If ever imminent death could be captured and held within the glint in a man’s gaze, Ditch thought, Samuel Pritchard, now Joe Atherton, was that man. He realized, with some alarm, that Pritchard hadn’t displayed the lethal glare when he was carving up Glenn Bedgley for killing his pa. Pritchard’s shadow, as he’d come to think of it, had shown itself only since he’d emerged from the grave.

Ditch wasn’t a particularly religious sort, nor superstitious, but he couldn’t help thinking his friend Samuel, whom he’d known as a friend and brother his entire life, had changed. It was as if he’d brought something back with him when he returned from the dead. Whatever it was, it was now on display for all to see.

“Don’t,” Ditch cautioned Pritchard. “Let it go.”

“I’ll not be grained like a horse,” Pritchard said, his voice monotone, “nor whipped like a dog.”

“I decide,” the sergeant smirked, “who gets a taste of my lash. And, boy, you’ve earned one.”

The sergeant cracked the whip, aiming for Pritchard’s face. Had the metal tip struck its intended target, he would have lost an eye.

Moving faster than Ditch thought he could, Pritchard snatched the tail of the whip. With one powerful jerk of his massive shoulders, he pulled the startled, and now off-balance, sergeant stumbling toward him. Then he threw as hard a right as he’d ever thrown. Pritchard’s huge fist struck the noncommissioned officer squarely in the center of his face.

The sergeant’s head snapped violently back. He flew rearward, instantly unconscious. On the way to the ground his head struck the iron cauldron, resulting in a sharp crunching sound. Once down, he began to convulse.

As the sergeant jerked and trembled, and blood trickled from his ears and nose, he emitted a gurgling, coughing noise from deep within his throat. Ditch had heard the sound once before.

Pritchard tossed the bullwhip away. No one else moved, or said anything, until a corporal knelt and examined the sergeant.

“He’s in a bad way,” the corporal announced.

“Sarge is dying,” a soldier exclaimed. “He’s done for, sure as hell. That sound he’s making? That’s the death rattle.” Others murmured their assent. They’d heard it before, too.

“I warned him,” Pritchard said.

“You son of a bitch,” exclaimed another soldier, turning on Pritchard. He drew a revolver from a flap holster, cocked it, and was leveling the weapon to fire when Ditch seized the pan of boiling coffee from the stove and hurled it into the gunman’s face.