toward the direction the marshal had pointed out.
Zane wanted to finish it and get gone from his broth-
ers once they collected the reward money. He was
hearing voices in his head, figured it was God talking
to him, maybe angels, maybe the devil hisself. He
wanted to finish things up and go somewhere alone
and get the yoke of his sins from around his neck and
settle into a righteous life. He never again wanted to
do what they done to that woman, and he was sure
they would do the same thing again sooner or later.
The voices told him to go get that son of a bitch
William Sunday and kill him, mostly for what he did
by shooting that boy off a fence, but some for that re-
ward money, too.
“Look at that little cocker,” Zeb said of his kid
brother.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Zack said. “He’s
acting peculiar.”
“Maybe that thing with that woman took all the
shy out of him and finally made him into a real man.”
“Well, we better catch up or he’s liable to go in and
kill old Bill Sunday by his lonesome and try and claim
that reward money for himself.”
“Shit, that’ll be the day,” Zeb said as they hurried
off after their sibling.
Big Belly stood frozen. He could see a man sitting in
the shadows with just enough light on him to know
he was aiming his pistol at him.
“I just come in for a damn drink. I didn’t come in
to scalp nobody or fuck no white woman or nothing
like that,” he said in Comanche. “I sure wish you
don’t shoot me.”
William Sunday listened to the man speaking gib-
berish, clipping off the end of his words in whatever
tongue he was talking in. He guessed him for some
sort of half-breed.
“Step away from the gun on that bar,” he said.
Big Belly didn’t know what the man was saying.
He did not move.
“I said step away from that gun,” William Sunday
repeated. Still the fellow did not move.
Then there was a sound from the back. The rear
door opened into the room.
Jake standing there, saw the situation immediately.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Damned if I know,” Sunday said. “But he took
his gun out and put it on the bar.”
Jake held one of the Schofields in his right hand.
“What’s your name, mister?”
Shit, Big Belly thought: now there are two of them
and they both got guns.
“Wiss-key!” he said.
“Whiskey?”
Big Belly nodded vigorously.
“Get the hell out of here,” Jake ordered.
Big Belly didn’t move. He didn’t know what they
were saying but he was afraid if he made a move,
they’d shoot him. White men were that way; they’d
shoot you over nothing. He’d seen it down in Texas
with them Rangers and other white men, too.
“Wiss-key,” he said again. He was damn thirsty.
*
*
*
“Hey,” Zeb said, stopping short of the sidewalk.
“What?” Zack said.
“Those are our guddamn horses.”
All three stopped and saw that he was right. The
horses tied out front of the saloon were theirs.
“Son of a bitch,” Zane said. “They sure are.”
“Looks like we got lucky. Got us two birds inside
need killing.”
They drew their pistols.
“How we gone do this?” Zack asked.
“Just go in and shoot everybody inside. Don’t ask
no fucking questions.”
“Well, what the hell we waiting for,” Zane said,
his head full of voices now telling him do this, do
that. And he stepped quickly through the door, his
brothers right behind him.
Jake was just saying without having taken his gaze
off the Indian, “They’re coming for you, Sunday.”
“Kill that one if he goes for his gun, would you?
I’m going to have my hands full.”
Jake took a step back into the shadows when the
men came through the door.
Zane saw the man at the bar—short little son of a
bitch—and shot him.
Big Belly felt the bullet punch in just above his
navel and it was like that time Cut Nose and him got
into it over a woman one night after they’d been
drinking hard and were tossing bones to see which of
them would get to go into the lodge with Missing His
Moccasins’ woman since the old man couldn’t satisfy
her anymore. When Cut Nose hit him it knocked all
the air out of him, like now. He struggled to keep his
feet but it was like dancing on the wind and instantly
felt his face slamming against the floor.
The other two men came in firing because they
didn’t know why their kid brother had shot or who he
had shot and they weren’t taking any chances.
“I’m over here, you sons a bitches!” William Sun-
day yelled and then shot one of them—the one who
shot the man at the bar, and the bullet knocked him
over a dice table so that the only thing showing of
him once he was down was a boot heel resting on the
edge of the upturned table.
The other two turned quick and fired on him and
he felt the first slug take him high in the shoulder and
another ripping through his knee. Jesus Christ, it hurt
like hell, but he fanned the hammer of his pistol until
it clicked on spent shells, then dropped it and took up
the other one.
Jake stepped out of the shadows and said, “You’re un-
der arrest!” Only he didn’t say it very loud. Then he
shot one of the two men standing and when the other
turned in his direction, William Sunday’s bullets
ripped bloody holes coming out of the front of Zeb
Stone’s shirt and jacket. Zeb Stone had the damnedest
surprised look on his face as he was falling.
The only sound in the yawning silence that came
after the gunfire was moaning.
Jake walked over and kicked the pistols away from
the twitching hands of one of the shooters, and did
the same to another whose hand wasn’t moving at all.
He glanced toward the dice table, the foot sticking
up, and it was obvious that the foot’s owner was
dead. The moaning came from the little man whose
hat had tumbled off letting his long hair spill out.
Jake could see then he was an Indian. The front of his
shirt was dark with wetness, a bloody flower blos-
soming. And each time the man moaned, the blood
oozed out a little more. A man shot thus, through the
gut, was sure to die a painful death. He felt sorry for
the man, but the wound was fatal.
The final bullet from Zack’s gun before he went
down had struck William Sunday almost dead center
and Sunday could feel the struggle going on inside
him. Getting shot so many times without getting
killed instantly was a whole lot worse than he could
have
imagined. His guns empty, he tried the best he
could to reload one of them thinking he’d have to fin-
ish the job himself. But his hands didn’t want to co-
operate and the bullets fell to the floor in a clatter.
It was like all the wires in him had been cut and all
he could do was barely manage to sit upright.
Jake approached him slowly.
“Just my damn luck they couldn’t shoot worth a
shit . . .” Then the shootist coughed and spit a mouth-
ful of blood and Jake knew the bullet had gone
through his lungs.
Each breath carried a bubbling sound.
Jake sat down across from him.
“What’s your medical opinion?” the gunfighter
said.
“I think it won’t be long.”
“How come . . . you . . . got involved in . . . this?”
“I couldn’t do anything legal to them until they did
something,” Jake said. “When they shot the little
man, I had to step in—it was my job.”
“Bull . . . shit.”
“Yeah, maybe, but that’s the way it had to be.”
The gunfighter coughed again. Jake could see the
life going out of him.
“You want me to stretch you out on the floor?”
Sunday shook his head. His fingers reached inside
his coat and tugged at something, then gave up. Jake
did the job for him, took out an envelope.
“Give . . . her that . . .”
Jake said he would and that he’d help her take care
of everything and explain it to her, what had hap-
pened here. But before he could get it all said, he saw
the gunfighter had closed his eyes and wasn’t going to
open them again. He fell face forward onto the table.
“That’s okay, partner, you go ahead and sleep,”
he said. He took the envelope and put it in his
pocket, then stood and returned to the Indian whose
moans had shrunk to a few grunts. He knelt by the
man and looked at him carefully, drawing back his
eyelids to peer at his pupils, try and access how much
longer he had.
Big Belly saw the vague figure of a man looking
at him.
He said, “You come to get me . . . ? I only screwed
her once . . .” He thought it was Missing His Moc-
casins who had appeared above him ready to seek re-
venge for that time he and Cut Nose fought over the
old man’s wife.
Jake didn’t know what he was saying.
“I ain’t sorry I killed no damn Rangers—every one
of them I killed deserved killing. They killed my wife
and family. Shot them all to hell, and all I ever did
was kill a few of them, but not enough to make no
difference.”
The world was tumbling out of order for him and
he couldn’t keep his thoughts on one thing and he was
angry about it. He tried to sit up but couldn’t more
than lift his head before it dropped back again.
“You ought to save your breath, my friend,” Jake
said.
Well, at least they can say I died a successful fellow
before I got rubbed out, Big Belly thought, thinking of
the three horses. How many Comanche these days
could say they owned three good horses they stole off
white men the day they died?
Jake wondered why a dying man would suddenly
smile.
“All you white men can kiss my ass,” Big Belly
said with his final effort.
Jake watched as the Indian took a deep breath,
then another, then tried to take a third before he gave
up. Some died harder than others.
32
Toussaint said, “Were you serious earlier?”
“About what?” Karen said.
“That Swede boy?”
“Yes,” she said. “He needs a family and I need a
son. Don’t seem much point in both of us lacking
what we need when it’s the same thing and doesn’t
have to be that way.”
