“Let’s go outside and smoke a fatty,” Yuma says.

“We’re talking ancient history,” Real Deal says. “Don’t make me lose my place.” The bartender tries to ease out of his grip. Real Deal clamps down and continues. “We ran up one gully and down another, and it looked like we might be getting away until we came upon the general’s band. They’d tried to escape, but their wagon lost a wheel. The bushwhackers had caught up to them, had them kneeling in the dirt, ten men and a little Negro drummer boy. You ever heard a man beg for his life? It’s pitiful, something to give even the meanest motherfucker pause. Not those Rebs, though. They shot every one of the poor bastards, whooping and hollering like it was squirrels or cats.

“Henry couldn’t bear it. He jumped up and ran, and they chased him down. They shot him twice in the back and a bunch after he fell, and it was like they’d killed me too. I lay there like one more dead man and watched the Rebs pile the corpses onto the band’s wagon and put a torch to it.

“Someone started screaming, someone alive in the pyre, the drummer boy. He untangled himself from the other bodies and crawled out of the fire. Flaming from head to toe, he dragged himself on his belly like a glowworm, leaving a trail of burning grass. The bushwhackers wagered on how far he’d get and pissed on him to put him out when he finally dropped.

“I laid there all night, hollow as an old cow carcass, while the Rebs drank themselves to sleep. They packed up at daybreak and rode off, and sometime later a scout from the fort out looking for survivors found me.”

Real Deal releases the bartender, sits back, and strokes his goatee.

“Eighty-two good men were massacred that afternoon, slaughtered without mercy by four hundred piece-of-shit Reb bushwhackers,” he says.

He points at the Confederate flag.

“Take that fucking thing down.”

“This is my place,” the bartender says.

In a dark flash Real Deal pulls his pearl-handled switchblade and sticks the point of it under the bartender’s chin.

“Take it down, or I’ll drain you dry,” he says.

Pedro comes in from outside. He’s big for a Mexican. His mom used to tell him he was part mountain and part tree. He’s got a thick, black horseshoe mustache that hangs six inches off his chin. “Antonia and Elijah are back,” he says. “Time to go.”

Nobody moves. All eyes are on Real Deal and the bartender, the tension in the room like a finger tightening on a trigger.

“I said let’s roll!” Pedro roars, trying to break the spell. “Samuel!”