and all night and all the next day if I have to and if you
want out of here, you’re going to have to get past me.”
“You think so, huh?” Fallon had been gauging the
distance between them carefully. The longest kill shot
he’d ever made was maybe thirty feet and had more
luck to it than skill. He figured it was forty at least to
where the Indian stood. But what the hell, that god-
damn Indian wasn’t going to shoot Clara just to kill
him. At least he didn’t think he was. Still, the thought
of getting shotgunned wasn’t a pleasant one. He’d
seen men ripped apart by shotguns; some died in-
stantly, others didn’t, their middles or legs shredded.
He glanced behind him, saw there was an escape
route, and said to Clara, “Don’t pull away from me.
We’re going to back up. If you try and run, I’ll shoot
you and go tell our girls about how you died.”
She felt sick.
He turned his attention again to the man in the
mouth of the alley.
“Hey, Chief,” he said. Then fired and saw the man
stumble backward. “Come on,” he ordered Clara,
tugging her with him toward the rear of the alley.
But just then he felt something press into the back of
his skull. Something hard and cold and small. And he
didn’t have to turn and look to see what it was, be-
cause he heard what it was when the pistol’s hammer
got thumbed back.
“Turn her loose.”
He swallowed hard. Where were all these sons a
bitches who wanted to be heroes coming from?
“I won’t ask again,” the voice said. “You’re an
ounce of pull away from dying.”
He released his grip and she turned on him and spit
in his face as she brought the flat of her hand hard
across his cheek. It sounded like someone snapping a
belt.
“Back away, Clara,” Jake said. “Go see to Tous-
saint.”
She stood there for a short moment, her face
flushed with anger at the threats Fallon had put
against her, her children. The pistol dangled from his
hand and she grabbed for it and when he tried to pull
it from her Jake shot him.
34
In two days time there had been six funerals—four
hasty ones and one of distinction—followed by a
wedding. And the weather had seemed to know which
to present for death and which for the promise of life,
for on the day of their wedding, the sun washed over
Toussaint and Karen, the wound to his upper leg
hardly enough to keep him from the ceremony.
Practically the whole town had shown up for the
wedding, performed by one Reverend Elias Poke. His
missus, Birdy Pride Poke, had offered herself as a
bridesmaid. Karen thought it all a bunch of foolish-
ness that such a fuss was made over something as sim-
ple as pledging to love, honor, and cherish a man she
had known for over twenty years and had already
been married to once before. But Birdy and Elias in-
sisted the couple do it up right, and privately Karen
felt a flood of emotional happiness that anyone would
care so much as to go to all the trouble.
Even Otis Dollar and Martha attended, Otis feel-
ing the need to contribute to the pair’s wedding by
selling Toussaint a nice suit of clothes at cost and on
credit of “. . . say, how would a dollar a week work
for you until it’s paid?” Toussaint wasn’t inclined at
first to become indebted to a man he once considered
a rival, but then Otis extended his hand and said,
“Congratulations, Mr. Trueblood. Karen truly de-
serves a man of your caliber, and no hard feelings, I
hope.”
Jake accompanied Clara Fallon and her two
daughters to the services and the Swede boy, Stephen,
was asked to stand up at the altar with his new folks.
He stood there looking up at them with wonderment.
She seemed to be a nice ma and he a nice pa. They said
they’d teach him to ride horses and give him one of his
own and other things—it all sounded pretty good.
He’d nearly forgotten the sound of gunfire and hear-
ing his father’s voice calling to him in the darkness.
Of course when Toussaint and Karen and the boy
came out of the church folks threw rice at them—
which made Karen blush and Toussaint mutter:
“White folks . . .” then grin.
And someone had tied a string of tin cans to the
back of Toussaint’s wagon so that when they rode off
the cans rattled and clanged together much to the
Swede boy’s delight as he rode in the back of the
wagon.
Jake walked Clara back to her place “I’m sorry I
had to get you involved in all this,” she said.
“Not to fret. I’m sorry I had to . . .” he looked to
the girls, April and May, walking ahead of them. “He
didn’t leave me any choice, you know that.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know.”
“Oh, and one other thing,” Jake said, handing her
a thick fold of papers. “You’ve got a permanent home
