Kloehr saw Grat stop next to the dying city marshal and drop a hand with a pistol close to Connelly’s head like he was going to put him out of his misery. Kloehr shouted, “You there!” and my brother turned and Kloehr shot him in the throat. Grat’s hands went up like he’d swallowed a fishbone. He keeled backwards over the marshal and his head bounced when he slammed to the ground. His mouth and eyes were open when he died.

Men in white shirts and suspendered black trousers stood in the plaza and in the north alley by the Wells Brothers’ store. Kloehr couldn’t find me. Carey Seaman used up two shotgun shells on the heads of two of our standing horses to prevent a getaway. Blood splattered Red Buck, my horse, and he screamed and plunged and I had to grab him by the bit ring to unfasten his reins from the tie-up.

I saw my brother Bob sag back on the rock curbs and stare at his rifle and grope at the rocks to stand up. I saw his face when the pain climbed. Bob saw the sun flash silver off Kloehr’s fancy trigger housing but he couldn’t convince his arms to raise his own rifle up and his shot at the liveryman only ripped weeds. He staggered forward and slid against the north wall of the jail, a kite’s tail of blood on the stone, until he stumbled into the adjoining ramshackle barn and collided with its west wall. Kloehr had a pirate’s eye to his rifle sight. Bob fired but the slug only split a rotting board of the stables. Bob fired again and the grass made a spitting noise.

Kloehr saw a twenty-two-year-old desperado with sweat on his face and his shirttail out, sagged against a barn wall. The gunpowder was black on his hands and neck. Kloehr fired a cut bullet into the middle of Bob’s dark vest at the sternum. It exploded his chest and hurled him back against a pile of farm implements. Sunlight came through the barn roof and striped him. My brother opened his eyes and lay there and got up on one elbow. He heaved strings and clots of blood onto the straw and he puked again until he was empty and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He saw men talking to each other on Eighth Street but they weren’t coming any closer.