Powers knelt near the fire and shoved a pipe cleaner down his pipe stem. Broadwell lifted back his long top hair and looked at his baldness in the mirror. “Do you think if I cut my hair it would thicken? It does that for grass you know. Only thing I’m afraid of is that I’d be short and sparse at the same time.”

Powers blew air through his pipe stem and screwed it onto the bowl. He said, “The trouble is you’re too brainy, Dick. Your brains cut off the blood supply to your scalp.”

Because I was a mere twenty years old, Eugenia gave me maturity with a dark beard that blew in the wind and showed the linen underneath. The mucilage stuck so hard it burned my skin later when John Kloehr bent over and ripped the mustache off.

She said, “Do you know where I was five years ago, Em? I was in a dinky Missouri town putting makeup on schoolchildren for a play about Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. I was Eugenia Moore, the schoolmarm, and I was convinced the rest of my life would be no more exciting than a Sunday piano recital.”

I said, “This is kind of a change of speed for you then, isn’t it. You’ll knock on the pearly gates a dang, contented woman.”

She finished with my disguise and I stirred the fire out with a stick and poured coffee onto the hissing coals. Last night’s eggshells were scattered on the ground. Bob stood at his saddlebags and put an oil can and a pair of gentleman’s gloves into the pockets of his black suit coat. He wore a six-button vest and a blue wool lumberjack shirt and a tall, bell-crowned hat that was duplicated by William S. Hart in his movies. I could’ve been my brother’s twin that day because I dressed exactly as he did except for a white shirt with a celluloid collar and a fantastic wide tie that resembled blue-veined marble. Grat had the stain of chewing tobacco on his chin as he surveyed me. “You gonna curtsy to the queen?”

My horse was a fifteen-hand roan-colored stallion with orange mane and tail, called Red Buck. He nickered when I walked over and fed him a ration of oats in a canvas sack with leather ties sewed into it. Then I slapped the feed sack clean and folded it up under my vest and Broadwell asked, “Are we ready?” and I climbed up into the saddle.

Bob sat on his dapple-gray gelding with a toothbrush in his hand, rinsing baking soda out of his mouth with night-cold canteen water. In his black holster he had a .45 caliber pearl-handled Colt with floral engravings on a blue metal frame. Snug under his vest in a left shoulder sling was a small .38 caliber Brisley Bulldog. They’re now in museum display.