I slumped deep in my coat against the wind, my cheeks and nose stinging with cold, holding the reins as Bob sat stolid on the front box with me, his Winchester cradled in his mackinaw coat and snow on his hat brim, eyelashes, and shoulders. We’d been on the road to Coffeyville for ten minutes when Bob said, “Soon as I found out Frank was dead I swore I’d be the best dang marshal the West has ever seen, and I’ve really applied myself; you know that. But I never want to let myself get shot in the mouth for a lousy two dollar reward. I feel bad, Emmett. Miserable. But I’m not going to forget what I promised myself. I don’t want to die poor like Frank, and I don’t want to croup up in bed like Simon, and I’m never going to be so stupid in love that I can be bushwacked while I’m cinching a horse, like the corpse in the back of this wagon.”

I just clucked the team and didn’t say anything, but then I saw that my brother was staring at me, waiting for some kind of reaction. I don’t think I had a single opinion in those days; I didn’t have a comment in me. I said, “I can’t improve on that at all, Bob. You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“Shut up.”

It was after midnight when we reached Coffeyville. Bob woke up undertaker Lape in his brick-basemented house on Ninth Street, and Lape crouched in the back not saying a thing as we rode down Walnut Street to the sign on the wooden awning that read: LANG & LAPE, FURNITURE DEALERS AND UNDERTAKERS.

Lape said, “There are reports I’ll want to fill out. Questions I’ll have to ask.”

“That’s fine,” said Bob; then he and I unloaded the body and propped it to a slump on the board sidewalk while Lape dug out his keys. The undertaker bumped his way to the back of the store and lit a grimy lantern over his embalming table.

My brother removed his gloves and brushed snow from the dead man’s face and coat; then he just squatted there, staring at him. He said, “He was caught burglarizing Seymour’s stable and house; then all of a sudden he was dead. I don’t know if I meant to kill him or not. I took myself by surprise.”

I could see Lape in back in a rubber apron and gloves, limbering some hose. I said, “That’s the amazing thing about guns.”

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