lowed only thin blades of light to cut through the nar-
row spaces of the poor nailed boards. The place had
been waiting to be sold ever since the killings of
Skinny Dick and his whore, Mistress Sheba. It hadn’t
been much of a draw to begin with, and after the
killings there was nobody to buy it and start over. Spi-
ders had been busy, the rats, too, looking at the tracks
and droppings in the dust atop the bar.
William Sunday coughed and it hurt some.
“Pick your spot,” Jake said.
The gunfighter looked around, saw a table and
three chairs around it along one wall just opposite the
front doors and went and sat in one of the chairs so he
had a good view of anyone coming in, but sat enough
in the shadows that whoever came in wouldn’t see
him immediately.
“I don’t suppose this old drinking house has a
drink in it?”
Jake shook his head.
“It got pilfered pretty good of any liquor once
word got around Skinny Dick wasn’t guarding it any-
more with a gun.”
The regulator clock above the bar had stopped
due to no one to wind it. Its black hands stood
frozen at two-thirty.
“Quiet in here,” William Sunday said.
Jake stood waiting.
“If you would be so kind as to get this started,
Marshal, I’d appreciate it. I doubt my respite from the
pain is going to last very much longer.”
“You sure this is how you want it? No doubts?”
The gunfighter nodded as he took out his pocket
pistols and set them on the table in front of him. He
took also a thick cigar and lighted it before blowing a
stream of smoke.
“This is how I want it. My death, my terms.”
Jake approached him, extended his hand, and said,
“Good luck to you, then.”
“Let’s hope those boys are all good shots, for I
know I am.”
Jake turned and walked out the front doors, left
them standing open like an invitation. The light fell in
through them about as wide as a man’s body and lay
there on the dusty floor and William Sunday watched
it knowing it would move an inch at a time either far-
ther into the room or in retreat, depending on the way
the world was turning.
The gunman sat and smoked and waited.
31
Big Belly rode into Sweet Sorrow as if he’d just
bought the place. Hardly anyone on the streets paid
him any attention. A few dogs came out and barked,
then got distracted and went off barking at something
else that interested them. Some kids played with a
metal hoop, pushing it along with a stick. A man in
an apron stood outside a store sweeping the walk.
He rode past a storefront that had boxes in the
window that white men buried their dead in, and past
another store that had little hats with feathers in the
window. He rode past a corral that had a few horses
in it and a man beating hell out of a horseshoe with a
hammer that rang so sharply it hurt Big Belly’s ears.
White men were the noisiest bastards ever was.
He saw a place where he knew white men drank,
for there were several of them standing out front with
glasses of beer in their hands, the hats on their heads
cockeyed, talking to one another in loud voices. He
decided to pass it up, see if there was another place
less crowded he might slip in unnoticed and get him-
self a drink. A block up the street he saw just such a
place, its doors flung wide and nobody standing out
front. He reined in, dismounted, and tied up his three
horses. Took one of the pistols out of the saddle bags
to use for barter and stuck it in his pants, then tried to
walk like he wasn’t an Indian, a Comanche Indian,
but there was only so much he could do with those
banty bowlegs of his.
Inside it was dark and dusty and not a single soul
in sight.
William Sunday had his pistol aimed at the stranger
waiting to see what his play was. Watched him as he
walked bowlegged up to the bar and stood there. Son
of a bitch must have been sitting horses since he was a
baby to be that bowlegged.
Big Belly stood there waiting for someone to come
and ask him what he wanted. He eased out the pistol
and laid it atop the bar and waited some more, and
when no one came, he slapped a palm on the bar rais-
ing a small cloud of dust that got in his nostrils and
caused him to sneeze.
“Hi-ya!” he called. “Wiss-key!” one of the few
English words he knew.
It sounded like half grunt and half sneeze and the
gunfighter was prepared to drop him where he
stood.
“Wiss-key!” he yelled again.
Sunday eased off the trigger; this man wasn’t there
to kill him, but get a drink. Couldn’t he see the damn
