Short said, “I’m pretty woozy,” and sat himself down on the board floor. Then he leaned on his elbow and sagged against the trunk. He shut his eyes. “Have you ever rode a horse hard for two days without sleep and laid yourself down on a feather bed?”

When the train stopped in Waukomis he was dead.

10

THAT SUMMER GRATTAN DALTON spent in a California jail. Railroad detective Will Smith came by his cell in middle May with an Oklahoma paper. He put on spectacles and read aloud the accounts of the Wharton train robbery. The coward Ransom Payne was one of the quoted witnesses. Smith folded his spectacles up and said, “I’ve been puzzling it in my mind but I can’t figure out why your brothers would do such a thing when you got a jury trial coming up. Seems to me that might prejudice the court just a little.”

Grat lay on his mattress with his hands behind his head. He said, “Maybe there wasn’t nothing better to do. Maybe choir practice was canceled.”

Smith walked six cells down to where Bill Dalton was reading a law book, his finger moving under the words. Smith inquired about Bill’s family and his upcoming trial but my brother started reciting aloud from the text until the detective left.

Bill had so many friends in the county it seemed unlikely to the prosecution that they’d convict him for anything, so they let him out after the arraignment. It was not so with Grat. His trial for “assault to commit robbery” at Alila was held in the Tulare County courthouse in Visalia on June 18, 1891. His attorney, Breckinridge, walked into the courtroom reading his law clerk’s brief for the first time. He shook hands with the prosecution and several Southern Pacific executives in the gallery, whispering something and laughing longer than they did. He sat down next to Grat, smelling of witch hazel. Grat’s hair was shaved off because of lice in the jail pillows. His ears stuck out; his face was pale. He wore a white shirt that was too big for him and a tie he’d already unknotted.

“Are you nervous at all?” Breckinridge asked.

“I learned the tiniest bit about the law from being a marshal in the Oklahoma Territory and I know for a fact you can’t convict an accessory unless you’ve got one of the supposed principals arrested. I don’t see how this trial can last longer than afternoon.”

“Stranger things have happened,” said Breckinridge, and he unfastened the clasps on his briefcase.