He said, “I guess most folks would shoot a little higher for the stars, Emmett, but each to his own vista I always say.” He slumped back on the bed. “But let me tell you about our next job. I’ve been thinking that banks are where the money is.”

“I’ve got wax in my ears,” I said.

“My! You’re already churned and clabbered on the issue, aren’t you?”

“Yep. You’re talking to yellow headcheese. You ain’t gonna get me theoretical about banks, Bob. I’m just gonna sit here and stink.”

“Dear me, I went and did it, didn’t I? I got you in a snit. I better hide before you start chucking pillows.” He got off the bed and walked barefoot to the front room where he bummed a cigarette from the owner he’d tied to a chair.

We stayed in Coffeyville two nights, which was stupid, because somehow word got out that the Dalton gang was headed south from there and a posse of thirty men piled out of wagons for an ambush at the Caney River crossing. They dunked handkerchiefs in kerosene and wiped their skin to keep mosquitoes and chiggers away; then they squatted in high weeds and sweated and itched in their coats, or they sloshed through the river in high rubber boots to sit under the bridge, waving their hats at gnat swarms, staring up at the rotting, moss-green, overhead boards.

They would’ve had us for sure except they’d tried to recruit Julia’s older brother Garrett and he talked about the ambush at supper that night. She excused herself from the table and dressed in Garrett’s overalls and a blue denim jacket. She rolled up the cuffs and snuck out of the house to saddle a gray mustang that she galloped along the hard, moonlit road in the direction of her intuition. I recall that we heard hoofbeats like the wooden block noise they use in radio plays, and the gang trotted our horses into the dark of blackjack trees and sat there with hands on our holstered pistols.

I recognized Texas Johnson’s mustang, then Julia, and she cut from gallop to stop when she saw me ride out of the trees. “Emmett, thank goodness I found you,” she said. Her horse nodded with his exertions and pranced around in a circle and I grabbed ahold of his bridle and walked my horse alongside as she warned me about the posse at the Caney ford.

I saw Bob and the others sitting on their horses in the trees. Newcomb lit a cigarette. I said, “It was brave of you to interfere.”