For an hour on the evening of September 15, 1891, seven men in black raincoats sat with their horses under cottonwood trees across from the depot in Leliaetta. Three of them smoked cigarettes; Broadwell sat on a tree stump cleaning the glass lenses of his dust goggles with the blue bandana he’d wear. I hunched up on my saddle cantle with my ankles crossed over the horn, tapping tobacco into paper. The horses shook their reins and pulled what green weeds they could; then they just stood there with the dumb-animal stares, sliding their jaws, tails whisking from side to side. Powers leaned forward with his calabash pipe to squint down the railroad tracks; then he and Bob chucked their horses and skidded them down to the siding where a black man and woman were walking on the cinders with a pail.

They both wore shawls on their heads and the woman’s right eye was milky with a cataract. The old man stayed two feet behind the woman, touching her coat with his hand.

Bob kept under his coat collar; Powers tipped his hat to the lady. “Lookin’ for something?”

She gripped the pail with both hands. The old man slowly looked up. He wore glasses but one of the lenses was gone. She said, “This old man and me, we tryin’ to find a little stray coal to warm the shanty up. We be camped over yonder by the sidin’ and the hawk been talkin’ awful bad. Get measly cold in the night.”

The old man asked, “You gentlemen be wantin’ a man for a job of woik?”

“Nothing you could handle,” said Powers. “But you go on up the track to the gantlet and see if you don’t find some coal after the express goes through.”

After they’d gone, Bob said, “You did good, Bill.”

“Thankee.”

I licked a cigarette paper and twisted it tight and struck a match off my stirrup. The old woman stared at the red of my cigarette in the dark as they walked along the tracks. Broadwell lifted his saddletree to ventilate his horse, then tightened the cinch again. Newcomb climbed off his horse, complaining. “What’s he doin’, talkin’ to niggers?” He spread a big raincoat that was long as his heels and unbuttoned his pants and leaned his hand against a box elder. Our saddle leather creaked. Somewhere in the dark town a dog barked. Doolin said, “My back hurts.” My brother and Powers stayed down at the siding. The cinders crunched as the horses picked their shoes up and put them down again. I watched the depot where a man had been bent over a desk all night, turning the pages of a book and penciling in all the closed letters, every a, e, g, o, b, d, q, and p.