him damn good on the head. Twice.” Though the outlaw was speaking to Rufus, he was looking at Kip and remembering. They’d all been there together before, that very spot, keeping secrets. He pushed the memories down a useful amount, enough to give him a sense of obligation but not too much to weigh him useless.

Kip was holding the reins of two horses in the center of the little barn as he set eyes on Loot. He was even more imposing now in his long pale sheepskin coat, holding a heavy scatter gun in one hand and a rifle in the other. “Hey, Pecos.” Loot walked up slow and rested his head against the nose of the sturdy animal, aware he was avoiding Kip’s eagerness. “Hey there, amigo. Sorry to leave you locked up in that livery so long.” He rubbed the dark brown hair between the horse’s ears. “Any consolation, I know just how you feel.”

“Twice you hit him?” Rufus said, interrupting the reunion between man and beast. “I hope you didn’t do anything permanent. Damn, Loot.”

            “He made it clear, Doc. I told him a bad knock to the head was nothing to take light, but the man’s mule stubborn. He wants this ruse smacking authentic.”

            The doctor kicked weakly at some loose hay and checked his gold pocket watch. “But you know the plan. I can’t just go busting in there before the sun’s up.” Elias was whispering fast and taut. For Kip it was off-putting; Doc liked the sound of himself and was normally given to stretching words. “Talk about suspicious. It would cast attention on our designs. Heading over there now? Heading over to check and see if Cox happens to be unconscious?”

            “You’re right, Doc. Getting back to your place is the ticket,” Kip set himself into the proceedings for some calm. “Stick to the plan. When Rooker shows up to that jail and sees trouble, you’ll be the first person he runs to. Best it looks like you’ve been cozy in bed all night.”

            “That was my original idea.”

            “Just saying it back to you,” Kip answered with a lowered head and humble tone. With time pressing he wasn’t for arguing. “Is my brother okay?”

            Moreno almost flinched at the question. It was the first time the boy had ever talked to him. “Your brother’s fine,” he said with a cough. “Being made to look a fool will have him bucking to find me.”

            “We’ll take care of that,” Kip said, handing the reins of both horses to Loot. “Besides, there’s not an able tracker in town besides Cox, and he’s not going to be shoving his best foot forward.”

            “You’re a good tracker,” Doc Rufus said, peeking out the barn door. “So, you’ll probably be called upon if they cobble a posse together. Need you back here fast. You’re cutting this thing real close.”

            “We’ve got moving parts, sure enough. Best I make tracks and get back before anyone gets wise.”

            “Deception,” Rufus said, holding Kip by the shoulders like sizing him up. “I’ve known you all your life. This worries me. You’ve never been able to lie about a goddamn thing.”

            “I’m better than you think when pressed,” Laird answered, giving Moreno a steady look through the dim of the barn. “I’ll hold up my end, seeing as I owe. Hope there’s a talk and some answers at the end of it.”

            Moreno stayed silent and offered Rufus a loaded expression that he tried to hide from the boy. The fugitive’s insides were tangled in knots. He didn’t like Kip involved, didn’t like binding and gagging Ben Laird’s oldest. None of this would’ve happened if he’d just stayed clear of Thunder Hill. None of this would’ve happened if he’d been made normal and lived a normal life. “We need to set out,” he said gruffly, filling the other horse’s saddlebags with gear. It was a spirited gray colt previously owned by a church parishioner traveling for his trade. The Lairds were tending to it in the man’s absence and most likely nobody would think to come asking after it. It was a chance they’d have to take. If all went well, the horse would be back soon enough to placate any inquiring minds.

The Laird’s barn was behind the church; the last manmade structure in town before six miles of uninterrupted prairie. Rufus opened the backdoor and tipped his hat to Moreno. Before he could convey parting worries, Kip was tearing off into start of dawn on Pecos, striding proud toward the bottom of the foothills. It was an exuberant ride, and done for a reason. The tracks needed to be spread in a way that had the look of a man and horse making a wild run for it. That, and Kip needed to be back in town when news of the escape hit.

            “Hope he knows what he’s into,” Loot said, trying to control the colt he was on. “Though I suppose that’s impossible, considering what we’ve told.”

            “He’s a good kid,” Rufus whispered, tipping his hat again as if to say get going. “When things settle, you’ll learn him the rest.”

            “Yeah,” Moreno said, “I was thinking about that. Must be even in his dying sickness Ben thought it was time for the boy to know. Anyhow.” The big outlaw tightened his massive legs around the body of the unfamiliar horse and urged him along, pulling the frisky animal around in the opposite direction of Laird and Pecos, back to his hideout in the mountains.

Chapter 14: Different Ideas

            The sun was rising quickly above Thunder Hill, less than two hours from high noon. After their encounter with the bounty hunters, they’d put in a hard ride to get there before the hanging. They hadn’t heard of the escape and were still planning on taking their own look at the prisoner.

