When they’d smoked their cigarettes down, Short stubbed them both out on the floor and told Bryant to stand. They lurched down through two swaying, vestibuled Pullmans until they got to a baggage car that he hammered with his fist. “You won’t be so uncomfortable here,” said Short.

A slot opened and closed and then the baggage door slid and Short pushed Bryant inside. A bald man in suspendered trousers and a yellowed union suit that was stained with food near the buttons sat down on a chair next to a trunk. He had an inch-long beard along his jaw.

Short handed across his own revolver. “I left his rifle in the coach. Can you watch him while I get it?”

“Wasn’t doin’ much anyways, Ed.”

The man put Short’s revolver in a mail sorter over his head. Bryant sat down on a box with his hands between his knees. He rocked calmly with the train. With his mind focused he wasn’t crazy at all. He said, “This scar come from when I was a four-year-old child. Slept too near the stove and my mother tripped over me one morning.”

The baggage man looked. “Ain’t hardly noticeable at all.” He cut a chunk of barbwire with a tinsnips and stapled the wire to a board.

“That a hobby, is it?”

“My barbwire collection.”

“I bet you get plenty of examples, travelin’ as much as you do.”

The baggage man faced a board of twelve strands towards Bryant. “You an old cowhand?”

Bryant squinted. “That top one’s a Kelly with a staple barb.”

“Patented 1868. What’s this one?”

Bryant got up from the box and walked over. “Hell, that’s just a Glidden barb on two wires.”

“When was it patented?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“I do: 1874. I’ve made a regular study of this,” the baggage man said.

“That last one I can’t get at all.”

The baggage man looked down. “This one? This is what they call an A. Ellwood spread.”

Bryant kicked the board away and snatched Short’s pistol out of the pigeonhole. He snapped the hammer back and slumped down on top of the trunk. He was panting with just that little movement. “Don’t you stir now. You just continue with what you were doing. I don’t have no reason at all to hurt you yet.”

“Well, it’d serve me right for being so stupid.”

Bryant gasped for air and wiped his face inside his sleeve. The baggage man said, “I wouldn’t’ve suspected you was so sick.”

“I’m as bad off as a man can be and not have maggots in his nose. Each morning when I wake up alive, I’m surprised. That’s why I needed the gun. I can’t stand the suspense anymore.”

“This your last roundup, is it?” the baggage man said.