“Mules are smarter than horses—they’ll never put
themselves into danger like a horse will. And if I have
to ride something, I’d just as soon ride a mule; gentler
ride.”
The sky to the north was scudding low with clouds.
“A storm is on its way,” Toussaint said.
The weather had turned churlish again, clouds
scooping in from the north, rolling like gray waves.
“One place we might look for him—a place where
a murdering man might try and hole up, is Finn’s
place,” Toussaint said.
Jake had heard of the outpost—a whiskey den, re-
ally, on the west road halfway between Sweet Sorrow
and the county line. But he’d never been there, had no
reason to go there, and had no official jurisdiction be-
yond the town’s limits.
“What makes you think so?” Jake asked.
“It’s a rough place, but a place where men don’t
ask any questions. Finn’s not choosy about who
comes around long as they have a few bits to spend
on liquor and that whore he keeps there.”
“Well, we may swing by there just to check it out.”
Then they saw something up ahead—a man stag-
gering afoot along the road, coming toward them.
“Maybe that’s him,” Jake said.
Toussaint watched for a moment as they slowed
their animals.
“No, that’s Otis Dollar.”
Jake spurred his horse forward and Toussaint fol-
lowed.
By the time they reached him, Otis had fallen. He
had ribbons of dried blood crusted down his face and
his hair was matted with it as well. He tried to stand
at the approach of the two figures, who he couldn’t
discern through his swollen eyes. He thought perhaps
it was the Swede coming back to finish him off. The
Swede and Martha.
“Martha!” he cried.
Jake and Toussaint dismounted and took him in
hand.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
Otis looked at him, then at Toussaint through his
bruised and battered lid; it looked like he had small
plums in place of eyes. He tried to touch their faces
with his trembling hands.
“Oh, god . . .” he said, then fainted.
They laid him out in the grass and Jake cleaned his
head wounds with water from his canteen spilled onto
a kerchief while Toussaint looked on.
“Somebody’s worked him over pretty good. He
may have a fractured skull.”
“You talk the same way old Doc Willis talked—
real medical.”
Jake ignored the comment. Toussaint couldn’t help
but wonder who Jake Horn really was.
“We need to get him to a bed. Where’s the closest
place around here?”
“It’s about twenty damn miles back to town, but
Karen’s is about six that way.” Toussaint pointed off
to the east.
“Then that is where we’ll have to take him.”
Karen was coming back to the house, a pair of rabbits
she’d shot hanging from her belt. She carried a needle
gun in her right hand—something Toussaint had
given her once. She hated goddamn rabbits. She hated
cleaning them and she hated eating them, but they
were the only living game she came across when she
went out that morning and so she’d had no choice but
to take them. And as she neared her house, she saw
the two riders, one of them riding a man double. And
then they all reached the house about the same time
and she saw who the two riders were and she wasn’t
pleased.
“Karen,” Jake said.
She looked at him, looked at Toussaint and Otis
Dollar riding double on the back of Otis’s mule.
she thought.
Jake explained the situation and Karen was re-
lieved that it hadn’t been Toussaint who had done
Otis the damage.
“I might as well open a hospital,” she said. “Or a
way station.”
They helped Otis into the house and onto Karen’s
bed. Toussaint looked on with a certain amount of
jealousy. He was wondering if this was the first time
Otis ever lay in Karen’s bed.
“How long you planning on me entertaining com-
pany?” Karen said looking down at poor Otis.
Twenty years had changed him from what he was on
that one particular day. He had a full head of dark
hair back then, and quite handsome—not at all the
way he was now.
“A day, maybe two at the outside. I’ve sent out a
burial party to the Swedes. I can have them stop by
on their way back and pick him up and take him into
town.”
“Lovely,” she said sarcastically. “I can’t tell you
