Sam Toe was picking the feet of a horse when Jake
arrived.
“Got that gelding saddled?”
“Inside the stable,” Sam Toe said, pointing with
his hoof knife.
The Stone brothers stopped a block short of the stables.
“Now what?” Zack said. “Look’s like he’s getting
ready to ride out.”
“What’d you do with them damn horses we stole
off that woman?” Zeb said.
Zack shrugged. Both he and Zeb looked at Zane.
“I put them in that corral.”
They saw the lawman ride out leading the stolen
horses.
“Where the hell’s he headed now?” Zeb said, his
voice a whine of irritation.
They watched him ride off onto the grasslands.
“Shit fire!” Zack said. “He’s got to know they
been stole and is taking them back to that woman.”
“We should have just gone on and killed her.”
They again turned their attention to the youngest
brother.
“See what you did now?”
“Oh go to hell,” Zane said. “He may know they’re
stolen but he don’t know who stole ’em.”
“He will soon enough,” Zack said. “Then he’ll
come back here looking for us.”
“Since when has you sons of bitches been afraid of
anybody?” Zane asked.
“Shit, since never,” Zeb said. “Who gives a fuck
what she tells him. We find that Sunday, we’ll kill him
and get in the wind. And if we don’t find him before
that marshal gets back, well, it’s his poor luck, cause
we’ll kill him, too.”
Jake was hoping the men would follow him, but when
he got a mile out he stopped and waited and when
they didn’t come, he circled back. Those bounty
hunters would find William Sunday as easy as a fox
finds chickens; it was just a matter of time.
William Sunday stood in the parlor of the big
house waiting for the marshal to return. He was
dressed in his best suit, one he’d purchased for just
this occasion. He looked at the fine woodwork of the
house. It was a good house. Clara would enjoy living
in it. He noticed, too, that the pain in him wasn’t so
bad even though he hadn’t taken a drop of laudanum
in the last hour. He’d heard that when a man’s time
gets very close all the pain and suffering go out of
him, he becomes at peace.
An old lawman turned gambler he once knew in
Hays told him on his deathbed: “Bill, whatever it is
killing me don’t hurt no more. I don’t know why it
don’t hurt, it just don’t. If this is anything like what
death feels like, then I’m ready for it,” and closed his
eyes almost as soon as he said it and went into that
long forever sleep.
William Sunday had never given much thought to
God and the afterlife until lately. Seemed strange for a
man to live so short a time then die and be forgotten
as though he’d never lived at all. None of it made any
sense. But then, the opposite argument never carried
much weight with him, either. He recalled saying one
night as the laudanum started to carry him to that
strange place how he’d like to believe—talking to
himself aloud—but that unless he heard a voice
speaking to him that very moment, how the hell was
he supposed to believe in the ghostly world? He heard
no voice.
He thought of it—dying—as about like stepping
through a door and finding nothing on the other side
except space and darkness awaiting him.
I never been afraid of nothing, till now.
He heard the turn of a doorknob coming from the
back. Slipped out his pistols wishing it could have
ended the way he wanted. Stood there waiting, waiting.
Jake called out to him.
“It’s just me.”
He eased the guns back into their pockets, grateful
it would end the way he’d planned it instead of on
someone else’s terms.
“Thought you had to be someplace and weren’t
coming back until tonight like we agreed.”
“Plans have changed. I was hoping to lead those
bounty hunters on a chase, shake them once we got
far enough out of Sweet Sorrow. Thing is, they didn’t
take the bait. They’re still in town and I’m guessing
looking hard for you this very moment.”
“Then let’s let them find me.”
“You still want to go through with it?”
“I don’t see any other way. It’s them or this thing
eating my insides.”
“Okay, then. You set?”
“Ready as I’m ever going to be.”
“Let’s go out the back.”
“Lead the way.”
Skinny Dick’s defunct saloon was as stonily silent as a
graveyard. A skin of dust lay everywhere, collected
from the months of disuse; its boarded windows al-
