“Nobody knows you’re involved,” Pritchard told him. “You already saved my life tonight, twice. I’ll never forget it, or how you helped me bury Pa. There isn’t any reason for you to get mixed up in what I’ve got to do, and no point in both of us catching a ball. You’d best get home and check on your own father.”

Ditch recognized the logic in his friend’s words. With his mother long dead and his only brother off fighting the war, there was only Ditch and his pa, and the meager horse ranch they operated. The boys hadn’t heard any more gunshots or seen any more smoke on the horizon, but Ditch had been worried all night that raiders might have visited his home, too.

The two friends shook hands. Ditch grabbed his rifle and departed on foot, through the woods, back to his place. Pritchard steered the horses to Atherton, only a few miles away.

While Pritchard held his sobbing mother and sister, Marshal Stacy, Sheriff Foster, and several deputies examined the carcasses slung over the saddle.

“It’s Bob Toole,” the marshal said, after lifting the head of one of the bodies. “He’s been stabbed. One of his hands has been cut off.”

“Who’s the other?” the sheriff demanded.

“One of your deputies. Glenn Bedgley. He’s been shot and gutted like a hog.”

“You son of a bitch,” Sheriff Foster said, moving toward Pritchard.

Pritchard pushed his mother and sister aside and drew both revolvers. He pointed one at Shipley, standing above him on the hotel stoop, and the other at the approaching sheriff. All the deputies and marshals drew their own pistols and aimed them at him.

“You murdered a deputy sheriff,” Foster said, still approaching Pritchard. “Drop them guns. You’re under arrest.”

“These men killed my pa,” Pritchard said, “and torched my home. I caught them red-handed. They got what was coming to them. You take one more step, Sheriff, and you’ll get yours. Your boss Shipley, too.”

“I’ve got a dozen guns on you, boy,” Sheriff Foster said, but he stopped advancing. “You’ve got no chance. This is the last time I’ll tell you. Drop them pistols.”

“These men murdered my father on Shipley’s orders.”

“That’s your story,” he said. “For all we know, you murdered them yourself.”

“If I did, would I dress them up in reb gray and freight them back into town?”

“Stand by to fire,” Foster said to the deputies and marshals, “on my signal.”

“Go ahead and tell ’em to shoot,” Pritchard said, raising the pistol pointed at Foster’s chest up to his face. “But you’ll never hear the shots. You’ll be smokin’ in hell before I will.”

“No!” Dovie shouted, and ran to stand between her son and the lawmen’s guns. “I won’t let you kill him!”

“Get clear, Mrs. Pritchard,” Sheriff Foster said.