“Then, let’s go,” Toussaint said.
“No, I can’t leave here. You go and get him and
bring him back.”
He could see the fear coming back into her eyes.
“What are you afraid of?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“You’ll have to get off this place some time or
other. Might as well go in with me and we’ll get the
boy and some supplies.”
He could see her thinking about it, going out and
exposing herself to strangers she knew would be in
town, maybe even the same strangers who had hurt
her. But he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her again
and he knew, even if she didn’t, what was needed.
“You don’t go, I don’t go,” he said. “I can’t leave
you here alone.”
“What if they . . .”
“Nobody’s going to hurt you.” He put his arms
around her and drew her to him and said it again,
whispered it into her hair.
“That Swede boy’s probably as afraid as we are,”
he said softly. “Everybody’s afraid of something,
Karen, but together they can’t touch us.”
He felt her body relax.
“He’ll probably need some clothes,” she said.
“Then we’ll stop at old Otis’s and get him some.”
“Kids like hard candy, too.”
“I remember,” he said. “I ain’t so old I don’t re-
member what kids like.”
It felt like the sweetest thing in the world she could
have done when she kissed him on the cheek.
Toussaint hitched the rented mule to the wagon
and he helped Karen up, then went around and
“You set?” he said.
She nodded.
“We’ll be back here by evening,” he said reassur-
ingly.
“What if he don’t want to come home with us?”
Toussaint looked at her; she was staring straight
ahead, her face taut with worry.
“Why wouldn’t he? Hell, knowing you, he’d have
the run of the place in nothing flat. You’ll probably
spoil him and he’ll grow big and fat as a coon from
your cooking and lazy, too.”
He saw a slight smile playing at the corners of her
mouth.
“Let’s go, you old fool.”
“You know,” he said when they’d gone about a
mile, “we could get that wild-haired preacher to
marry us if we wanted to.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Or, we could just go on like we have been,” he
added.
She knew he said this last to save face. What he
didn’t know was he didn’t have to save face any longer
with her. What he’d done, the gentle way he’d been
with her, had saved her—in her mind—and every anger
and hurt she’d held toward him over the years since
they’d gone their separate ways, she’d forgiven him.
They rode on in silence for another hour. Then she
said, “Why you want to marry me?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he halted the
mule and set the brake with his foot and turned and
looked at her and she look
ed at him. A stiff wind ruf-
fled their hair and clothes. He could smell winter and
she could, too, and they each thought at that same
moment of the coming season with fresh snow deep
on the grasslands and water you’d have to break a
skin of ice to get to and horses with thick coats snort-
ing steam and stamping the ground. And they thought
of smoke rising from a chimney and a fire in the fire-
place throwing off heat and the sound of wood being
split with an ax. They thought of hot cups of coffee
and frosted glass you had to rub a circle in with the
heel of your hand to see through. And they thought of
the warmth of lying in bed together and a little blond-
headed boy running around the house being wild and
busting with energy, asking to be set astride a horse
and taken fishing.
“Hell, I guess I want to marry you for the same
reason you want to marry me,” he said at last.
She nodded.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she said.
He started to take up the reins and release the
brake, then paused and took instead her face into his
large thick hands and brought it close to his own and
kissed her on the mouth and she kissed him back.
Then he just sat there for a time, until she said,
“Well, are we going to just set here?”
He took up the reins and released the brake and
snapped the lines over the rump of the mule and said,
“Step off, mule,” and they started forth again toward
Sweet Sorrow. He didn’t have to say what he was
thinking. She already knew from the look on his face.
Jake crossed the street from the saloon—silent now as
it had been before the gunfight. Inside were five dead
men and the dead didn’t make a hell of a lot of noise
when it came down to it. He went first to Tall John’s.
“I’ve got business for you to handle,” he said.
Tall John said, “I figured when I heard the shoot-
ing.”
Jake went up the street again to the rented house
Clara was living in. He knocked on the door and
waited and when she came and opened it, she read the
look on his face.
“It’s over, isn’t it? He’s dead?”
Jake nodded.
“He didn’t suffer,” he said, knowing that wasn’t
completely true, but what difference would it make to
tell her otherwise.
Her hand came to her mouth to stifle the emotion.
“You were there with him?”
“I was,” Jake said, and reached a hand into his
pocket for the envelope. “He wanted me to give you