piece of paper.
“What is it?”
“Laudanum. It will take the edge off the pain—at
least until it gets real bad.”
“And when it gets real bad?”
Doc Morris shrugged.
“There’s no easy answer to it, Mr. Sunday. But a
man of your profession I’m sure can figure out what
your options are when that time comes.”
Sunday patted the front of his coat, could feel the
shape and heft of the pistols on the inside.
“Yes, I’ve already thought about it.”
“You run out of this, you can always get more.
Might pay to keep an extra bottle on hand . . .” Doc
said, handing him the note for laudanum.
William Sunday took the paper, looked at it. He
couldn’t read, never had learned, regretted now that
he hadn’t learned, along with regretting several other
things he’d ignored in his now too short life.
“I’d appreciate it much if you didn’t tell anyone
about this,” he said.
Doc Morris looked at him over the tops of the
spectacles that had slid down his nose.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
“Mine is not the business of gossip.”
Sunday reached into his trouser pocket and took
out a wallet, opened it and took out several bills and
laid them on the desk.
“It’s October now,” he said, as much to himself it
seemed as to the physician. “The leaves have already
started changing in the high country. It won’t be long
till winter.”
“No, it won’t,” the physician said.
“I don’t know if I should thank you or not,” Sun-
day said.
Doc shook his head.
“There’s nothing to thank me for, sir. Mine is of-
ten a thankless task and I’m sorry as hell whenever I
have to give someone bad news.”
Sunday took his pancake hat from the peg on the
wall and settled it on his head. He was a striking figure
of a man—six feet tall, long reddish locks that flowed
to past his broad shoulders, well dressed in a frock
coat, bull-hide boots. He could have been a banker or
a successful businessman by the looks of him. But he
was neither.
What he was, was as a pistolero—a gun for hire. A
man whose profession was taking lives for money, and
he had not regretted that very much until now that he
realized his own life would be taken. There was one
that troubled him, one he did not know how to make
up for, a boy. He thought of him now, how that still
haunted him.
He would be dead by the winter, before the spring.
In a way, he told himself, he was lucky; he had time to
put his affairs in order, to plan his exit, unlike those
he’d killed.
Outside in the crisp sunny air of Denver, death
seemed quite impossible. The city was alive with com-
merce, people laughed, children played, women smiled
at him as he passed them on the street, and he touched
the brim of his hat out of old habit.
In a way, nothing seemed changed at all. Hell, he
didn’t even feel particularly sick at the moment, ex-
cept for the shadow of an ache in his loins from hav-
ing sat too long.
But everything
And this time next year . . . Well, he did not want
to think of this time next year.
And that night, he got very drunk and cursed and
wept at the crushing sorrow that caught up with him
the way a wolf catches up to an old buffalo. His time
was finished, the world would go on without him and
it would be just as if he never existed at all—except of
course to those men he had killed—to that one boy
whose death still nagged at his conscience.
He paid a hundred dollars to a bordello beauty to
spend the night with him. She was sweet and young
and reminded him in a way of another young woman.
And in his broken state of mind he told her he was
dying, for he needed to tell someone and thought she
had a kindness about her that would let her under-
stand. But he could see in her eyes that she could not.
She stayed with him until dawn, then slipped away
and he awakened alone and knew that there was yet
one thing he needed to do before winter set in, before
spring came.
He sold his horse and saddle, closed his consider-
able bank account.
There was a young woman he meant to see.
Her name was Clara.
She was married—the last he heard to an Army of-
ficer named Fallon Monroe—and he had heard they
had two small girls.
But before she married, her name had been Clara
Sunday.
His daughter and only living kin.
The last word he’d gotten of her, she lived in Bis-
marck with her soldier husband.
