It seemed a long night as I alternated between the Pillow of Jealousy and the Pillow of Guilt—the latter because I had not been able to summon up the moral courage to go tell Mesty-Woolah that perhaps he ought to skip his prayers, for once. I reminded myself over and over again that he was a deadly killer: I myself had seen him kill two men, one of them a friend—but that didn’t soften the Pillow of Guilt.

Cecily Snow did not return that night. Once it was light enough to see, I got up and looked, and the corral where her thoroughbred was kept was empty.

Then I got back in bed—it was not yet sunup.

It occurred to me that perhaps the two of them had simply eloped: romance might have triumphed over murder.

That theory was soon disproved. The sun rose; Mesty-Woolah came out and sang a few syllables of his prayer, and two shots rang out from the vicinity of the barn.

That there were only two struck me as odd—Billy would never stop with two if he could shoot five or six times. But of course it was an English sporting weapon; it would hold only two shots.

After a time I got out of bed and went out on my balcony. I could see across the east wing of the house to Mesty-Woolah’s prayer platform, on which he was stretched out facedown, apparently dead.

Most of the cowboys had left with Isinglass; only three wranglers were there. Later, all three of them climbed up in the tower and confirmed that Mesty-Woolah was dead. Being lazy, they simply rolled his body off the porch and let it fall. Shortly after that, two of the wranglers fired several shots at one another in a dispute over who would dig the grave—of course, it would have to be a long grave, and none of them was eager to undertake it. Despite emptying at least two guns in the dispute, no one was hurt, and a skinny wrangler named Pedro spent the rest of the morning with shovel and pickax, digging the grave.

I was beginning to feel very depressed. Mahmood crept in with my breakfast. I dabbled at the porridge and left the rest. I could think of no reason to live, although I had no immediate or firm plans to die.

At eleven Bertram wobbled in, carrying a small silver tray as if it were an anvil. Though it was only a silver tray, it seemed almost more than he could manage—though in fairness I should admit that the note which lay on the tray was written on very heavy paper. Lady Snow skimped on nothing.

The note itself was characteristically crisp: