“Not as many words as you have acres,” I pointed out. “My books are only about thirty thousand words long. Sixty-five of them would make about two million one hundred and fifty thousand words. If you have three million acres, then you own an acre for every word I’ve written, with about eight hundred and fifty thousand acres to spare. I’d have to write another several years to match you a word for an acre.”

The old man seemed amused by my arithmetic.

“If I hang you today you’ll never catch up, will you?” he said mischievously. I believed it pleased him to consider that he had accumulated more acres than I had written words.

“Not in this life,” I said.

“No, and this rough old life is the only one we’re sure of, ain’t it?” he said, pitching my wallet back to me. Then he stuffed Orson Oxx back in his saddlebag and stood up.

“I best take you on home,” he said. “Cecily might let me off for killing an acrobat, even if he was from Europe, but if she finds out I hung an author without even bringing him to tea there might be hell to pay. Cecily’s an author too, you see. She writes books about the flowers out here on the prairie.

“Anyway, I’m out of good yarns myself,” he added. “Can you still write them?”

“I suppose I can,” I said. “I worked on one a bit just last week.”

“Here’s my offer,” he said, picking up his saddle. “If you can write yarns that’ll keep me awake long enough to digest my supper I’ll contract not to stretch your neck.”

“That’s gracious of you,” I said.

“No, it ain’t, really,” he said. “I’ve been bothered by severe indigestion lately. I’ve tried pills—now I’ll try yarns. I hope they work.”

“I hope so too,” I said.

PART IV

Winds’ Hill

1.

Isinglass insisted that I drive the wagonful of corpses from Skunkwater Flats to San Jon, a town he had established near the Texas line.

“You haul the bodies,” he said. “That way you won’t be tempted to do nothing impractical and spoil Cecily’s tea.”

The trip took a somber day and a half, the old man plodding ahead of me, sipping from his quart of whiskey, which he replenished about midafternoon from a barrel kept in the wagon.

The Texans, all trailing behind us, looked hopefully at the barrel, but were offered no whiskey.

“A man that allows his hired help to drink is looking for trouble and will soon find it,” he remarked before plodding on across the grassland.