“Is there a religious congregation around here?” Pritchard finally asked.

“Nearest church is ten miles south, in Mount Ida.”

“C’mon.” Pritchard motioned to the girl. “You’re coming with us.” She dutifully obeyed, as if she had no will of her own. Ditch collected their sundries, and the trio went outside to pack the saddlebags.

Ditch selected the better of the two horses Calverson owned, which wasn’t a particularly good animal, and put the girl up in the saddle.

“I know your face,” Pritchard called out to the trading-post proprietor as he swung into his own saddle, “and I know where you sleep. Bury that dead fool, forget us, and I’ll forget you. If you send a posse after us, once I gun them, I’ll be back to kill you graveyard dead.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” the proprietor said.

“Wish I could say the same.”

Pritchard, Ditch, and the girl crossed the Ouachita River at dusk, over a rickety wooden bridge, and spent the remainder of the night as they did most nights, riding cautiously south. Ditch held the reins of the girl’s horse. She slumped in the saddle, dozing. A little after midnight, they saw the silhouettes of rooftops ahead and knew they’d reached Mount Ida.

They tied the horses to a tree in a thicket, on a hill overlooking the town, and settled in to a fireless camp.

Pritchard carried the girl from her saddle while Ditch laid out the blankets. He gently placed her in the makeshift bed. She was fast asleep.

“I reckon a person can experience something so hard on ’em,” Ditch remarked, “it takes all their words clean away.”

“I reckon so,” Pritchard said, covering her up.

“Something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Ditch said.

“Go ahead.”

“Do you think it’s changing us?”

“Is what changing us?”

“The killing,” Ditch said. “You’ve put down seven men to my one, and truth be told, you finished off the only one I shot. Don’t take offense, but it seems to me killing’s getting easier for you.”

“That’s because it is,” Pritchard said. He sat down and put his back against a tree. Ditch retrieved the bottle of whiskey from the saddlebags and sat cross-legged opposite him.

“Does it feel wrong to you?” Ditch asked. He uncorked the bottle. “Don’t get me wrong; I don’t regret what we’ve done. Everybody we did in had it comin’. But when I think about it, sometimes, it sorta feels wrong.”

“Killing ain’t about right or wrong,” Pritchard said. “It’s about them or us.”

“I ain’t so sure,” Ditch said. “It wasn’t them or us back at that trading post. We could have bought our sundries and left. We didn’t have to involve ourselves in Calverson’s business with that girl, but we did.”

“You mean, I did,” Pritchard said.