as painful as if it had been horse bit. He’d decided af-
ter a cold and miserable night that he wasn’t going to
spend any more cold and miserable nights.
He caught up to her, took hold of her elbow, and
said, “Hello, Clara.”
She had been deep in thought about the events of
her father’s death and it took her a second to even be
aware of who this person was or what it was he
wanted. Then she saw who it was.
“Fallon!”
“That’s right, you remember me, don’t you, old girl,
your loving husband, the father of your children, the
man you left without so much as a goodbye note?”
“Fallon,” she repeated. “Please. Leave us alone.”
“No damn way. You’re coming with me. You and
the girls and we’re all going to be one big happy fam-
ily again.”
“What are you talking about? We were never one
big happy family. You abused me and left us when-
ever you wanted to. No, Fallon, you had your chance.
I’m not going back with you and neither are the
girls.” She tried to pull free of his grip but his good
hand was still strong and he was at least a foot taller
than she.
“I saw you the other night,” he seethed. “Got
yourself another man and you ain’t gone from me
three weeks. What law would blame me for taking
what’s mine and getting revenge on him that tried to
steal it from me . . .”
“Please, let me go!”
She pulled and tugged but he was a big man with a
strong grip.
“I’m warning you, gal. You give me grief, those
darling daughters of ours will have to learn to get
used to a new mother, for I’ll kill you here and now
and I’ll kill your lover, too.”
The mention of her girls took all the struggle out
of her. She would do whatever it took to protect them.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll go with you.”
“Good, that’s the way I like it to be with us: I want
something, you go along with it.”
They walked down into the alley. Then he pressed
himself against her and said, “How about you show-
ing me how much you missed me?” He put his face up
close to hers and she instinctively turned her head to
avoid the taste of his mouth.
“No,” she murmured. “Don’t do this, Fallon.”
He slapped her. Not hard, just hard enough.
“We ain’t going to be about arguing over every lit-
tle thing anymore,” he said. “You understand me?”
She closed her eyes. Felt his hard dry mouth press
against hers.
That’s when a voice said, “Step away from her, you
son of a bitch.”
Toussaint and Karen had just turned onto Main Street
when he saw something up ahead about a block’s dis-
tance that shuddered through his senses. He halted
the wagon.
“What are we stopping in the middle of the street
for?” she said.
“Go see if you can find Jake Horn,” he said.
“And tell him what?”
“Tell him to meet me up in that alley that runs
alongside of the undertaker’s.”
“What’s going on?” she said as she watched him
step down from the wagon, reach under the wagon
seat for the shotgun, and hurry up the street.
Fallon was a seasoned fighter, and as soon as the voice
called a warning to him, he grabbed Clara and put
her between himself and whatever danger had pre-
sented itself. What he saw was a swarthy man stand-
ing at the head of the alley holding a shotgun.
“Go on and get your ass out of here,” he called to the
man. “Unless you want to end up something the dogs
chew on.”
Toussaint saw the situation was a bad one, that the
alley was narrow and there hadn’t been any way just to
sneak up on the man and bash in his brains with the
stock of the shotgun or otherwise cut him down. But if
he hadn’t interceded, who knew what the man was
planning on doing to the woman? He could see that the
arm the man held around the woman was bandaged.
“I’m not leaving here without her,” Toussaint said.
“Shit, you want her, come on and get her, then.”
Fallon was gunman enough to know that beyond
twenty paces you were lucky to hit your target with a
pistol. Whereas a shotgun’s pattern spread out the far-
ther it went. ’Course, he’d have to kill the woman to
get to him if that’s what he wanted and he doubted
the man would do that—kill the woman to get to him.
“You know anything about Indians?” Toussaint
said.
“I know the only good ones are all rotting atop
lodge poles.”
“Yeah, I figured that was what you knew about
them. But there’s something else you should know
about them, too.”
“What the hell would that be?”
“We’re good at waiting. I can stand here all day
