Then we went south in buffalo grass that was high as our flashing spurs, seeing six horses in the sod house corral, seeing Eugenia Moore hang clothes on a line, snapping them out of a bushel basket. Next to the sod house was a schooner with the white tarp off its ribs and a black man caking grease on the front axle and sliding on a spoked wheel. Amos Burton said something over his shoulder about the approaching riders and Eugenia turned and waved.

My brother Bob yawed his horse to meet her; Grat and I stayed in a walk with Broadwell and Powers as they talked animatedly about hopping a freight train to New York afterwards so they could eat prime ribs at Delmonico’s and attend the Wintergarden Theater with consorts. I said, “Maybe I’ll just join you boys instead of traipsing off to South America. I’ve always hankered to be a city slicker and I think you ought to travel to somewheres really eye-opening when you come into a ton of money.”

“Yep,” said Grat, who hadn’t a single plan beyond perpetual drunkenness. “Kind of gives you ants in your pants, don’t it?”

I don’t remember much about that last week in the sod house, only the blankets strung up between the bunks and the whisper of a man and woman behind them and Broadwell walking around like a circus clown, lifting off his tall hat to show his cat Turtle underneath it on his head. I spent mornings in the sun combing out a brood mare’s tail and I watched the white clouds castle in the blue and I lay by a cooking fire at night with an oil can and cotton rags and a handkerchief spread on the red dirt, disassembling a nickel-plated pistol while that shipment of government issue rifles arrived in Coffeyville, Kansas. They were stored in the Isham Brothers and Mansur store which commanded a view of the plaza, and for two days in October too many men spent time at the bins and crates and nail kegs, waiting on us, so that by the 5th there wasn’t much worry anymore and City Marshal Connelly would leave his gun in the middle drawer of his desk as he took his morning walk.