Last of all was Bill Doolin who rode in from Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he took the medicinal baths for his rheumatism and courted a preacher’s daughter by the name of Edith Ellsworth. Doolin later had a gang of his own that included my brother Bill, but in those days he was merely a lanky, red-headed, hat-rack of a cowboy with gander blue eyes and a woebegone look and a mustache long as his lower lip. Tied to the tail of his saddle horse was a pack mule with a tarpaulin cover over his skillets and cake pans and jars of spices: cayenne red pepper, arrowroot and chives, mace and dill seed and cloves, rosemary, ginger, basil, and thyme. He was a good cook and took Old Lady more than his share and he would have lasted with us longer than he did if he wasn’t so sure to his bones that he was tougher than two men and smarter than Bob and the natural bona fide president of any company he kept. He’d smirk and ignore and argue whenever my brother talked. He was contrary as a teenager sometimes. Deputy Marshal Heck Thomas organized a party that used a shotgun on him in a cornfield in 1895, and they took a photograph of Bill Doolin dead in a chair with his shirt off and his blue eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The shotgun holes looked like pennies on his chest.

My brother left me with the stolen horses in late May and I didn’t see him again until July. He rented a wagon and drove it west of Hennessey twenty-three miles, to a big farmhouse being hammered and scraped and painted white by three black men hired out of Dover. Bob walked to the back porch with a net bag of oranges and a man on a ladder took off his felt hat.

“The lady of the house around?”

“Mrs. Jones, she in there with the othuh gemmun.”

The gentleman was Blackface Charley Bryant who’d stopped by to visit on the way to the Rock Island Hotel. He’d left his run-over boots by the butter churn in the back and was slouching on a red divan, his feet on a coffee table, while Miss Moore stood on a footstool and hung white draperies. She heard Bob’s footsteps on the kitchen tiles and let the draperies fall. Bob stood there in black corduroy trousers and a blue shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, his hair combed with kitchen water.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Jones.”

She said, “It’s been nearly a week.”

“I know that.” He walked into the front room and nodded like a country boy at Bryant. “Hey Charley. How’re things?”

Bryant crossed his legs. “Pretty quiet.”

Bob smiled at Eugenia and hugged her off the footstool and lifted up the net bag. “I brought you oranges.”

She kissed him and said, “I think we should go upstairs.”