“I figured he done something bad,” Otis said. “I
saw blood on his shirt cuffs just before he knocked
me on the head.” Then they fell to silence again, the
food and the very world itself seeming glum.
All the rest of that morning, Karen had sat in front of
the cabin watching for strangers while Otis lay in bed
mumbling in his sleep before she went in and woke
him for dinner. It was right after they finished eating
that she saw a strange-looking carriage approaching
from off in the far distance, two people riding atop.
“Get ready, we got company,” she said.
Karen took the needlegun Toussaint had once
given her and went outside with it and Otis followed
her. He squinted through swollen eyes to see who it
was, said, “If you give me a gun I’ll help you kill
him.”
“Go back inside, Otis. I only got this one gun and
I can shoot pretty damn good with it and if there is
any killing to be done on my property, I’ll be the one
doing it. Your head funny the way it is, I wouldn’t
trust you to protect me from a chicken thief.”
But when the contraption drew within better view,
Karen could see the two people riding atop it: Tall
John, the undertaker, and Will Bird, the lanky and
handsome young itinerant with dark curly hair
spilling from under his hat. It was a glass-sided hearse
they rode atop.
“Miss Sunflower,” John said as soon as he drew
reins and set the brake. “Marshal asked me to come
collect Otis from you.” He looked at the shopkeeper,
the bandaged head, the swollen black-and-blue eyes
that gave him the look of a wounded raccoon.
“We thought maybe you were that madman,” she
said.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any coffee with some
whiskey in it,” said Will Bird, his thirst for a drink
hard upon him now that he’d helped bury a bunch of
murdered people. The youngest woman’s face espe-
cially haunted him; she had probably been pretty
enough in life, but in death she was haunting.
“Coffee, no whiskey to go in it,” Karen said.
Both he and Tall John were sweaty and dirt
smeared.
Both men got down and John wiped his brow with
a large blue bandanna he pulled from his back
pocket.
“An onerous task burying those poor folks. Oner-
ous, indeed.”
“Damn mean work, too,” Will Bird said, not know-
ing what
legs. “How you been Karen? It’s been a time since I
seen you last.”
“I’ve been okay,” she said. There had been a time a
few years back when she’d flirted with the idea of tak-
ing Will Bird into her bed. It was the summer before
Will went off to Texas and when he was roaming
around the county picking up whatever work he could
find locally. She’d hired him to repair her leaky roof for
her. It had been a week’s worth of work—what with
waiting for the rain to come again after he patched it to
see if it leaked still. And over that time they’d gotten to
know each other about as well as a woman without a
man and a man without a woman can in spite of the
difference in their ages and philosophies.
Will had even gone out one evening and picked
wildflowers and brought them to her. They’d eaten
their meals out of doors most evenings where they
could hear the meadowlarks singing in the dusk and
Will said, “It’s like they’re singing just for our bene-
fit,” and Karen did not disagree with such a notion.
Will Bird could be a terribly charming fellow and he
had a smile like beauty itself with his nice white teeth
set in his weather-darkened face. Then, too, he had a
pleasant singing voice, something she found out about
the night he brought her the wildflowers.
After it rained and they saw there were no leaks,
he’d said to her, “I’ve come to be awful fond of you,
Karen,” and she knew immediately what he meant
and was tempted to repeat those same words back to
him, but she didn’t because she knew where such
things could and would most likely lead and she just
wasn’t up to paying the price of another broken heart
so soon since her heart hadn’t yet mended all the way
from being broken over Toussaint. And so she’d paid
Will Bird his meager wages and watched him ride off
one purple evening and he looked like something that
artist that came through the area once might paint:
Will’s dark shape and that of his horse against a sor-
rowful but lovely sky.
Now they stood eyeing each other and remember-
ing those times until Karen said, “I’ll get you all some
coffee,” and went in and got it.
“Maybe you ought to ride into town with us,
Karen,” Tall John said as they got prepared to go
with Otis reclining in the back of the hearse.
“I’m not letting some mad Swede run me off my
land.”
“You want Will to stay with you for a while, until
the marshal and Toussaint catch that murdering old
