“Any stars in the bunch?”

Tackett ignored the question and said, “Afterwards Emmett and I would drink sherry and I’d work at convincing him about what a million-dollar idea it was. I’d say, ‘Do you know how much money there is in these Westerns? Do you have even an inkling of how America craves stories like yours? You’re going to be a rich man, Emmett.’ ”

“And he was right, wasn’t he,” said Macdonald.

I didn’t answer, but Tackett winked and said, “I always was pretty savvy that way; just like his brother Bob.”

That afternoon we were on tour. My wife and I sat in the back seat of Tackett’s green La Salle and Macdonald sat in the front with a note pad, recording whatever was said as we rode slowly down the streets of a town that had radio shops and grocery stores and Tackett’s two movie theaters where once there were houses and vegetable patches. A mailman walked down the street and mailboxes clinked. Boys swerved down a sidewalk on bicycles with balloons in the spokes. A woman rocked on the porch of her house, flapping her apron dry; a man stood in his yard with a garden hose, water trickling off the nozzle onto his shoes. Every once in a while someone would wave at Tackett’s automobile and he’d acknowledge by lifting a finger off the steering wheel. He said, “This is the way they rode into town that morning, right in on Eighth Street.” Macdonald said, “I see.”

Tackett said, “Along about here is where they found Dick Broadwell dead. His horse was standing over him and it reared up whenever anybody got close. I guess they couldn’t pull the corpse away for a long time.”

Macdonald turned in his seat to see me. “Is that true?”

“I really can’t say. I was sort of distracted that morning.”

Tackett continued, “Then on Saturday Dick Broadwell’s kin came down from Hutchinson, Kansas, and demanded his remains, his horse, and the $92.40 the sheriff discovered in his braid wallet. That’s why there’s just the three men buried there now. Nobody ever came for Bill Powers. Name was probably an alias.” Tackett looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Maybe we could show him the grave.”