Then a stray bullet from the posse whanged off a skillet strapped to the pack mule and ripped into my right shoulder. The force of it knocked me off my knees and I sat down in the water looking at my pain. It felt like I’d been slammed in the arm with a crowbar. Blood was rolling through my fingers.

Bob asked if I was okay and when I nodded my brother shouted, “What’d’ya say we attack!” and he rushed at the men on foot, hurdling over the dead trees.

The Mexicans were emptying their cylinders and reloading as their horses jittered and bucked, and then the Dalton gang swung up onto their own horses and raked them hard with their spurs, screaming as they turned the posse into retreat and started up a chase. They fired now with their pistols, and one of Bob’s .45 slugs plowed into the neck of a pony, bringing it down. The rider squirmed out from under it and limped as he fired his cylinder up. Three men ducked down behind the heads of their horses and rode east and the man shot down doubled up with a man in a black stetson and soon the cantina’s halfhearted posse was gone, leaving faster than they came.

McElhanie whooped and howled; Newcomb swaggered on his boot heels yelling names in their direction; Bryant tethered the horses and put away the limping one he’d ruined. Bob wiped his pistol against his pants leg to smear the gunpowder off, then pressed it hot against my neck. “Feel that,” he said. “It’s on fire.”

I said, “I take it we’ve scattered them.”

“The wicked flee where none pursueth,” said Bob.

I had my coat and shirt off and was pouring a canteen of water over my wound. The skin was so torn it was lacy. Blood was rushing down like a sleeve.

Bob crouched and worried over the hole, picking bits of shirt and thread out of it. “I’d say you earned your paycheck, Em.”

I wiped at the hole with my shirt cuff. “I can read it with my fingers, Bob. The slug’s as clear as a jawbreaker in your cheek. Hot fire and a sharp knife and whiskey’s all I need.”

“That’s how I picture it.”

Word got to City Marshal Canty when he was having breakfast. “Well, don’t that beat all,” he said. He ordered another cup of coffee, then set about getting reliable men for a posse. And he was so upset that it was almost noon before he’d even got a saddle on his horse. The day just seemed to drag by.