Kate foretold that soon every brand of highwayman and tyro would be begging to join us but that we should keep the gang to a governable size. Then Bob sat on a three-legged milk stool while Kate read the fortune in his hand. She said, “You will be successful in whatever you undertake. You have been disappointed in love but a better woman will replace her. You are a born leader of men.”

“Not very exceptional, is it.”

The woman shrugged.

“How about Emmett?”

I was about as close to Bob as his clothes in those days; I sat cross-legged by his milk stool and shook my head, my fists behind my back. “I believe I’ll forego the pleasure,” I said. “I like a little mystery regarding the hereafter.”

She said, “You’re the kind that becomes prosperous.”

Bob grinned. “This your full-time occupation, ma’am?”

Bob massaged her breasts by the fire, and during the night Bryant, then McElhanie, stole into the tent and used her under the blankets, and the five members of the Dalton gang argued into the small hours about where to go after we got my brother free from the Fort Smith jail. Options were New Orleans and California and Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where there were hot medicinal baths. But my brother Bob wooed us into deciding on the gambling town of Silver City, which was located in an unpopulated section of the country that would become New Mexico in 1912. There a former neighbor of ours named Ben Canty was now the city marshal. He lived on bribes and was mostly tolerant of rustlers.

That was May of 1890 and the five of us decamped and rode through the spectacular Ozarks to Fort Smith, staying in our saddles as McElhanie—who wouldn’t be recognized as a criminal—walked bandy-legged into the office of the Fort Smith Elevator and moseyed up to a man in visor and sleeves who was setting type. We could see the man talk and point directions; then McElhanie came out with the names of the jury and judge and prosecutor listed on a blank newspaper page.

Then we set about making fools of ourselves. We delivered to every prospective member of the jury a letter that had a crude skull and crossbones drawn over script that read: “There is no evidence implicating Grattan Dalton in the horsestealing business. He is a respected former deputy marshal and a victim of circumstances.”

Bitter Creek and Blackface Charley and I then visited Judge Isaac Parker, riding up so close to his house that the horses potholed his spaded flower garden.

His fat daughter came out, drying her hands on a tea towel and said her father wasn’t home, what did we want?

I elbowed Newcomb and he said, “We’re associates of a prisoner of your papa.”

“The innocent Grattan Dalton,” I said.

“Ah,” said the girl. “You’ve come to intimidate us.”