corsets and stockings with a description and price of
the items next to the drawings. The paper was yel-
lowed, curled, some of it ripped and tearing, some of
it rain soaked.
Toussaint saw that this is what happened to old
men who ended up living alone far out on the prairies
without the benefit of female companionship: they pa-
pered their walls with the pages from catalogues and
dreamt no doubt of beautiful ladies there with them
in the loneliest of hours and sometimes ended up dy-
ing violent and unexpected deaths.
Jake saw it, too.
“What do you think?” Toussaint said.
“Looks like they had one hell of a fight and killed
each other,” Jake said.
The cabin was just one room. A bed in one corner,
a small wood stove in the center of the room, table
and a chair in the opposite corner, and the catalogue
women.
“No sign of Otis’s wife,” Toussaint said.
“She must have gotten away while these two were
busy killing each other,” Jake observed.
“Well, you want to take time to bury them?” Tous-
saint said squatting on his heels outside the cabin af-
ter they had a look around.
“No,” Jake said after several moments of thinking
about it. “I’d rather get on the trail of the woman.”
“Just leave them then?”
“Wouldn’t be quite right to do that, either. Wolves
would come, badgers, coyotes, birds would come eat
their eyes out.”
“Well, hell. What then?”
Jake went back in the cabin and came back out a
few moments later. Toussaint could see smoke start-
ing to curl through the open windows. He knew then
Jake had set the place afire. It wouldn’t be any sort of
great loss.
“It’s the best,” Jake said as the first flames licked at
the walls then ate through the dry shake shingles of
the roof.
“Seems somehow fitting,” Toussaint said.
They watched until the roof collapsed and sent a
shower of sparks rising orange against the smudged
sky.
“Mount up,” Jake said.
“Where you think she is?” Toussaint said, stepping
into the stirrups.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
They started searching for sign by riding a loop
outward from the cabin. There wasn’t much sign to
be cut, but then Toussaint saw where the grass was
knocked down just a little like someone had ran
through it and they followed that for a time until they
found a piece of torn cloth not much more than the
length of a finger—gingham.
“She’s heading this way,” he said.
“Back toward town,” Jake said, “hell, she might
even be there by now.
“Town’s still a long way.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Let’s pick her up.”
Big Belly saw the horses. Three nice-looking saddle
horses. Looked like they were just out there eating the
grass waiting for someone to come along and take
them. Sometimes the Great Spirit provided unex-
pected gifts to his favorite people. Big Belly squatted
there in the grass just about eye level watching those
horses. He didn’t want to be seen in case those horses
had owners around somewhere. Most horses did have
owners, though some got away from their owners still
wearing saddles like the three he could see. Might be
that’s what those horses did, ran away from whoever
owned them and hadn’t yet been found. Well, it was
his good fortune the way he looked at it. Finders
keepers.
He had come a long way since leaving Texas. He
was of the Naconi Tribe—the Wanderers. That was
the trait of his people: to wander the land. Only in his
case, he had wandered very far indeed. Texas wasn’t
worth a shit since the Texas Rangers rubbed out most
of the Comanche.
He looked at those horses standing by themselves,
knowing that the horse was the true brother to the
Comanche.
He said down under his breath: “Hello, brothers.”
It had been a long time since he had a horse, now
there were three of them just waiting for him to take
them. The last horse he had, he ended up eating after
it became lame. He wouldn’t have eaten his horse
even then, but the Rangers were on his heels and he
was way out in the dry country and there wasn’t any-
thing else to eat. Damn good horse, too, both ways.
He squatted there waiting to see if the three horses
had owners around anywhere. He didn’t see anybody.
He rose and walked slowly toward the animals that
were grazing and swishing the flies off them with
their tails. One was a roan, one a bay, and the other a
buckskin. He couldn’t believe his good fortune.
Thank you, he said in his head to the Creator. Thank
you for these goddamn horses.
