Montgomery was reaching under the belly of the horse to bring the cinch through the brass loop. Bob brought his rifle up and stood twenty yards away as Montgomery lifted up hard on the cinch strap. Minnie came out with one of Montgomery’s coats and a carpetbag. She saw Bob and it so shocked her she couldn’t say a thing. Montgomery turned his head just a little and there was gunpowder noise and a rifle bullet ripped into his neck, splitting his throat like a swamp root. He smacked against the saddle and the horse changed its hooves; he lifted a yellow-gloved hand to his neck, his mouth open like he was yelling or had just burst through the surface after touching the mud in a deep lake. He pawed for balance on the horse but it reared away and yanked the reins from their wrap on the fence. Minnie Johnson’s hands were in prayer at her face as she sank down to her knees, and Montgomery fell off and died on his back in the snow.

Bob stayed where he was and looked at Minnie who was jerking with tears and still fairly far away. The night made everything blue. He yelled, “I’m a deputy marshal. That bag there isn’t yours. Those clothes aren’t. Same with the horses and bridles. So you’re both thieves. I could shoot you in the face.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“What?”

She shouted, “Please. Don’t make me scared, Bobby. Please don’t shoot me.”

He left her there and whipped the team out of the ditch with a weed and lifted the heavy body of the man into the back of the gray board-wagon.

Cousin Minnie was gone when he returned. So was the saddled horse. No one ever heard of her again.

Bob stopped at the Dalton farm and stomped his boots on the porch and came back out of the house with me. I was buttoning up my long coat and shoving my pants inside my boots when I looked at Montgomery and saw the pockets of snow where his eyes were and a mustache white with ice. A blood-sopped scarf was stuffed around the man’s neck.

“He’ll be heavy as a tree,” I said.