Bryant stood spraddle-legged on the rockbed siding, looking down the quiet train of railroad cars, a rifle in the crook of his arm. He unbuttoned his pants and pinched himself open but could only shudder a minute. He wiped his eyes with his gloved hand and lifted his left boot into the stirrup. He shoved his pistol into his holster and cradled his rifle in his arms and watched the stoker and engineer spider under a coupling to the left side of the train. People were walking inside the cars. He nudged his horse with his knees and walked it slowly past the depot, talking to himself.

The male passenger in the depot walked outside thinking the gang had disappeared. The Wharton ticket agent lit a kerosene lantern and hung it by the calendar over the telegraph key and opened up his Morse book.

Bryant saw the boy begin his signals; then he lifted his rifle some with his elbow and smashed window glass with a cartridge that slammed the boy in the ribs. His body didn’t know he was dead until he’d spun and walked backwards over a castered chair and pulled the wooden ticket slots down. The boy looked flabbergasted.

Bryant nudged his horse into a trot and never said a word about the killing so that we didn’t discover it until several days later. And then we didn’t know what to do about it. Bob made no diary entry.

After it had stayed quiet in Wharton for a minute or two, Ransom Payne got up out of the weeds and solemnly boarded the train. He was already writing reports in his head. He said, “That was the Dalton gang.”

The conductor stared at him.

The Dalton gang abused their horses for twenty miles; then we slowed to a walking string of four on the road south and east to Orlando, a saloon town with nineteen worn-out whores. Bryant hung his head down and tried to sleep; I played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” on my Harpoon; Bob packed some of Newcomb’s Mail Pouch tobacco under his lower lip. It looked like his tongue sitting there. The horses were wheezing and they nodded their heads with each step and sometimes just stood in their tracks to jerk the leaves off low trees.

Newcomb shouted over his shoulder, “You’re gonna like it at the place we’re headed, Bob. Ol Yountis, the owner, he’s got an ugly sister who eats snuff and one of the dogs barks ‘arf arf arf,’ like he’s read it in some cartoon.”