Grat was with the greyhound hunting a small pocket mirror he’d dropped, when the dog lifted her head and whined. Grat stood and brushed the snow from his knees and heard the creak of a wagon and the cough and rasp of too many horses; and he backed up to the tent as the dog glanced over her shoulder, then back to whatever was down there. Hair stood up on her back as she growled. Grat tied his clothes inside a shirt and shoved what food he had in the pockets and sleeves of the mackinaw, and the dog was barking loudly as he grabbed his canteen and rifle and hurdled over scrub brush and snowcapped tree stumps into a drifted gulley. He heard the greyhound say everything over again to the horses, and he lay on his belly in snow that had yellow grass poking through it. Aspens rattled in the wind; a bird folded its wings and sailed out of the blue sky into the green of the pines. My brother saw the veined legs of roan quarter horses, then heard the springs of a wagon and more horses scrabbling up the stones of the hill.

The dog was talking to them from the white ashes of the fire. Riley Dean was bound and gagged in the wagon. Soon a deputy sheriff and six other men in derby hats stood around the tent with shotguns and rifles carried in two hands like they were abnormally heavy. The sheriff yelled, “We’ve got you covered, Dalton. Come out of there with your hands up.”

Grat sat deep in the snow, roofed by a spread oak, and saw the possemen in their dark suits and fur coats and trousers tucked into Wellington boots. A mustached boy with a long muffler let his shotgun blast the canvas flap and then another gun went off and then all of them were firing. The tent pegs broke and the pelted canvas flapped and gunsmoke reached into the trees. It was loud and then it was quiet and Grat slid down the mountain shale dragging his stuff through the snow. The dog chased after Grat, and a deputy in a string tie stood on the brink of a cliff firing down at the dog and the snatches of mackinaw coat that he saw. Grat crashed through snow-heavy bramble and dodged between trees and after he sloshed across a flashing stream he sat against the mud bank and looked up. Aspen leaves were curling with the smoke and the posse was shooting every which way. Then they must’ve lost heart because the shooting stopped and Grat never saw the posse again.

The dog limped to the other side of the stream. Her front right paw had been destroyed by a bullet. Blood had splashed up on the dog’s face.

“You stay there, you hear? Don’t follow me. Stay.”