I guess Bob then went to the city marshal’s office where he reviewed the conviction record of Charles Montgomery, and instead of riding on to the Indian Territory, as he’d planned, he returned to the Dalton farm where he harnessed a dark brown team to a gray board-wagon and drove them to a ditch of sunflowers beside the Santa Fe Railroad tracks.

Bob loaded his rifle and crept across the Seymour backyard to squat in the empty chicken coop and stare at the barn and empty house. Sparrows had their nests in the coop and they chased and screeched a while. Snow began to fall and the temperature dropped to ten degrees, but Bob just huddled down in his mackinaw with the rifle cradled warm inside his coat and the barrel against his cheek. It was eleven o’clock at night and the ground was thick with snow when Montgomery pounded out of the Seymour house with dresses draped over his shoulder and two pair of ladies’ shoes in his hand. When he was inside the barn he shouted to someone, “Look what I got for you.”

Then he came out of the barn and swung a working saddle up to the top board of the fence. He went inside and brought out another saddle by the horn and Minnie Johnson stood in the doorway in Mrs. Seymour’s shawl and watched Montgomery tug over a horse by its rope bridle. They spoke to each other and she shivered and went inside.

Bob told me this years later when we were on the porch stoop at Hennessey and Eugenia Moore was in the kitchen with a creaky ironing board. He said he had cocked his rifle four hours before so he did not do that then. He stood up and slowly pressed open the chicken coop’s wire mesh door. He stood still a minute, then walked toward the barn. The falling snow was a grainy sound in the trees; otherwise it was silent night.