            “Place is a regular hive of activity,” Sybille said, riding close to her father. She had her bandana up and hat pulled down to her brow. There wasn’t but a little room to negotiate up the main thoroughfare and thickening dust made it hard to stick to a fixed line. Regular folk were coming in on wagons from local homesteads; dodgier types were trotting eager on horses from parts unknown. Many had descended for the entertainment of a hanging, the surrounding atmosphere of activity and excitement, or maybe to see (like them) if the person destined for the noose was really Loot Moreno. Clearly, the telegraph she heard mentioned in Boyd City had made the rounds. Judging by the turnout, Sybille guessed those little dots and dashes had spread to every corner of the territory.

            They dodged a rusty wagon of farmers and passed by groups of drunks talking loud by the gallows. Sybille whiffed the fresh lumber, even with all the shit and stink associated with a crowded little town like Thunder Hill. Based on the number of buildings lining the street, she guessed that maybe three hundred people lived there regular. Maybe another hundred on the surrounding farms and ranches. Today the place was glutted with twice that.

            “I’m going to get a drink,” her father said, barely loud enough to hear. “Find somewhere to hitch the horses and meet me over at the saloon.”

            He dismounted and handed her his reins without a look. They hadn’t exchanged words since the “ceremony” out on the trail. She’d say something and he’d look ahead and keep riding, or he’d bark a few syllables and want it left there. Sybille watched him walking through the bustle of the road to the saloon, making everything and everyone deviate from his path. He hadn’t had a drink in years; she didn’t know how to feel about it. They had business to take care of. He was surely different. Maybe forever different. She reminded herself once again that this was her desire: the chance to see her father as he was in the days of his prime, to be part of the legend. She shook her head and brought the horses to a hitching post with some spare space just ahead, trying not to think so much. It’d been a long, turbulent night. I just need a wash and a drink. Need to kill Moreno. Might be, that sorts Pa right out. He’ll be Dan Clayton again, old skins shed.  

After hitching the horses, Sybille noticed a figure trudging up through the alley toward the street. She patted her horse and sharpened her eyes for a better look. He was young, maybe a hair older than her, but it seemed like he’d been through the ringer. He wasn’t heeled and didn’t carry himself like the sort that would be. Indeed, he was the opposite of menacing. Still, something was off. She couldn’t quite figure it. He was coming right for her with his head down, sweat dripping from shaggy brown hair.

            “You okay there?” she asked, but he didn’t catch it. The clamor of the town conspired against his hearing. She started to ask again as he pulled himself up onto the boardwalk, but the chance was averted by a girl tarted up whore-like with crimson lips and red hair who seemed to appear out of nowhere. The look on his handsome face was apprehensive at best. They were having it out smack dab in front of the general store. An aproned oily fat man came charging on the scene and stuck his finger in the face of the sweaty one. Sybille looked up. Grimes General Store. Bet that’s Mr. Grimes.Probably not too happy having a love quarrel on the precipice. Hanging days were good for business.

            Sybille knew she was staring and didn’t exactly know what had her captured. She thought the stranger was pleasant to the sight and strong-jawed, but she’d seen plenty of those types on her travels. Something else. Like he wasn’t going through the motions. He had some tough meat on his plate.

            Maybe she was just watching normal life, and normal was suddenly all the more fascinating set against what she’d recently experienced. The night had taken and added things to who she was before. It was still for sorting out. I need a drink worse than I thought.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grimes.” Kip couldn’t afford this hitch. The day was far from done and Grimes and Lindy weren’t giving him time enough to pray for patience.

“Customers, Kip. This is a big day. Now with no hanging, nothing going but the festivities, you might as well put the noose around my neck, interrupting traffic. You know how Mrs. Grimes gets.”

            “You’re right. We’re moving. I sincerely apologize, Mr. Grimes.”

            Only mumbles as his landlord scuffled back inside. Kip pulled out his shirt from the waist of his pants and used the lower portion to wipe his face. He was looking over Lindy’s hatted head at the trough just below the boardwalk, wondering if the pretty cowgirl standing next to it would take offense if he dunked his head in.

            “You gonna answer me?” Lindy asked, snapping her little fingers relentlessly. “What is going on with you?”

            “Nothing. Chopping wood out back.”

            “Did you cut down a forest? Something’s not right. You’re not being all the way honest.”

            Nope. And she couldn’t imagine the secrets. The hard ride on Pecos through the fledgling light, six miles at close to full tilt. He knew the terrain, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a dangerous sprint, uneven most of the time. Hitching Pecos up secure behind Miller’s abandoned cabin in the lower foothills. Dragging Miller’s old canoe into the river and getting downstream without being tossed by the whitewater or dashed into a rock. Hiding the canoe where it would take a miracle to find. The dang thing weighed a ton, even for Kip’s strong back. And then, running the soles off his father’s cavalry boots back to town. Blisters on his feet or maybe just skin rubbed all the way to the bone. He was afraid to check. Not your average five or six hours, Lindy.